Harry the 8ths time so it may perhaps as justly be said that they are in debt to the Crown for the safety of the Protestant Religion since Queen Elizabeth's who as I have been informed from some well Vers'd in our Exchequer Records alienated more of the Patrimony of the Crown then any English Prince ever did and that in order to her raising those great Sums before mentioned which were necessary for the securing the Protestant Religion and rivetting it in fast to our Laws and Government and I am the more apt to credit such my Information because I see not by what other way she could raise those vast Sums but by such alienation of the Crown Lands her ordinary expences probably coming near such her receits which one may partly guess by what Sir Robert Cotton in his abstract of the Records of the Tower touching the Kings Revenue affirms Ex Computo Dom. Burleigh The saurar that Anno 12 her Revenue besides the Wards and Dutchy of Lancaster was 188197 l. 4 s. and the Payments and Assignmets were 110612 l. 13 s. of which the Houshold was 30000 l. Privy Purse 2000 l. Admiralty 30000 l. and Sir Robert Cotton in that Book mentions that she did pawn her Iewels in the Tower and often morgage her Land which no doubt she was constrained to do for the great end aforesaid her ordinary Revenue and extraordinary Supplies of Subsidies not being adequate to the great Sums that her Measures of State and Religion caus'd her to expend And to how low an Ebb the Crown Lands were fall'n in the late Kings time from what they were in the 12th year of her Reign and when they were perhaps about 200,000 l. per Annum appears in a Book of Mr. Christopher Verion an Exchequer man dedicated to Sir Iohn Culpeper under Treasurer of his Majesties Exchequer where 't is said that the Revenues of the Kings Lands now in charge before his Majesties Auditors amounted in the whole to 100,000l per Annum and consisted then for the most part of Fee-Farms and certain Rents I have before mentioned that she laid the Foundation of the Protestant Religion being here semper eadem as in the Metropolis of Holland the Foundation of a House ordinarily costs as much as the superstructure thus expenceful to the Crown did the Foundation of Protestancy by her prove and she needed not the Precaution in these words of St. Luke For which of you intending to build a Tower sits not down first and counts the cost whether he hath sufficient to finish it lest happily after he hath laid the Foundation and is not able to finish it all that behold it begin to mock him saying This man began to build and was not able to finish She laid the Foundation of our English Gospel so deep in the Law of the Land that God be thanked the Romanists have not been able to mock it further then by calling it a Parliament-Religion and by my consent let them that way still mock on and I shall mock at them who think that any Religion but protestancy here will ever have a Parliamentary Sanction and if Popery had not been a Parliamentary Religion here in the Marian dayes her Reign had not as I may say been infamous by the occasion of any Noble Army of Martyrs nor the Eclipse of Justice and Mercy and the English good nature in her vile Quinquennium been made an Epoche of Horror in the English Story as great Eclipses of old in Chronology like notches in the Line of Time for Mens Memories to fasten on served as dates of Epoches to measure it by and setting aside some just ground of fear of Poperies being here permitted by Heaven to be an Epidemical opinion of Religion as a just Punishment of such defection from Morality I think the fear of the Kingdoms being Shipwrack't on it and sustaining thereby such persecution as was in Bohemia would be as much to be mocked as Shakespears Shipwrack in Bohemia and the fear of the Writ De haretico comburendo grillading any more Christians be as ridiculous as Lithgows mentioning in his Travels that in a hot Country he saw Geese roasted in and by the Sun. But My Lord raillery apart the Protestant Religion that before Queen Elizabeth's Reign was only like a Picture hanging on the Wall and easie to be removed without Fatal Prejudice to the Kingdom hath since been so incorporated into our Laws and the heart of our Politicks that like the old Fresco Painting appearing on Walls and there wrought deeply in it cannot be removed but with the Wall it self and whatever Popish Bishops or Iudges any Prince of that persuasion may possibly hereafter appoint they must till some of our Acts of Parliament can be Repeal'd which declare Popery to be against God's Law give Judgment that it is so accordingly as 't is rationally resolved in Vaughan's Reports in the Case of Thomas Hill vers Thomas Good where 't is occasionally said That if a Marriage be declared by Act of Parliament to be against God's Law we must admit it to be so for by a Law that is by an Act of Parliament it is so declared There is nothing I am more ashamed of in many Protestants who pass for first-rate ones and carry not only swoln Sails of Profession of it but Flaggs as Demagogues then to see them as I said value themselves on their excessive Fears of Papists and Popery I would wish that such intimidated Protestants if really they suffer that Passion and are afraid of the Fire of those Faggots that they are more distant in nature from then from the heat of Mount Aetna and talk after the Rate of the Martyr in his Letter to Cranmer that they must prepare to hold out to the Fire Inclusive would not by their pittiful ill boding fears stain the Noble Prophecies of some English Martyrs when the Fire was kindled about them at the Stake The Acts and Monuments will tell them how at the Martyrdom of Ridley and Latimer That when a Faggot was kindled with fire and laid down at Ridleys Feet Latimer spake to him in these words Be of good comfort Mr. Ridley and play the man We shall this day light such a Candle in England as I trust shall never be put out But what is somewhat more extraordinary and which I remember not to have heard any one observe out of the Acts and Monuments is in the Relation of the Tryal of Roger Holland a Merchant-Taylor of London how Bishop Bonner heard him say after the Sentence of Condemnation was read God hath heard the Prayer of his Servants which hath been powred forth with Tears for his afflicted Saints whom you daily persecute But this I dare be bold in God to speak which by his Spirit I am moved to say that God will shorten your hand of Cruelty c. For after this day in this place shall there not be any by you put to the Tryal of Fire and Faggot
and not any Religionary Regeneration and That the accession of the Crown purgeth all Obstructions And that that Prince did by the Oath of Allegiance design only to twist the Band of our natural Allegiance the stronger an Allegiance tyed not to Princes Faith of the Cross but to their Crown appears throughout his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance He likewise in his Premonition to all Christian Monarchs p. 9. doth with some warmth of words reflect on the Malice of some who impudently affirm That the Oath of Allegiance was devised for deceiving and entrapping of Papists in point of Conscience and saith That tho the House of Commons at the first framing of the Oath made it to contain That the Pope had no Power to excommunicate me which I caused them to reform only making it to conclude that no Excommunication of the Popes can warrant my Subjects to practise against my Person or State c. so careful was I that nothing should be contained in this Oath except the profession of Natural Allegiance and Civil and Temporal Obedience with a promise to resist to all contrary uncivil violence From thence it appears that what looked like the Religionary part of Popery namely the Pope's exercising a Spiritual Power against him or the Notion as Aquinas delivers it That there is Potestas in summo Pontifice puniendi omnes mortales ratione delicti he intended not to whet the sharpness of the Oath against but only against the Irreligionary part of Popery beforementioned and as to which he might rationally depend on the Zeal of any Heir or Successor tho Roman Catholick concurring with his therein He having in the foregoing Page mentioned how that Parliament that was to have been blown up made some new Laws against Papists saith So far hath my Heart and Government been from any bitterness as almost never one of those sharp Additions to the former Laws have ever yet been put in Execution The Execution of some Laws of pecuniary Mulcts on Papists who in that Conjuncture believed the irreligionary part of the Papal Power might seem to carry such a Face of Justice with it as the practice of the Custom-house doth pursuant to the 13th and 14th of Harry the 8th c. 4. Whereby any English man or born Subject of England who shall swear Obeysance or live as Subjects to any Foreign Prince shall pay Aliens Customs but 't is a madness to think of any Prince's abdicating his Temporal Power and swearing Temporal Obeysance to any one and no man but he who has Laesa principia can suppose that King Iames who avowed in his Premonition That no man in his time or the late Queens ever died for his Religion nor yet any Priests after their taking Orders beyond Sea without some other guilt in them than their bare coming home and who p. 16. of his Apology avows and maintains to his own knowledge that Queen Elizabeth never punished any Papists for Religion but that their punishment was ever extorted out of her hands against her will by their own mis-behaviour could ever intend that by the withdrawing of Allegiance from any of his Heirs in the Course of their Lineal Succession on the pretence of any of their Religionary Notions or other pretence or ground whatsoever there should be a solutio continui or political death inflicted on the Hereditary Monarchy by the preserving of which the lives of all the People of England could only be preserved He in his Premonition and Apology discharged the Moral Offices of honouring all men with relation to Papists his Subjects and judgeth some of them to be of quiet dispositions and good Subjects and in p. 3 4. 46 47 48. of his Apology he makes a difference between many of his Popish Subjects who retained in their hearts the print of their naturâ— l Duty to their Sovereign and those who were carried away with that Fanatical Zeal the Powder-Traytors were and useth the expression of quietly minded Papists and Papists tho peradventure zealous in their Religion yet otherwise civilly honest and good Subjects and acknowledgeth That his Mother altho she continued in that Religion wherein she was nourished yet was so far from being superstitious or jesuited therein that at his baptism tho he was baptized by a Popish Arch-Bishop she sent him word to forbear to use the spittle in his Baptism which was obeyed and in his Premonition speaking to Roman Catholick Princes and wishing them to search the Scriptures and ground their Faith upon their own certain knowledge and not on the Report of others since every man must be safe by his own Faith but leaving this to God his Merciful Providence in his due time he further wisheth them to imitate their Noble Predecessors who in the days of greatest blindness did divers times courageously oppose themselves to the encroaching Ambition of Popes and acknowledgeth That some of their Kingdoms have in all Ages maintained and without interruption enjoyed their liberty against the most ambitious Popes c. and saith That some of those Princes have constantly defended and maintained their lawful freedom to their immortal honour and concludes his Premonition with earnest Prayers to the Almighty for their prosperities and that after their happy Temporal Reigns on Earth they may live and Reign in Heaven with him forever This Learned King did sufficiently thereby Proclaim himself an Enemy to the Papal Tenet of founding Dominion in Grace as to those Foreign Popish Princes and could not therefore but more abhor the effects of it in the Case of his Hereditary Successors and he having judged that those Foreign Princes who owned the Religionary Tenets of Popery did yet constantly defend and maintain their lawful freedom from all Papal Vsurpations to their immortal honour and with so devout a Charity pray'd for their happy Temporal Reigns on Earth and that they may live and reign in Heaven afterward could not but suppose that any of his Heirs who might be of the Roman Catholick Communion would yet disown any Tenet of Popery that was irreligionary and would Exterminate all Papal Vsurpation and that they might here expect a happy Reign on Earth and a happier in Heaven hereafter leaving it to God to open their Eyes as aforesaid in matters Religionary and to render them fafe by their own Faith. King Iames in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance doth incidenter prop up the Justice of the Oath of Supremacy and in p. 49 50 51. doth insert 14 contrary Conclusions to all the Points and Articles of which the Oath of Supremacy consists to denote the absurdity of the opposing that Oath and which Conclusions tho many Clerical and Lay-Papists among his Subjects might maintain yet he might well think it Morally impossible for a Roman Catholick Prince here to do so and he gives a very good reason for the inducing any one so to judge of his measures viz. That those Conclusions were never concluded and defined by any compleat General Council
to such a high Prospect of thought from whence they might at once have a view of the past and present State of Popery here and abroad in former Ages and likewise of its probable future one a sight that might better entertain Curiosity than what the Traveller speaks of when from a high Mountain in the Isthmus of America he could view both the great North and South Sea not to have rendered himself an acceptable Perswader by his Discourse carrying with it Self-Evidence that he was no Papist had been a vain attempt And again for any one who would perswade the generality of Popish or Protestant Recusants that it is not their Interest by any Artifices to endeavour to make so great a Figure in the Internal Part of the Government as they have in some former Conjunctures without his Discourse carrying likewise Self-Evidence that his Advice was that of a Friend to their Persons as far as the publick Security would admit had been an attempt as insignificant as the former I have in this Discourse often took notice of this distinction of the Tenets of Popery and Presbytery viz. Such of them that properly are denominable by Religion and such that are not presuming in my private judgment to differ from the Measures took by the Government in King Iames his time when the printed Prayers for the Anniversary of the Gun powder Treason represented Papists Religion to be Rebellion and I under the Notion of Principles denominable by Religion have ranked Transubstantiation Purgatory Invocation of Saints and others and have judged none of their Principles Irreligionary but such as the late Learned Earl of Clarendon in his incomparable defence of Dr. Stilling fleet attributes to Popery as injurious to Princes and their Subjects and what King Iames in his Speech to both Houses hinted as such according to what is cited by me p. 172 viz. As it is not impossible but many honest men seduced with some Errors in Popery may yet remain good and faithful Subjects so on the other handâ—none that know and believe the Grounds and School-Conclusions of their Doctrine can ever prove good Christians or faithful Subjects and such as are apparently contrary to the Light and Law of Nature But there is nothing in this Discourse otherwise than en passant that impugns or confutes the old Religionary Points controverted formerly between the Church of England and that of Rome and all the passages throughout referring to those old points might I believe be comprized together in about a Page And if I were as in a Dictionary to express the sense of the words Popery and Irreligionary so often used in this Discourse I would say that generally by Poperâ— or as the Writers in Latin call it Papismus I mean the power of the Bishop of Rome in imposing Câ—eeds and Doctrines and Rules of Divine Worship on Men and his Jurisdiction interloping in that of Princes and their Laws and the doing this by the Charter of Ius Divinum and as he is Christs pretended Vicar and by the term of Irreligionary of often by me applied to Principles I sometimes mean such as are barely NOT religionary that is to say Principles that are not in truth and in the nature things parts of Religion whatever any Sanction of the Papacy or a Presbytery may term them and which do not religare or bind the Soul to God by Moral Obligations nor by any Band of Loyalty to our Prince or Charity to our Neighbour but do only tie men to a Party and to the owning with them several points of speculation and no more necessary to be believed in order to our improvement in Moral Offices that the Divine Law natural or positive enjoyns or conducing to the same than are the Hypotheses of the old or new Philosophy But I most commonly apply the word Irrâ—ligionary to Principles that are reverâ contrary to Religion and Justice and Morality and such as I would therefore dis-robe of the Name of Religion and under this term of Irreligionary not only all the Antimonarchical Principles of the Jesuites and Presbyterians are properly to be reckoned but those Principles of the Papacy that even in the times of our Roman Catholick Ancestors as I said were so injurious to our Princes and their Subjects and which were by them as Vsurpations on the Crown opposed and defied and especially by those of them who were in their tempers most Magnanimous and in this Case the Papal Principles that favoured those Vsurpations on the rights of our Princes might be said to be both Non-Religionary or things beside the matter of Religion and likewise Irreligionary or contrary to Religion as being unjust The Religio Officii as Tully calls the Conscience one hath to do his duty did bind those Princes of the Pope's Religion to impugne his Arbitrary Usurpations on their Realms and in the Case of the meanest Cottager of England the Pope's Excommunication was never allowed good in Westminister-Hall under our Roman Catholick Kings The latter end of the very Reign of Queen Mary was likely to have diverted our English World with the sight of as remarkable a Prize played between the two Swords I mean the Pope's Spiritual and her Temporal one as was ever played on its Stage and when Cardinal Pool her Kindsman who had reconciled our Nation to Rome was so far lost in the Pope's good Graces as that his Legantine Power was abrogated by the Pope and in affront to Pool given to Peito a poor Friar but whose red Hat by Queen Mary's opposition could get no further than Callis and She was so regardless of the Pope's Curses in the Case that his Bulls in favour of his new Legate were not permitted to Arrive here and the designed Legate was enforced to go up and down the Streets of London like a begging Friar without a red Hat. And more need not be here said to express the Principles that Usurp on Monarchs to be Irreligionary When I have in the former part of the Discourse once or twice mentioned the term of Apostates for some turning to the Church of Rome I did there speak Cum vulgo and likewise according to the Style of our Courts Christian which proceeding against some perverted to the Church of Rome impute to them the Crime of Apostacy but having observed in the Progress of this Discourse that that term was seditiously used by the Disciples of Iulian I have reprehended the further calling any men Apostates for the alteration of their judgments in some controvertible points of saith between Papists and Protestants and that may without absurdity be called Tenets of Religion As to the expression of the Extermination of Popery and likewise of Presbytery used in this Discourse sometimes and with allusion to the trite term of the Papacy viz. Exterminium haereticorum I have there in p. 283 sufficiently expressed my abhorrence of the Extermination of Persons and as is there said do only refer to the Extermination of Things
let men see how the Pastorage of the Church of England treats them like Gentlemen and may serve to awaken their Compassion for their deluded Country-men whom they see frâ—ghtened by their Teachers into a fancy of the unlawfulness of a Ceremony and yet embolden'd by them into the belief and practice of a Covenant without the King's Consent and from which Persons we should perhaps quickly receive Alarms of Persecution if the Government should impose any Covenant or Test on them in order to Loyalty tho never so necessary for the publick Peace But the World is aweary of the umbrage Sedition hath found among denominations of Churches and of judging of Trees by their Shadows or otherwise than by their Fruit that is by their Principles and for the happiness of the present State of England after we have by many Religion-Traders been troubled with almost as many Marks of true and false Churches as there are of Merchants Goods Nature seems to have directed the People to agree in this indeleble Character and Mark of a false Church namely one whose Principles are Disloyal The Genius of England is so bent upon Loyalty in this Conjuncture that a disloyal Principle doth jar in the Ears of ordinary thinking men like a false string in the Ears of a Critical Lutenist and the which he knows that Art or Nature can never tune and upon any Churches valuing themselves on the intrinsic worth or the weight of their Principles as most opposite to Falshood men generally now take into their hands the Touch-stone and the Scales of Loyalty and do presently suspect any Church that refuseth to bring its Principles to be touch'd and weigh'd and they will not now allow the Reputation of a visible Church to any body of Men whose Principles relating to Loyalty shall not first be made visible Nor can it be otherwise thought by the impartial than that Mens Consciousness of somewhat of the Turpitude of some of their Principles restrains them from bringing them to appear in publick View and according as Cicero in his de fin bon mal answers Epicurus who said that he would not publish his Opinion lest the people might perhaps take offence at it viz. Aut tu eadem ista dic in judicio aut si coronam times dic in senatu Nunquam facies Cur nisi quod turpis est Oratio I who thus urge the Reasonableness and Necessity of mens being Confessors of their Principles of Loyalty have frankly exposed one of mine own in p. 131. and which I say there that I account the great fundamental one for the quiet of the World as well as of a Man 's own Conscience viz. That no man is warranted by any Intention of advancing Religion to invade the right of the Sovereign Power that is inherent in Princes by the municipal Laws of their Countreys and I have mention'd the same in p. 136. as owned by the Non-conforming Divines in King Iames his time Tho I believe as firmly as any man that the Christian Religion doth plainly forbid the Resistance of Authority and that his Majesties Royal Power is immediately from God and no way depends on any previous Election or Approbation of the people yet since the Sons of the Church of England are sufficiently taught both that Doctrine and likewise that human Laws in the point of their Allegiance do bind the Conscience and since other men who err in Principles of Loyalty may sooner be brought to see the Absurdity of their Error by the known Laws of the Land than by Argumentations from Scripture which may admit of Controversy and since his Majesty hath been pleased to expect the Measures of our Obedience from the Laws and that our English Clergy while in the late Conjuncture they have so universally preach'd up Loyalty have so religiously accorded with the Measures of the Laws and have therein as I may say shewed themselves Apostolical Pastours and since the persons whose Complaints of the danger of Popery are most loud do joyn therewith their Exclamations against Arbitrary or Illegal Power and seem to joyn Issue in the point that they are willing that the Power that is by Law inherent in the Crown should be preserved to it I thought it most useful in the present Conjuncture to assert the Principle in these Terms I have done and I the rather chose to do it because I thought that the security of the Crown is by some Laws well provided for whose Obligation admits of no Doubt I mean those whereby Men have been obliged to take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy But moreover as I consider'd it to be one great valuable Right inherent by Law in our Princes to secure the Continuance of the Succession in their Line so I likewise judged the legal Right of Princes to Succeed according to Proximity of Blood to be unalterable and therefore having my eye on the prevention of further Scandal to Protestancy from the Exclusion I introduced that Principle so worded as aforesaid that by dilating thereon as I have done I might bring the Reader the better prepared to my Casuistical Discussion of the Oaths The Reader will find at the end of this Discourse the Casuistical Discussion of the Obligation to the King's Heirs and Successors resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy by me promised in p. 214 and the occasion of my writing which is likewise there mentioned It was wholly writ in the time that the Question of the Succession made the greatest noise among us and was then by me Communicated to several of my Friends in Terms as herewith printed without any thing since added or diminished and both it and the Discourse which contains so many things naturally Previous to the Consideration of that Question would have been long since published but partly for the various Accidents of Business and Sickness that necessarily interrupted me in the Writing of the latter And tho perhaps the Publication of the former in the time of the Sessions of our late Parliaments might have been more significant than after the Volly of Loyal Addresses shot of manifesting the general just zeal against the Exclusion of which Addresses I yet observed none to mention any thing of the Obligations to Allegiance to the King's Heirs and Successors from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy it may be said that the subsequent Births of Fate have not restrained the possibility of its usefulness in future times and tho Heaven may be propitious to our Land in the blessing it according to the Loyal Style of the Addresses namely in his Majesties Line continuing on the English Throne as long as the Sun and Moon endure yet many and many may be the Conjunctures when a supposed Heterodox Prince shining like the Sun in the Firmament of the English State and regularly moving in the Line of the Law and his own Religion may attract the dull Vapours of Fears and Jealousies again as another glorious Prince hath done and
Author's opinion that they can never recover the wounds given them by the publication of the les Provinciales c. ib. and that much less those given them by the Popes said Decree p. 50 51. Observations on that Notion of Moasieur Descartes and Mr. Hobbs That the faculties of the mind are equally dispensed and on the natural effects of that Notion p. 58. The Author remarks some Shamms and Calumnies used by some Protestants and their contending with Papists therein p. 59. An Antidote mentioned for Papists and Protestants to carry about with them in this Pestilential time of Shamms ib. A vile Shamm or Calumny used against Papists as if they intended to burn the Town of Stafford and other great Towns is referred to in one of Janeway's printed Intelligences p. 60. Animadversions on Parsons his Book of the Succession p. 60 61. 'T is for the honour of the Roman Catholick Religion observed that Harry the 4th of France after he turned Papist continued kind and just to his Protestant Subjects notwithstanding the Popes endeavours to the contrary p. 62. The Authors grand Assertion viz. That whatever alterations time can cause yet humanly speaking while the English Nation remains entire and defended from Foreign Conquest the Protestant Religion can never be exterminated out of this Kingdom p. 64. Mr. Hooker's Propliecy of the hazard of Religion and the service of God in England being an ill State after the Year 1677 p. 65. The defections of the ten Tribes from the time of David punished by a Succession of 10 ill Kings p. 66. The words in Hosea I gave thee a King in mine anger falsly made by Antimonarchical Scriblers to refer to Saul ib. Dr. Stillingfleet's Sermon cited about the uncertainty of what the fermentations among us may end in ib. Dr. Sprat's opinion cited That whatever vicissitude shall happen about Religion in our time will neither be to the advantage of Implicit Faith or Enthusiasm p. 67. Historical Oâ—servations relating to the Papacy from p. 67 to p. 77. The Papal Power formerly pernicious to the external Polity and Grandeur of England p. 77 78. Queen Elizabeth said by Townsend to have spent a Million of Money in her Wars with Spain and laid out 100000 l. to support the King of France and 150000 l. in defence of the Low Country and to have discharged a Debt of 4 Millions She found the Crown indebted in ib. How by her Alliances She laid the Foundation of the vast ensuing Trade of England whose over-balance brought in afterward so much Silver to be Coyn'd in the Tower of London p. 78. The Sums Coyn'd there from the 41 st year of her Reign to May 1657 ib. England alone till the Peace of Munster in the year 1648 enjoyed almost the whole Manufacture and best part of the Trade of Europe by virtue of her Alliances ib. The same Month of January in the year 48 produced the signing of that Peace and the Martyrdom of the best of Kings and the fatal diminution of our Trade ib. Queen Elizabeth had what praemium of Taxes from Parliaments She pleased ib. King James told the Parliament Anno 1620 that She had one year with another 100,000 l. in Subsidies and that he had in all his time but 4 Subsidies and 6 Fifteenths and that his Parliament had not given him any thing for 8 or 9 years ib. In Harry the 3 d's time the Pope's Revenue in England was greater than the Kings and in 3 years time the Pope extorted more Money from England than was left remaining in it ib. In Edward the 3 d's time the Taxes paâ—d to the Pope for Ecclesiastical Dignities amounted to five times as much as the People payed to the King p. 79. By a Balance of Trade then in the Exchecquer it appeared that the Sum of the over-plus of the Exports above the Imports amounted to 255214 l. 13 s. 8d ib. Wolsey's Revenue generally held equal to Harry the 8 th's ib. Why the Pope never sent Emissaries to Denmark and Sweden and some other Northern Countries for Money and why probably in no course of time that can happen he will send any to England on that Errand ib. and p. 80. In the 4 th year of Richard the 2 d the Clergy confessed they had a 3 d part of the Revenue of the Kingdom and therefore then consented to pay a 3 d of the Taxes ib. Bishop Sanderson mentions the Monastick Revenue to be half the Revenue of the Kingdom ib. The not providing for the augmentations of the poorer livings in England observed to be a Scandal to the Reformation p. 81. Of 8000 and odd Parish Churches in Queen Elizabeth's time but 600 were observed to afford a competent maintenance to a Minister and four thousand five hundred Livings then not worth above 10 l. a year in the Kings Books ib. During the late Vsurpation the Impropriate Tithes saved the other ib. A Million of Pounds Sterling commonly observed to accrue to the Popes per Annum from Indulgencies p. 87. An account of the Compact between some of the most eminent Presbyterian Divines and the long Parliament by which the Parliament was obliged to settle on the Ministry all the Church Lands and those Divines engaged to promote the Parliaments Cause and of the result thereof p. 88. Observations on the Calculations of the Monastick Revenue made in the year 1527 by Mr. Simon Fish in his Book called The supplication of Beggars and which Calculations were much valued by Harry the 8 th p. 90 91. Not only none of our Monkish Historians but even of our polished and ingenious ones made any Estimates of the Numbers of the People in the times they writ of ib. A Calculation of the Number of Religious Persons or Regulars in England at the time of the Dissolution of Monasteries p. 92. A Calculation of the Numbers of Seculars as well as Regulars that then lived in Celebacy ib. The Author's Calculation of the Number of the Levites and of their Quota of the Profits of the Land p. 93. A Calculation of the Ebb of the Coynage of England from May 1657 to November 1675 p. 102. A particular Account of Cromwel the Vsurpers depressing the Trade of the European World p. 103. The Kings of Spain impose Pensions on Ecclesâ—astical Preferments to the 4th part of the value p. 104. The proportion of Papists and Non-Papists by the Bishops Survey in the Year 1676 is 150 Non-Papists for one Papist ib. The People in the Province of Holland reckoned to be 2 Millions 4 hundred thousand ib. The People in Flanders in the Year 1622 reckoned to be 700,000 p. 105. Amsterdam in the Year 1650 reckoned to have in it 300000 Souls ib. An Account of what the Inhabitants of Holland in the Year 1664 did over and above the Customs and other Demesnes of the Earls and States of Holland pay toward the publick Charge namely to the States of Holland to the Admiralty of the Maze to the Admiralty of
part of its Patrimony Queen Elizabeth alienated to secure the Protestant Religion ib. The fears of Popery further Censured p. 198. Ridly and Latimer Prophesied at the Stake that Protestancy would never be extinguished in England p. 198. Roger Holland prophesied at the Stake at Smithfield that he should be the last that should there suffer Martyrdom ib. Observations on the Natural Prophesying of dying men and its effects p. 199. The Vanity of Mens troubling the World by Suppositions ib. and p. 200. 'T is a degree of madness to trouble it by putting wanton impossible cases p. 200. The Author without any thing of the Fire of Prophecy and only by the light of reason presageth that the excessive fear of Popery as weâ—l as its danger will here be exterminated ib. The justice of the Claim of King Charles the first to the Title of Martyr asserted p. 201 202 203. The Author judgeth that some vile Nominal Protestants by the publication of many Seditious Pamphlets have given the Government a just Alarm of their designs against it p. 203. Of Papists and Protestants being Antagonists in Shamms p. 204. Mr. Nye cited for representing the Dissenters acted by the Jesuites in thinking it unlawful to hear the Sermons of the Divines of the Church of England p. 204. False Witnesses among the Jews allowed against false Prophets p. 205. The Earl of Anglesy's Courage and Iustice asserted in the professing in the House of Lords his disbelief of such an Irish Plot as was sworn by the Witnesses tho the belief of the reallity of such a Plot had obtained the Vote of every one else in both Houses ib. Above 2000 Irish Papists in the Barony of Enishoan demean'd themselves civilly to the English during the whole Course of the Rebellion ib. Several eminent ingenious Papists in England and Foreign parts celebrated for their avowed Candour to Protestants p. 206 207 208 c. D' Ossat's acquainting the Pope That if his Holyness were King of France he would show the same kindness to the Huguenots that Harry the 4th did p. 208. Cromwel being necessitated to keep the Interest of the Kingdom divided was likewise necessitated to keep up all Religions according to the Politicks of Julian p. 211. Of the Papists calling King James Julian ib. The Author inveigheth against the Calumny of any Protestants who call any one Apostate for the alteration of his Iudgment in some controvertible points of Faith between Papists and Protestants ib. The Author's Reason why 't is foolish to fear that any Rightful Prince of the Roman Catholick perswasion that can come here will follow the Politicks of Julian ib. 'T is shewn that any Protestant Vsurper here must act à la Julian ib. The Vsurper Cromwel shewn to be a Fautor of Priests and Jesuites by the Attestations of Mr. Prynn and the Lord Hollis p. 212 213. The danger of Popery that would have ensued Lambert's Vsurpation p. 213 214. How true soever any Vsurpers Religion is he must be false to the Interest of the Kingdom p. 214. Observed that the Kings long Parliament by the Act for the Test did enjoyn the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy to be taken ib. Those Oaths lay on the Takers an Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors without any distinction of the Religion true or pretended of such Heirs and Successors ib. Mr. Prynn's Book called Concordia discors printed Anno 1659 to prove the Obligation by those Oâ—hs to the King's Heirs and Successors commended ib. The Author mentions the Reasons that induced him to write Casuistically concerning such Obligation and promiseth to send that his Writing to his Lordship ib. The Author judgeth that he ought not to be severe to any Papist before he hath a Moral certainty of such Papists having imbibed any of the Principles imputable to Pâ—pery that is unmoral or inhumane ib. The Author observes that few or no Writers of the Church of Rome have lately thought fit by their Pens to assert the Inheritable Right of Princes without respect to any Religionary Tenets they may hold p. 215. The Author thinks that for a Protestant at this time to write for the devesting any Roman Catholick Prince of his Property and Right of Succession when few or no Writers of the Church of Rome either do or dare for fear of offending the Pope employ their Pens for the preservation of such his property and right without respect to to any Religionary Tenets he may hold is like drawing against a naked man ib. D' Ossat affirms That the Pope and the whole Court of Rome hold it lawful to deprive a Prince of any Country to preserve it from Heresie ib. An Animadversion on a late Pamphlet concerning the Succession ib. Reflections on the House of Commons Proceedings in the Exclusion Bill ib. and p. 216. The Author gives an explanatory account of the tempus acceptabile he in p. 25 mentions p. 216. His Majesty's constant contending for the Protestant Faith celebrated and likewise his Iustice in preserving the property of the Succession in the Legal Course by all his Messages to the Parliament p. 217. The unhappy State of that Prince who shall for fear of the Populace do any Act of the Iustice whereof he doubts and much more of the injustice whereof he is fully convinced p. 217. at large The Caution to the Angel of the Church of Philadelphia applied to such a Prince viz. Hold fast that which thou hast that no man take away thy Crown ib. at large 'T is not only Popery but Atheism in Masquerade to do an unjust Act to support Religion p. 218. King James disavowed the Act of his Son-in Laws accepting the Title of King of Bohemia ib. An Observation that in the Common-Prayer in King Charles the 1 sts time relating to the Royal Family the Prayer runneth for Frederick Prince Palatâ—ine Elector of the Rhine and the Lady Elizabeth his Wife ib. The Author observes that in the Assembly's Directory the Lady Elizabeth is styled Queen of Bohemia p. 219. An Account of the Governments avowed sence in King James's time that any of the Princes of England ought not by becoming Roman Catholick to be prejudiced in their Right of Succession to the Crown ib. The same sense of the Government in the time of King Charles the 1 st ib. The Parliament during the Civil War projected not any prejudice to the right of Succession on the account of any Religionary Tenets p. 220. Mention of somewhat more to confirm the claim of King Charles the 1 st to the Title of Martyr beside his Adhesion to Episcopacy and its Revenue ib. An account of the Protestation of the Nonconforming Ministers in the year 1605 relating to the King's Supremacy wherein they assert the Royal Authority inseparably fixt to the true Line whatever Religion any Prince thereof may profess p. 221. The Author peâ—stringeth the Protestant would be 's and new Statists of the Age that would for Religionary Tenets barr any of the
Religion of the Church of England hath naturally pierced through the sides and roots of Protestant Recusancy ib. The numbers of the Non Conformists are daily decaying ib. There were in the Year 1593 judged to be in England 20000 Brownists ib. The Gross of the Numbers of Non-Conformists always consisting chiefly of Artisans and Retail-Traders in Corporations p. 281. They were very numerous there before the King's Restoration ib. A new way by which their Numbers and Potency may easily there be diminished ib. The Author judgeth the continuance of the old Laws against Protestant Recusants to be necessary p. 282. The Lord Keeper Puckerings Speech of the ill behaviour of the Puritans in 88 referred to ib. The prudence and justice of the King's Measures asserted as to the not repealing the Statutes against Protestant Recusants ib. The Peace of Munster observed to have removed the popular fears abroad in Case of the Successions of lawful Princes differing in Iudgment from the Religion Established p. 283. The Author of the Catholick Apology with a Reply cited for there not being one Priest one Mass one Conversion more in England in the year after the Declaration of Indulgence then in any year of trouble p. 284. The Author mentioneth the soft and gentle disposition of Bellarmine p. 284. The Authors reflecting on the Principles of the Iesuites with sharpness as the Pope and his Court of Inquisition have done ib. The Author disowneth all acerbity and rancour relating to the usage of any Papists ib. He observes that the putting Roman Catholick Priests here to death did propagate their Religion ib. The Author observes that an English Priest of the Church of Rome hath done him the honour to adopt as his own many passages of the Authors long since printed that were disswasive of the use of force in matters of Religion p. 284. Observed that if it be not lawful for every man to be guided by his private judgment in matters of Religion 't is hardly possible to acquit our separation from the Church of Rome of the guilt of Schism ib. The Author not inclined to be severe to any Papist for being in any Tenets that may properly be called Religion guided by his private judgment to receive the guidance of the Church of Rome ib. The Custom of Authors of large Discourses publishing together with them a REVIEW ib. He promiseth to the Earl of Anglesy a REVIEW of this Discoursâ— p. 285. The Author will in a short REVIEW explain some passages on occasion and add others ib. If he doubts of any thing or shall alter his opinion of any thing therein he will in the REVIEW acquaint his Lordship why he doth so ib. The Author thinks that as none but Cowards are cruel so none but Dunâ—es are positive ib. C2 R DIEV·ET·MON·DROIT HONI·SOIT·QVI·MAL·Y·PENSE Devon Jan. 27. 1680. My Lord AS to the Candour of the English Nation that was formerly so very extraordinary and the whiteness and sweetness of the temper of the People of England that did adde to the representing it a Land flowing with Milk and Honey and to the making it like the Galaxy to have one brightness from thousands of fixt Stars placed so high by Nature that they could not suffer the least Eclipse by the shaddow of the whole Earth we may well since the Publishing of the horrid Affidavit of the Infamous Person and so many valuing themselves as the best of Men upon their believing what was sworn by the worst lament the temporary decay of so great a part of the Glory of the English good Nature And they who knew your Lordship and consequently knew you to be a steadfast approver of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England have reason more particularly to be sensible of what concern'd you in that calumnious Affidavit because the wretch presumed therein to fasten on your Lordship the Sanbenito of a Court of Rome Papist and to represent you as a favourer of Popery or the Papal Usurpations that were in Harry the 8th's time hence exterminated and as an endeavorer to stifle the Evidence about the Plot notify'd by the Government for the recalling that kind of Popery Altho I know no Christian more tenderly inclined then your Lordship to shew all Christian Indulgence to the Persons of Popish and Protestant Recusants and have sometimes observed your Lordship while you were wishing that none of the New Articles of Faith in the Tridentine Creed were by any believed yet out of tenderness to the Persons of Devout and Loyal Papists with great reason to wish likewise that no Odium might come to such from the Name of POPERY for their Profession of such Tenets as are held by the Greek and other Churches who yearly Curse the Pope and are so Curs'd by him yet none need doubt but that your Lordship will as much as any man account it the opus diei by all due means to oppose all plotted Designs whatsoever to retrive the Papal Power of Usurping over the Crown or Conscience My Lord there are some among us who would usurp on and appropriate to themselves the Name and Thing of Protestancy and would be thought the only true Protestants and would be Monopolists of all the heat and light against Popery But as I shall make bold to come in for my share with them so I shall yet acquaint your Lordship that if I may in any part of this Letter to you seem with any excess of Passion to reflect on Popery I shall before I take leave of you afford you such a Patriotly and Gentlemanly reason of my warmth against it as I think hath not by others been given nor particularly by some Pedantick Anti-Papists who render their Conversation nauseous by their eternal talking of nothing but Popery and while they are neglectful of all the due means to prevent its growth These things being therefore premised I shall in despite of the Affidavit say that I will be the last man in England who shall believe that my Lord Privy Seal can be such a Court of Rome-Papist I think it was St. Augustine who meaning well in a pang of Zeal cry'd out on one occasion Credo quia impossibile est But I shall both as to the truth of any deposing or imposing Doctrine and of your Lordships believing it ground my disbelief on the impossibility of either When I hear men say they look upon it as an exerting of a miraculous Power Divine that the Globe of the Earth hangs in the Air without falling I interrupt not their thoughts of devotion but know that the Earth which is ballanced by its own weight cannot fall but it must fall into Heaven Coelum undique sursum And should any one tell me of your Lordships falling into any gross erroneous doctrinal opinions I who have long observed the constant tendency of your understanding toward the Center of truth cannot apprehend any danger of your falling from it So likewise when I hear men impute it
of Cattle by pasture hindred that encrease of Men that the advancement of Tillage would have produced and the furnishing the Crown with more Subsidy Men and Soldiers But this supineness of our Kings was not only caused by Superstition and a vitiated fancy in Religion an Idol to which Philip the Second sacrificed his Son and therefore might be well supposed prevalent with others to wish the generation of their Children or Subjects restrained but our Kings were not then stimulated by necessity to promote the populousness of their Realm for that their riches and strength depending on comparison the same Religious Orders did by Celibate and Depopulation equally obstruct the Wealth and Power of the neighbouring Kingdoms as well as this and by that means they were not our over-match But the course of encreasing Generations having operated so far as to awaken the World and Men for not having so much Elbow-room as they had jostling one another by the violence of War the politics of Statutes against Depopulation were forced and reinforced on this Realm And like as Men so too will such Statutes beget one another as I may say to the end of the Chapter Nor is the power of the Kingdom ever likely again to be really emasculated by such as pretended To make themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake and honoured not the Founder of Christianity of whom since he for the good of Mankind made his first Disciples fishers of Men it may seem unworthy that he should intend the hurt of States and Kingdoms by making the following Doctors of his Church Pastors of Sheep Sir Thomas Moor in the first Book of his Vtopia doth with a sharpness worthy his excellent wit tell us That certain Abbots holy Men God wot not profiting but much damnifying the Common Wealth leave no ground for Tillage they enclose all in pastures they throw down Houses they pull down Towns and leave nothing standing but only the Church to make of it a Sheep-house And afterward saith That one Shepherd is enough to eat up that ground with Cattle to the occupying whereof about husbandry many hands were requisite And he in that Book calls the Fryers errones maximos and desires they might be treated like Vagabonds and sturdy Beggars And in the Second Book contrives a Model of the Priesthood so as not to make it such a Nusance to the Civil Government as the Papal one was accordingly as has been before discoursed For one of his fundamentals there is That the Priests should be very few and that they should be chosen by the people like other Magistrates and with secret voices and enjoyns to his Priests marriage and makes them to be promoted to no power but only to honour Sir Thomas More it seems was far then from Writing at the Pope's Feet the Character that was afterward given to Bellarmine's style and there was as little occasion for a peace-maker's interposal between him and Fish as is between two wrangling Lawyers at a Bar. But the matter is well mended with our English World since the time of the Supplication of Beggars as appears by the multitudes of the healthy and robust Plebs of our Nation that Till the Earth and Plough the Sea and who by the proportion of the Mony Current coming to their hands having fortify'd their Vital Spirits with good diet there is finis litium and an end of such Lamentations as the beginning of that Supplication to the King in part before referred mentions viz. Most lamentably complaineth of their woful misery to your Highness your poor daily Beads-men the wretched hideous Monsters on whom scarcely for horrour any eye dare look the foul unhappy sort of Lepers and other sore people needy impotent blind lame and sick c. How that their Number is daily so sore encreased that all the Alms of all the well disposed people of this your Realm is not half enough to sustain them There is no doubt but their indigence was extream when they were to glean not only after the Reaping of the Monks but after the Ecclesiastick Beggars the Fratres Mendicantes or as they were then called Manducantes had been satiated in diebus illis and when Holy Church almost engrossed not only the wealth but the begging in the Kingdom And he who now looks on our English infantry when they turn their Plough-shares into Swords will see nothing of the horrour of starvelings in their faces and the Writ de leproso amovendo is in effect obsolete in nature as that too de haeretico comburendo is abrogated And within the Term of about twenty years that the Observator of the Bills of Mortality refers his Calculations to he mentions but six of 229150 dying of the Leprosie What the Bills of Mortality in France may contain about deaths by the Leprosie happening there in late years I know not but do suppose that the general Scurâ—e appearing in the skins of the Pesantry there condemned to Sell their Birth-right of nature for no Pottage and to eat little of the Corn they Sow and to drink as little of the Vines they Plant and to taste little of Flesh save what they have in Alms from the Baskets of the Abbies and who are Dieted only for Vassalage may be an indication of the Leprosie having still its former effects among them But our English Husband-men are both better fed and taught and the poorest people here have so much of brown Bread and the Gospel that by the Calculations on our Bills of Mortality it appears that for so many years past but One of Four Thousand is starved 'T is therefore I think by instinct of Nature That our Yeomanry in the Country though not addicted to mind niceness of Controversie in Religion nor to be dealers in the Protestant Faith by Retaile are great Whole-sale Traders in it and will as soon suffer their Ploughs to be took out of their Hands as their Bibles from under their Arms And they have been generally observed since the Plot and some years before to manifest in common discourse their robust abhorrences of Popery as supposing that under that Religion they could neither save their Souls nor their Bacon Doleman alias Parsons in the Second part of his Book of the Succession speaking of the Numbers of the Papists here makes it very considerable In that the most part of the Country people that live out of Cities and great Towns in which the greatest part of the English forces are wont to consist are much affected ordinarily to their Religion meaning the Popish Religion by reason the Preachers of the contrary Religion are not so frequent with them as in Towns c. But were he now alive he would find the Scene of things changed in our Country Churches since Queen Elizabeth's time in whose Reign a Book was printed Anno 1585 called A lamentable complaint of the Commonalty by way of Supplication to the High Court of Parliament for a learned Ministry He would find
Revenue of the demolished Monasteries was as my Lord Herbert in his Harry the 8 th makes it 1 hundred 61 thousand pound per Annum and the Revenue of the whole Church about Triple to that Sum viz. About 450000 l. per Annum and the Revenue of the whole Nation between triple and quadruple to the Revenue of the Church viz. one Million 6 Hundred Thousand Pound per Annum but careful Calculators in these times have computed the same to be about 8 Millions per Annum which is quintuple to the said 1 Million 6 Hundred Thousand Pound above mentioned And as to the proportion of the Trade and Traffick of England encreaseing since the Reformation little more need be added to what I have before discoursed then that the Customes which when Queen Elizabeth came to the Crown made but 36000 l. per Annum were since 1660 farm'd at 4 hundred thousand Pound per Annum and have since that time made about double that Sum. And because She foresaw that that Branch of the Revenue would both support the Crown and the Walls of the Kingdom I mean its Ships and Sea-men she wisely provided for the encrease of the Customs and Navigation in her own and future times by the Planting of Virginia and was the Foundress of our Trade in the American Plantations that is at this day so beneficial to the King and Kingdom and where no Forraigners can Trade without his Majesties leave and therefore the Freight both outwards and homewards is restrain'd to our own Shipping and where the Scene of entercourse is agreeable to the Genius of so many of our Protestant Traders of England and not troubling them with the sight of the Religion or with the Study of the Language of Popish Countries And as in any great important undertakings the first projectors or undertakers do usually but lay the Foundation of Gain for the next comers thus too did providence order it to be in the Case of the Spanish Acquests of America which were so fatal to the diminution of the strength of Spain and fortunate to the encrease of that of England And it was by the means of the advancement of the Protestant Religion that she was so prosperous in her mighty Attempts of advancing Trade and Navigation 'T is notorious how by making her Realm and Asylum to Forraign oppressed Protestants She enriched it with the Manufactures they introduced in her great Towns and Cities and where the value of House-Rent being by that means raised the Manufacturers were enforced to work harder and the encreasing of their corporal hard labour did tend to the encrease of their Generations and Populacy as it did among the Israelites in Egypt and it had a greater tending to that effect in regard that our People in their Towns were their own Task-masters and could console themselves with the thoughts not of going but being gone out of Egypt and they were rendred the more industrious by the knowing that they were secure from having the fruit of their labours swept away from themselves and their Children by Arbitrary Confessors and Priests a thing that was practised by those who formerly made England in effect but a Province to Rome and when more Money was exported hence by Appeals and Applications to the Court of Rome then is here imported from Ireland and when as in Turky men are dicouraged from enriching themselves thorow industry and improvement by the Grand Signiors being the general Heir our Fore-fathers too were by the Popes being so much here in the same capacity In fine the value of the Benefices of the Divines in those great Towns being partly encreas'd by the growing Numbers of the People and their riches and partly by their liberal contributions did invite thither such men of Learning to the Pastorage of Souls as did by their fame invite more inhabitants and did keep up those Towns by the Cement of Religion in such a state that they were Seminaries of Knowledge to the Adjacent Countries and even Magazines of War for the Princes occasions as well as Store-houses of Manufacture to be exported and for this purpose Arch-Bishop Grindal in his Letter to Queen Elizabeth Anno Domini 1580 Printed in Fullers Church History speaking of able Ministers being placed in all Parishes and of the benefit thereof redounding to Princes by their Subjects obedience to them saith No Prince ever had mâ—re lively experience hereof then your Majesty hath had in your time and may have daily and if your Majesty comes to the City of London never so often what gratulation what joy what concourse of people is there to be seen yea what Acclamations and Prayers to God for your long Life and other manifest significations are there to be heard of inward and unfeigned love with most humble and hearty obedience whereof cometh this Madam but of the continual Preaching of Gods word in that City whereby the people hath been plentifully instructed in their Duty toward God and your Majesty On the contrary what bred the Rebellion in the North was it not Papistry and Ignorance of Gods word through want of often Preaching in the time of the Rebellion Were not all Men of all States that make profession of the Gospel most ready to offer their lives for your defence insomuch that one Parish of Yorkshire which by continual Preaching hath been better instructed then the rest Halifax I mean was ready to bring 3 or 4000 able Men into the Field to serve you against the said Rebels c. As I before observed That the Reformation brought us at the first step out of a blind Chaos into a Paradice of knowledge so I may add that at the next it conducted us to that blessing of Paradice Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth and subdue it and have dominion over the Fish of the Sea. No sooner had the Reformation under that Great Queen cleared the heads of her Subjects but it enlarged their hearts and substituted in Men a new brave and generous spirit in lieu of that dull and formal and lethargic one that possessed them under the Captivity of their blind Guides and they accounted their All and even the Worlds too little for their Prince and they made her Exchequer as spacious as her Kingdom and the English Commerce as wide as the World. Navigation and Navigators were her Favourites and her great States man Walsingham by her Command animated Frobisher to attempt the discovery of a nearer passage to Cathay and China without going so far about as by the Cape of good hope and he gave not over that design till after three Voyages and the death of Walsingham and the success of her Politics and of the Reformation have in despight of all the power of Rome and Spain terminated in such a multiplying of the Subjects of the Realm of England as probably renders them more numerous then the people of the Kingdom of Spain which Heylin in his Geography makes to have only Eight
of Enemies a name that the Impotent passion of Subjects makes them so familiarly vex one another with and thereby shews them not such fit depositaries of Heavens Artillary as Soveraigns are so is it extremely unbecoming the Glorious height to which the Doctrine of the Cross hath exalted humane Nature for men as I may say to deâ—cend from Heaven to Earth for Dirt and to Hell for Fire-brands to throw at one another and petulantly to call those that were sometime Aliens and Enemies in their mind c. always such after the Divine reconciliation or even to manage the most lawful and just War Sine quadam bene volentiâ as St. Austines words are or to think that they can justly assume the great Name first used at Antioch and yet retain a Constant and Stated enmity against any Person whatsoever For according to the Excellent saying of Tertullian Christianus nullius est hostis But the Bosome of that wise Princess was no resting place for Anger and all the Popes Thunder could not discompose her and as in all Games they who in their play retain a Constant Equabillity of mind are generally most Successful so was she in the great Political Game she play'd by being Semper eadem and the Papal Excommunications seem'd to her as despicable as the Curses of loosing Gamesters and I doubt not but by her Prudent and just Administration of the Government of Church and State she hath laid the Foundation of the English Nations being Semper eadem in the Royal Line and of the Protestant Religions being so too and that no delendam fore can Issue out against either humanly Speaking and that any Popish Successor that can come here will find it his interest to use the Politicks of Queen Mary as a Sea Mark to avoid and Queen Elizabeth's as a Land Mark to go by and it being clear accordingly as Sir W. P. in his Manuscript discourse called Verbum Sapienti demonstrates it Cap. 2. of the Value of the People that each Head of Man-kind is as certainly valuable as Land that the many Strangers who have Transplanted themselves hither need never fear that they will be so undervalued as in the Marian days The Families of French Protestants that have lately come here have filled 800. of the Empty New Built Houses of London and have given us too an occasion of entertaining Angels in those untenanted Houses whose Ruinous appearance before made them seem to the vulgar such as they call haunted but from which no Prince can ever think of exorcising the inhabitants without Conjuring away his own Revenue of which about one moity depends on that City and where the Rents tho fallen as I say would yet have been much lower but for the Tenancy of these Forreigners and the expectation of others There is a very great President in our English Story and that is of a Prince of the Popish perswasion and yet one who was a sharp persecuter of the Extravagances of the Power of the Pope and his Clergy and one who by the Introducing of Forreignors here to Manufacture our Wooll saved the Life or Being of the Nations Trade which his Predecessors had left in a Gasping Condition and one who by his Patronizing of Wiclif sufficiently shew'd that if those Forreigners had been Wiclifists he would yet have been a Fautor of those Hereticks and one who more disoblig'd the Pope by seizing on the Lands of the Alien Oâ—thodox Clerical Idlers then he could have done by the entertainment of many Heterodox lay Alien Manufacturers 'T is needless to say that I here mean our great Edward the third of whom and of Queen Elizabeth the prudence was as memorable as of any Princes that ever Sate on the English Throne And I will never despaire of any Heroick Prince here of the Roman Catholick perswasion with his Scepter upholding the trade of the Kingdom as those two great Names did and that too by the same methods if ever he shall come to find it in the tottering Conditon that they did and it may be well supposed that the experience the Kingdom hath since gained under King Iames and the Royal Martyr and His Present Majesty of the publick benefit that hath arisen from the reception of Forraign Artists who have been Heterodox in some ritual points about our Religion will make their expulsion seem a Solecisme And every Sagacious Person will I believe accord with me that the Spider hath done much more good to humane kind by furnishing it with the Invention of Weaving then harm by any thing of Poyson I shall be glad to know from your Lordship whether on your search among the Records of State either in the Exchequer or Paper-Office you can find Foot-steps of any thing like those returns of the Numbers of the People in London mentioned out of Howel and Cotton I am sure that the knowledge of the Numbers of our People ought by Statesmen to be accounted their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in this conjuncture as the opus diei and to pass no longer for a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that those of them who take their measures either of the publick Strength or Revenue without respect to this are but State-Eâ—thusiasts and such who in their reckonings do according to our Common Phrase reckon without their Host and do not govern their Politicks by the Arithmetick the Scripture suggests in the question of What King goeth to make War against another King sitteth not down first and Consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand Bodin in his de Republicâ speaking of the Numbering of the People saith That the benefit that redounds to the Publick thereby is infinite and that thereby Princes and States know what Souldiers they may have and what Numbers they may send abroad to Collonys I have been informed by a Person belonging to the Custom-house that near 10000. Persons have had their Names entred as gone out of the Ports of London and Bristol for our Plantations in a years time And no doubt but the Number was great that then went away thither from other Ports and likewise of such that went from London and the out-Ports whose Names were not entred But I was not a little surprised of late when I read it in a Book newly Printed called The Negros and Indians Advocate and Dedicated to the Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury where the Author pag. 171. Speaking of the Kidnappirs trade or mistery saith A Trade that t is thought Carrys off and Consumes not so little as 10000. out of this Kingdome yearly which might have been a Defence to their Mother Country c. 'T is certainly a sign that we are very rich in the number of our People when we can endure such a quantity of them to be yearly stolen without the pursuit of a Hue and Cry. Yet in this point Scotland is reported to be somewhat more unhappy then England for those who
could not have been conducted so far as it was by any private persons the Book called Popery absolutely destructive to Monarchy printed in London in the year 1673. shews the danger of ordinary Magistrates intermedling with the numbers of Papists in particular Parishes by instancing p. 115. how when the long Parliament was first call'd Iustice Howard was ordered to deliver up a Catalogue of all Recusants within the Liberties of Westminster to prevent which Mr. John James a Zealous Popist stabb'd the Iustice in Westminster-hall and Sir George Wharton in his Gesta Britannorum saith Anno 1640. November 21. Iustice Howard assaulted and stabb'd in Westminster-hall It seems that Iustice of Peace as well as Iustice Godfry found what it was to anger St. Peter and so has that Noble Earl done I believe by some Papists murdering his reputation and shamming the Blood of Godfry on him in vallanous Pamphlets of which I hear that 32000 were dispersed in one Week and that it appeared at an Honourable Committee that no inconsiderable quantity of them was dispers'd by Celier 'T is probable that the time that was taken for discovering the number both of Papists and other Dissenters was most proper in regard that the Declaration of Indulgence visiting them as with a Sun-shine after the Rain invited them out of their Recesses to appear abroad visibly and as the words of the Scripture in another sence are To move out of their holes like Worms of the Earth And as if any man would give himself the trouble to essay the numbring of the Worms that are in the Earth the properest time for that his affected Curiosity would be after the Rain making the earth soft and the Sun then warming it had invited those Animals to come out of the Earth the which lye within a few Foot of the Surface of it so for the above reason was the investigation of the numbers of the Papists most properly timed I am therefore of opinion with the aforesaid Dr. That the number of the Papists was near the matter retain'd with truth and that their number is still waining and will be so more and more but in some accidental Conjunctures of time A late Author hath publish't it That in England in these twenty years last past 250 Families of the Gentry and 12 of the Nobility have quitted the profession of Popery And if any one shall affirm as some considerate Papists have done that the number here of secret Papists and who go not to Mass is as great as the number of the professed ones I shall say that the number of the people of England having been in this Discourse represented so much greater then it was in former Estimates the number of secret Papists cast into that of the known ones will perhaps signifie little more then the dust in the Ballance of the Nation Their Numbers that did somewhat encrease in the beginning of the Conjuncture of their petulant Insolence that went before the time of the Popish Plot as the Purples Small-pox and other Malignant Diseases fore-run the Plague did sensibly and suddenly decay by the change of the Air that the Loyal long Parliament and its Act of the Test made just as the Observator of the Bills of Mortality hath let us see that by the reason of the changes and dispositions in the Air the Plague doth by sudden Jumps start back in a very few days time from vast numbers to very small ones insomuch that presently after the breaking out of the Plot they took the advantage of the detection of the paucity of their Numbers that the Earl of Danby's aforesaid Prudence had made as thence to raise an Argument ab impossibili that they should design a Plot to turn the Tide of Nature in the Nation And thus as Men once pass'd the valuing themselves on the Charmes and Vigour of Youth do it for the Reverence of their Old Age and hope to be the better treated as Guests in the World for the shortness of the time they are to stay in it they did resemblingly too look big upon the smallness of their Numâ—eâ—s The Author therefore of the Compendium printed Anno 1679 tells us à propos p. 85 That there are not 50000 of the Roman Catholick Religion in England Men Women and Children and that agrees well enough with the Surveys of the Numbers of those of that Religion in the Province of Canterbury of the Age of Communicants and admitting the Total of such to be doubled on the account of Papists below the Age of Sixteen an account that ought to be admitted the Observator on the Bills of Mortality having taught us as aforesaid that there are in nature about as many under the Age of 16 as above it and with the making the Total of all the Papists in the Province of York according to Fuller equal to that in the Province of Canterbury the number of the Papists throughout England will appear to be probably near what the Author of the Compendium hath estimated That their Numbers did considerably decrease after the fermentation in peoples minds relating to Religion followed the Declaration of Indulgence and after the severity of the Parliament to Papists thereby occasion'd a convincing Argument may be had from the Letters of Mr. Coleman the which did confute several impâ—tations of it in Mr. Marvel's Growth of Popery to the King's Ministers better than any Apologies could have done and has enabled Fame to Trumpet them forth to Posterity as Confessors whom Envy here whisper'd to be Traditors and let the present Age see that their alledged Closing with Popery was but in the way of contending Wrestlers and not of friendly Embracers And no doubt then but the many Dependants and Followers those Ministers had and the Candidates for their favour and expectants of Offices thereby were then Enemies to all implicit Faith but only for what they thought the Religion of their Chiefs In his Letter to le Cheese of September 29 1675 He saith That the Lord Treasurer Lord Keeper and Duke of Lauderdale were become as fierce Apostles and as Zealous for Protestant Religion and against Popery as ever my Lord Arlington was before them and in pursuance thereof perswaded the King to issue out those severe Orders and Proclamations against Catholicks which came out in February last by which they did as much as in them lay to extirpate all Catholicks and Catholick Religion out of the Kingdom And he in his Letter to the Internuntio of the 5th of February 1674 5 tells him That the King had sign'd a Proclamation last Wednesday to banish all the Priests Natives of this Kingdom to forbid all Subjects to hear Mass in the Queens Chappel and at the Houses of Ambassadors to bring home all the Youth that is now out of the Kingdom in any Popish Colledges to prosecute all Persons as to their Estates according to the Laws which are so insupportable that 't is impossible for any that is reach'd by them
some Papists whose names the Age riseth up to for their great advancement of real Learning I mean Peiresk Descartes Gassendus Mersennus had as much tenderness for any differing in judgment from them as Protestants can have and that mighty hunter after knowledg Peiresk was so far from eagerness in pursuing the blood of Heretics that being one of the Judges for Capital Causes in France he would always come off the Bench when Sentence of death was to be given though against the most outragious Murderer and he always carried in his mind a charity large enough to embrace the whole World and maintain'd a constant Correspondence with Salmasius Causabon and other Protestants and did put Grotius on the writing his De jure belli pacis that hath taught more Civility to Nations than the Modern Papal Christianity hath done and who hath there so perfectly manumitted Secular Magistrates from being obliged implicitly to execute the Sentences of Ecclesiastic Judges that he hath there asserted it l. 2. c. 26. § 4. Quin probabile est etiam Carnifici qui damnatum occisurus est hoc tenus aut quaestioni actis inter fuerit aut ex rei confessione cognita esse debere causae merita ut satis ei constet mortem ab eo commeritam idque nonnullis in locis observatur nec aliud spectat lex Hebraea cum ad lapidandum eum qui damnatus est testes vult prodire populo Deut. 17. By the 7th Verse of that Chapter the hands of the Witnesses were to be first on him to put him to death which Law no doubt had the effect of a Caveat with men against their ambitus of the standing Office of Witnesses by tacking thereunto the standing Office of Executioners Moreover both common observation and Cursory looking into Books and indeed common sense will teach us that the Papal Principles do not oblige men at once to fence against Heretics lives and against impossibilities nor to endanger themselves by fighting with the Wind-mills in Heretics Brains That great Cardinal D' Ossat whom I have so often here cited and who was so renown'd for his probity as well as comprehensive knowledg of matters of State doth in the 86th Letter that is to Villeroy in the Year 1597. give him an account of his discourse with the Pope on the occasion of his Holyness angrily resenting Harry the 4ths observing the Edict of pacification and that D' Ossat thereupon said That it was necessary for the Peace of France that the Edict should be observ'd that for want of such an Edict France had not been quiet for 35 years That the Date of the Edict 1577. shewed 't was not the present King but the late King 12 years before his death that made it that the late King and King Charles his Predecessor and Brother did not make such Edicts of Pacification with their good liking and frankly but were constrain'd to it by necessity even for the good of the Catholic Religion and the Realm after having found that many Wars made by Heretics served for nothing but in many places to abolish the Catholick Religion and in a manner all Ecclesiastical Discipline Iustice and order c. And that besides that necessity hath no Law in whatever Subject and Matter it be Jesus Christ hath taught us in his Gospel to tolerate the Chaff in our Fields when there was danger of plucking up with it and spoyling the good Corn that other Catholick Princes used so to do whom none spoke ill of for it That the Duke of Savoy as great a Zealot as he makes himself for the Catholic Religion doth tolerate Heretics in their Religion in the three Valleys of Italy of which he is Lord. That the King of Poland did as much not only in the Kingdom of Sweden but of Poland that all the Princes of the House of Austria and who are Celebrated for being Pillars of the Catholic Church did as much not only in the Towns of the Empire but also in their own proper Estates as in Austria it self from whence they take their Name in Hungary Bohemia Moravia Silesia Lusatia Stiria Carinthia and Croatia That Charles the 5th Father of the King of Spain was he that taught the King of France and other Princes to yield to such a necessity by making the Interim that every one knows even after his having Conquered the Protestants of Germany That his Son the King of Spain at this day who is reputed to be Archi-Catholic and to uphold the Catholic Religion as Atlas doth the Heavens doth yet tolerate in his Kingdoms of Valencia and Granada the Moors with their Mahumetanisme and hath caused to be offered to the Heretics of Zealand and Holland and other Heretics in the Low-Countries the free exercise of their pretended Religion if they will for the future acknowledge and obey him c. And concludes his discourse to the Pope saying That the Kings ablest Counsellors were of opinion that if his Holyness saw things so near as the King did and that the Pope was to Command France in the State the Realm was at present his Holyness would not in this point do less than the King did To all which D' Ossat saith The Pope made no reply And I think it may with parity of reason be affirmed that if the Pope himself were to Command England in the State it is in at present he would be no hammer of Heretics so as to knock any one of them on the head I know that after the date of that Letter viz. Anno 1597. of D' Ossat's last mentioned the various Revolutions in Christendom made the Scene of the toleration of Heterodoxy in those Countries to be altered with a Vengeance for six years after the death of D' Ossat viz. in the Year 1610. King Phillip the 3d of Spain made an Edict for the exterminating the Moors with their Mahumetatisme out of his Realms and which was executed with great Cruelty and the Vnion of Vtrecht entered by the Provinces in 1579 and the blow given to the Spanish Monarchy by Queen Elizabeth in 1588 and the Patronage the United Provinces had from her and the kindness they found from Harry the 4th of France made his Conditional offers of favour to the Dutch Heretics not thank-worthy but even at this very day tho in the Low-Countries both of the United and Spanish Provinces there is a certain reciprocal liberty for the Papists in the Dominions of the States and for the Protestants in the Dominions of the Spaniard yet is the liberty not equal for in the United Provinces the States allow the Papists a certain number of Priests to officiate among them in sacris which is done by an express Concession But in the Spanish Dominions there is no such Concession and the Ministers who there privately officiate among Protestants do it at their peril And in the Year 1599. Ferdinand of Austria expelled the Lutherans out out of his Provinces and in Austria Bohemia
the Relief of his Great Auditory for those poor Hugonots did characterize them as such of whom none was ever suspected to have machinated any thing against their King's Person or Government or to have attempted the burning of his Metropolis I have granted that the Puritan and the Popish Petitioners did both in the beginning of King Iames his Reign offend Contra bonos more 's but if any should ask me which Sect was the more peccant by such incivility I will say that in one regard the Puritans were so for that they were bred to the Knowledge of better things but that in another regard the Papists most certainly were so if Thuanus may be believ'd who in the place I last cited out of him relating to the Gun-powder Plot by which it appears that their Petitioning was but a stalking-horse or as I may say a Trojan Horse to hide and enclose armed Men further shews That the Iesuites in England employ'd one privately into Spain in the Name of the Catholics with Letters of Commendation to Creswell the Iesuite there residing to negotiate with the Government there to send an Army into England in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth ' s Reign and that afterward one Wright was sent into Spain upon the same Errand and that then likewise Guy Faux was by some of the Iesuites sent thither to Creswel to hasten the Design and that Faux was instructed to take Care that it should be signify'd to the King of Spain that the Condition of the Roman Catholics would be worse here under King James than it was under Queen Elizabeth and that it might be effected that Spinola should then Land an Army in Milford Haven And then saith the great Historian they not being able to effect that proceeded to the Plot of the Gun-powder Treason The Popish Petitioners then did essay how they might flectere superos and Acheronta movere at the same time But in truth as in Whale-fishing 't is customary for Marriners apprehending Danger to the Vessel from the greatness of the Whale to throw out an empty Barrel into the Sea for the Whale to toss about on the Waters and to receive some diversion from it that while he is so diverted they may the more securely wound him with their dead-doing Irons thus did the Papists throw out their empty Petitions to that King only to divert and amuse him that they might surprize him with the â—ate they intended him Yet now if any one should put the Interrogatory to me which Person I had the least Kindness for namely a Non-Conformist that favour'd the Doctrine of Resistance or a Papist that believ'd the Grounds and School-Conclusions of the Doctrine of Popery as King Iames's before mention'd Expression was and which whoever did he said could neither be a good Christian or a faithful Subject I shall by way of Answer crave aid from a Judgment given by Philip of Macedon who having heard the Merits of a Cause or Complaint that happen'd between two lewd Persons gave the Decree That one of them should presently fly out of Macedon and that the other should run after him as fast as he could But against any Seditious Protestant I would wish more severity exercised than against such a Papist for the former doth not only rebel against his Prince as the latter but doth according to Iob's Expression more rebel against the light and is guilty of the Simulata Sanctitas and so according to the Expression before mention'd out of the Apocalypse Reward her as she has rewarded you and double unto her double c. deserves to be doubly punish'd for his duplex iniquitas and shall magnifie the Justice of the King's Ministers done to their Prince and Country and to themselves when in any Conjuncture they shall find any call'd Protestants turning Gods and the King's grace into wantonness and Religion into Rebellion they shall level their most solicitous endeavors with all the sharpness of the Law against such nominal Protestants for then the salus populi will engage them as the Physicians say to mind the Vrgentius Symptoma and for which they have a Rule that Cum diversae repugnantesque inter se committuntur indicationes parendum est omnino fortioribus 'T is fit I should recompence the trouble I have given your Lordship by what I have said of this Question by diverting you with the News of another Question that among some Company was lately bandy'd in Discourse here between a Papist and a Non-Conformist and 't was a much more termagant Question than the former namely Whether Popery or Mahumetanism be the woâ—st I was sorry to find the Non-Conformist to give his Judgment as he did in a gross and undistinguishing manner that the Impostures of Mahomet were fitter to be embraced than several Tenets he named in Popery which tho erroneous yet are denominable as Tenets of Religion but did for a while forbear giving my Opinion in the Case or relieving the Papist with any notion of mine tho I found the Non-Conformist as somewhat the better Disputant pressing too hard on him gave me occasion to have done it than if I would I calling to mind how the Papists of old have so often decided it that Heretics are woâ—se than Turks or Infidels and that they have ranked our Religion of the Church of England with Atheism since I allow not of works of super-erogation would not super-erogate in being too hasty in moderating in the Dispute Thus Maldonaâ—e on St. Iohn saith Qui Catholici sunt Majore odio Calvinistas caeterosque omnes Haereticos prosequuntur quam Gentiles And thus Stapleton in his Oration or Speech against the Politicians saith That the Heretics are worse than Turks And Mason in his Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae Lib. 1. Cap. 1. p. 8. cites Gulielm Reinold in his Calv. Turcis l. 1. c. 7. and l. 4. c. 11. for saying Religionem nostram meaning that of the Church of England ipsâ Turcicâ esse deteriorem Mason further brings in Bristo saying Religionem nostram nullam esse ipsâ Experientiâ probâ—ri And cites another Popish Author for saying Protestantes nullam habent fidem nullam Spem nullam Charitatem nullam Poenitentiam nullam Iustificationem nullam Ecclesiam nullum Altare nullum Sacrificium nullum Sacerdotium nullam Religionem Christum nullum and quotes Cardinal Alan for saying Nostram liturgiam sacramenta Conciones istiusmodi esse quae fine dulio aeternum afferunt exitium The well meant pains of the Compilers of our Liturgy in inserting there some good Prayers out of the Mass to render it more agreeable to the Papists was it seems all lost and that perhaps occasion'd that angry Exclamation of Mr. Cartwright of old That in Ceremonies we ought to comply with the Turk rather then the Pope I acquainted the Discoursers that Mr. Fox in the Edition of the Acts and Monuments printed together in one Volume in London in the Year 1596 doth Combat this mighty Question
and Honourable Actions of his numerous Ancestors being made by the hand of Heaven to point at him as the Centre and their being fixt so in his Memory that we cannot well think of his thinking of any thing but Honour that must make other Subjects pay the greater Veneration of his High Birth It is so hard a matter even for the flights of imagination with the exquisiteness of Art to produce thoughts of Kings and Princes any way proportionable to their real Figure that I have observed that our old famous Dramatists of the former Ages could hardly in any Scene give us the Character of a King done up to the height of a Monarchs Glory and as the Characters of Kings in those days were expressed it was but necessary that the Rule in Theaters should be that the Kings should enter there with loud Musick that so their Quality might that way be understood It is then no marvel if so many in the present Age who are not made è meliore luto and whose Education was low and whose Souls are narrow cannot comprehend the honour of the great part that God calls Kings to Act on the Stage of the World and are especially Strangers to the great thoughts that are to be supposed to Crown the Souls of Kings when they espouse a Religion But in that great particular Concern of Princes owning their Religion we are morally bound to think of them with all the honour we can nor to repine at that our Duty to them since in the Concern of Religion and as it is a Principle of the Divine Life we are to honour our Inferiours and cannot without profanation and usurping on Gods Right judge them rashly We are not to think that our honouring all men and the necessary parts of that duty are recommended to us by way of Council in order to a more perfect life and as not sub peccato obliging any but those who have by Vow bound themselves to the practice of the same but we are to esteem them Precepts and properly so called and universally binding and as necessary parts of that Holiness without which no man can see God. And therefore when I see any man after much labouring of his thoughts to have changed the Profession of his Belief of any Tenets controverted among Christians and particularly one who was in the Communion of the Church of England to own the belief of Transubstantiation Purgatory and the Doctrine of Iustification according to the Sense of the Council of Trent or other such points and shall find that most certainly that it neither was nor could be for Gain or respect to Temporal advantages that his judgment appeared thus altered nor yet out of levity and natural inconstancy and that his habitual constancy and steadiness in all measures relating to Persons and things long by me observed have assured me that no such change could thence proceed and shall further observe in such Person a greater tenderness in his regard to second Table Duties than before and that his inclinations of Beneficence to all Mankind and particularly to his former friends now differing in judgment from him have not been tinctured and discoloured by any alteration of his Notions I shall think my self under various Moral Obligations to honour such a Person tho perhaps erroneously opining I will honour him for his discharge of his Duty in trying all things and having spent time in examining the truth of Religionary Speculations and taking up a Religion not by chance as most Orthodox Religionaries do but by choice I will honour him for following that which Sanderson in his Lectures of Conscience calls the next and immediate tho not the adequate Rule of his Conscience the light of his mind for the time present a Light that I see so many Orthodox Religionaries playing with or endeavouring to extinguish I will honour him for the great Sacrifice I think that he honestly intends to truth and to offer which to it I see so many Persons who erred so reluctantly brought to its Altars I mean the Pride and Glory of the Humane understanding by a Recantation of its former Sentiments a Sacrifice that to him who consults with Flesh and Blood may seem as unpleasant as the offering up of Isaac did to Abraham And since to presage well of men is to honour them I will thus in the Case of such a Person who hath thus honoured God by taking up his â—ross and taking shame to himself believe that God will honour him and judge that tho he may in statu viatoris have mistaken Error for Truth in his way he will not mistake Hell for Heaven at his Journeys end Moreover since to speak rashly to or of any men is a dishonour to them I will not only not dishonour such a Person by determining that his Error is voluntary which whether it be so I can never know and which if it be not I do know it can be no Sin but will pay him the just honour of my judging it to be involuntary as knowing that neither he nor any one else can command his own understanding and that the nature of the understanding is such that it can no more apprehend things otherwise than they appear to it than the Eye see other Colours in the Rain-bow than it doth whether those Colours be really there or no. Moreover altho I know that no Law binds without a Promulgation and that that Promulgation of Divine positive Laws may by reason of mens diffent Abilities of understanding be sufficient for one man that is not for another and so that the erroneous opinion of one man may be a Crime and another mans holding the â—â—me opinion may be innocent yet I will not dishonour the understanding of any man for his not believing the Controverted points of Christian Religion that I observe other men of great intellectuals profess the Belief of and do consider that as the Wind bloweth where it lists so the influx of the Divine Spirit on men is not confined to the excellence of their understandings and that God doth not always reveal his mind to men according to the Proportion of their Gifts and Graces and that when the Book of the Law was found and read before Iosiah Hulda the Prophetess was sent to and consulted tho there were Prophets in the Land at that time and that that was Revealed sometime to Nathan that was not to David who was in all points his Superior I will according to what was cited out of Ames Interpret every thing of him in the better part that is doubtful And tho men do naturally think themselves equally wise I will according to the Morality enjoyned by that place in the Philippians Esteem him better than my self since a great part of Wisdom consists in the proportioning of the means to the end I will out of the knowledge of my own frequent Omissions in that kind account that we both having designed the same end of Eternal
that I affirm therein we have obliged our selves to by our Oaths is so incomparably asserted in a long Speech of that Great Man of the Church of Rome Reginaldus Belnensis Arch-Bishop of Bourges in France I shall refer any one to it as printed in â—huanus The Speech was spoke in a Famous Assembly and on a great occasion for to make way for the quiet Reception of Harry the 4th of France while a Protestant into the Throne and it was framed with such profound thoughts of Loyalty and with such extraordinary Learning referring both to the old and new Testament and to Fathers and Church History and Civil and Canon Law and with such close and nervous argumentation to evince the Divine Right of Allegiance due to Princes and particularly without any respect had to their Religion that it may pass for one of the best Bullwarks of absolute Loyalty I know of next to the 13th of the Romans and other things contained in Holy Writ And because I think no serious Christian who reads â—t will ever find in his heart afterward to ridicule passive oâ—edience or make ridiculous Platforms of Conditional Loyalty I do intend to Translate and Publish it Moreover because there is in that Speech one Noble peculiar Character of the Moral Offices of Loyalty wherein it is pity that the proverbial English good nature should in any men come short of that of the French Civility and any Protestants Loyalty of a Roman-Catholicks I mean that Arch-Bishops honouring the Mind and Soul of his Prince who was not of the Communion of his Church and even then vindicating him from Heresy and saying That he ought not to be thought a Heretick and propping up his honourable thoughts of his Prince with a Quotation out of St. Austin viz. That he was not to be reckon'd among Hereticks who without pertinacy defended his opinion tho erroneous c I think the hanging up so great a Picture in publick view wherein that Man of God did with such exquisite draught design and colour thus paint his Princes Character and that of his own Loyalty to Eternity may be variously useful and the very sight of the great Colours in which cannot methinks but raise the little ones of Blushes in any Nominal Protestants who do with such foul and hard hands handle the Religionary Concernments of Kings who are Nominal Gods and make no difference between the danger of Heterodoxy in Subjects and in Princes I have mentioned it that there is less danger of any Princes believing or practising what may favour the Papal Usurpation than of such Belief or Practice in a Subject and it were an easie matter to instance in many erroneous Religionary Tenets which as held by Parties among Subjects may cause general apprehensions of danger but from which as held by a Prince it would be ridiculous to fear any ill or to imagine that the Prince can imbibe the dregs of those Tenets as they discriminate discontented Parties as for example how can any one fear that a Prince by believing that Personal Reign of Christ on Earth for a thousand years would hurt his own Government or that a Prince by â—eing a Socinian â—ould hold the Tenet of the unlawfulness of Defensiâ—e War or that a Prince who favoured the Order of the Iesuites would approve of their Teâ—ets of Calumny and Equivocation c. and several of their vile Casuistical Tenets or that any Magistracy would permit some of their Apologies and particularly that of Guymenius to be so much as published in the Laâ—guage of the Country But the truth is we are Morally bound to make a great difference in our Demeanor toward our Princes when supposed to erre in opinions about Religion from the Measures we are allowed to take in relation to our â—ellow Subjects so erring Error is a part of Humane frailty and Subjects are Morally bound to conceal the frailties of their Kings and not to censure or publish them to their dishonour and are to be more ready to Apolâ—gize for their Princes on all occasions than for their Parents Sâ— Peter in that Verse where the Duty of honouring all Men and loving the Brotherhood is mentioned subjoyns a particular Precept of honouring the King. We are never to think of the hearts of Kings but as being in the hâ—nds of God nor of any Mists of Errors that may be in their heads without thinking of the Rays of the Divine Power that like a Glory surrounds theirs and which in the usual Concourse of Providence do dissipate all danger from any Errors within them Tho in mens beliefs who are Subjects Religionary Errors are often complicated with Irreligionary ones yet we are to think of the Oyl of the Lords Annointed as uppermost and appearing above such latter Errors and suppressing the Fumes of them in the minds of Princes and are to fear no more harm from the Persons of our Princes than from our Guardian Angels differing from us in many great Religionary Speculations and are to think with honour of our King as an Angel of God to discern between good and bad Religion and Irreligion and it is an absurd thing for any not to imitate the Popish Arch-Bishop aforesaid in clearing his Prince tho of another Communion from Pertinacy since such a Moral defect is a humour of positiveness that of all men Kings are most naturally free from and whose becoming dissidence of their own understandings how great soever is Conspicuous by the wearing away so much of their lives in hearing the advise of their Council And when ever Passive Obedience is called for by Princes and must be readily payed as a due Debt we are even then to strain our most improved thoughts to find an honourable Interpretation of our Princes Actions in like manner as some of the Loyal Non-Conformists to the Gallican Church have done as appears by a Great Observation in their Book called the Policy of the Clergy of France a Book that Maimbourg in print hath acknowledged to be the best lately published by their Party viz. That their Princes never made any great Assault on the Papal Power but what cost their Protestant Subjects dear This This is Loyalty worthy the name of Christian and after all if yet any men will make wanton Suppositions of the beliefs or practices of Sovereigns being never so contrary to Religion let those know that an absolute and irrespective Loyalty is that which by these Oaths they have obliged themselves to and that therefore it is an absurd thing to attempt to exclude any Heir of the Crown from his Birth-right on any pretence of his Religion or other pretence whatsoever since we must pay an absolute Obedience and Allegiance to him immediately on the Descent of the Crown to him and accordingly as by these Oaths we have obliged our selves to do Having thus in these Conclusions asserted the Obligation relating to our Kings Heirs and Successors as resulting from the plain and genuine Sense of the
not you after you have thrown off the Papal Power of Excluding Kings make your Reformation an empty Name if you at last reform your selves into Popery and after all your imagined Conversions from Popery we shall see your natural Conversion to it and as Natural as the Common Hieroglyphick of the year shews us and how in se convertitur annus The truth is that as to the Case of many of our Nominal Protestants and some real ones being thus deceived as aforesaid in the business of the Exclâ—sion there lyes a Pudet haec opprobriâ— nobis c. and a worse opprobrium than that of another common Latine saying Stulti dum vitant vitia c. for here they have run but from Popery to Popery from a Popery more genteely clad to a second-haâ—d Popery and even into a frippery of Antimonarchial notions and they have run into the Substance of the worst part of Popery and what I account worse then Transubstantiation while they have been pursuing the magni nominis umbria I mean the shadow of the Great Name of Protestant And I will still call it a great and noble name however abused by Schismaticks and tho not used in our Canons and Articles c. and wherein we soar above the dictates of Luther and Calvin and the distinctions of Names they occasioned and for which purpose our great-Souled Bramhall in the title page of his Iust Vindication of the Church of England hath the quotation of My Name is Christian my Sirname is Catholic by the one I am known from Infidels by the other from Hereticks and Schismaticks but yet doth often in that Book and his other writings use the word Protestants for such who have laudably opposed the Papal Usurpations and Impositions And in the mentioning of the Protestant Churches beyond Sea that word is justly and properly applicable Moreover our Great Chillingworâ—h's writing of The Religion of Protestants a safe way to Salvation hath endear'd that Name as well as his own to us thereby The adherents likewise of the Church of England are often put to it to use the distinction of Protestant Recusants to speak Intelligibly But 't is the Church of England-Protestant that the Orthodox and Loyal generally mean by that name when they speak of Protestants alone here according to the Rule of analogum per se positum c. It is for the honour of these Protestants who have not so learn'd Christ and Christianity as to be untaught their unnatural Allegiance and natural obligation of their Oaths that it may be observed of them that tho many within the pale of that Church have been tempted a while to extravagant thoughts and actings in the point of Exclusion yet they have through the Divine influences on their understandings soon come to themselves again and tho the Loyalty of some of these like Steel hath been bent yet it hath not like lead stood and continued bent And notwithstanding that being Transported a while with the Passion of Anger against Papists and Plots they said in their haste that Dominion was founded in Grace I observ'd so many of them by their second thoughts so averse from the second-hand Popery as I call'd it that they might merit an exemption from being censured by Papists as aforesaid and that by virtue of the Rule of Law viz. Quidquid calore iracundiae vel fit vel dicitur non prius ratum est quam si perseverantiâ apparuit judicium animi fuisse ideoque brevi reversa uxor nec divertisse videtur And here I am likewise to observe that tho many who have been members of the Church of England because it was by Law Established and have for fashion-sake gone to our Common-Prayer with no more concernment than the Monk went to Mass who said Eamus ad communem errorem yet such of this Church whose Devotion hath been deep rooted in their heads and hearts and who have seriously thought of those words in the Collect viz. So rule the Heart of THY Chosen Servant Charles our King and Governor c. did not long say Amen to any mens thoughts or motions of Choosing their King. Let Rome and the Conventicles thus like lead stand bent as I said but the Doctrine of the Church of England and its Prayers have sufficiently told us whose chosen Servant our King is I have here occasion to refer to an Illustrious Son of this Church and whose whole life hath been as perfect a Comment on the Oath and Moral Offices of Allegiance and of absolute and unconditional Loyalty as any could be and more useful to the World than any Written one I mean the Duke of Ormond and therefore it is but Iustice to him and the Subject I have been treating of for me here to cite him in what was published by the Loyal and Learned Father Walsh in Answer to what was by the Nuntio's Party pretended as a Scandal namely That one of a different Religion from those Irish Papists should be MADE CHOICE OF to Govern them and that that Party did fear the Scourges of War and Plague to have justly falâ— so heavy on them and some Evidence of God's Anger against them for putting God's Cause and the Churches under such a hand whereas the trust might have been managed in a Catholick hand under the Kings Authority but to which the Answer was thus with great Loyalty and Judgment viz. Now at length they are come plainly to shew the true ground of their Exception to us which they have endeavoured all the whole to disguise under the Personal Scandals they have endeavoured to cast upon us They are afraid of Scandal at Rome for MAKING CHOICE as they call it as if they might CHOOSE their Governor of one of a different Religion If this be allowed them why they might not next pretend to the same fear of Scandal for having a King of a different Religion and so the Power of CHOOSING one of their own Religion we know not and concludes with an Observation of that Party 's having infamously practised the Doctrine of Calumny in relation to the then Queen And all Papists therefore owning the Disloyal Principles of that Party have thereby the Pudet haec opprobria c. put on them Nor can it be by any Impartial Relaters of News either told at Gath or published in Ascalon that any Sons of the Church of England were actually 〈◊〉 in thinking they might choose their future King but it must likewise there be said how the Fathers and Divines of that Church did in that Conjuncture so universally and with such an Impetus of Reason and Scripture propagate the Doctrine of Passive Obedience and of the Loyalty that the 13th of the Romans and our Oaths require whereby the Popery of founding Dominion in Grace hath been so much Exterminated from that Church and the Realm that the very sense and reason and humor of the People of England is bent against it and is likely to be so
of his Mind that he would never consent to any such thing must necessarily appear to the considerate a Scruple fit to be thrown off Much more then must it appear to such to have been a vile Scruple to have fancied it lawful to pronounce men Enemies to the Kingdom because they so loyally defended the Hereditary Monarchy according to their Oaths in that HOT Conjuncture wherein the Air of mens fancies was so generally infected And as in any long Intervals of extreme hot or cold weather not to participate with the generality of mens bodies in some sensible effects of it would argue somewhat of distemper in ones Constitution so in the late heat of the Populace against Popery it was inconsistent with the soundness of Loyalty not some way to partake of the effects of that heat and as I have sometimes perhaps too much with many other Loyal Persons done I remember to have read it somewhere in a Print full of Wit and Loyalty said with gayety of humour to this purpose viz. That while a whole Nation was drunk meaning I suppose intoxicated with the belief of Witnesses telling incredible things and the Populace being thereupon drunk with Anger and Rage against the Persons of the Papists it was to little purpose for any one man to be sober The Notions that men had of a Plot were very various Some then were so far gone in Credulity as like the Fool that Solomon saith believeth every word they were resolved to believe every thing the Witnesses had said or would say The Loyal generally acquiesced in the Notification of it as published by the Government and thereby discharged part of the Moral Obligations of the Oaths I have discoursed of whereby they were to defend all the RIGHTS and Privileges belonging to the King his Heirs c. and one of those Rights and Privileges is what is allowed by the Law of Nations to all Sovereign Princes namely To have faith given to their publick attestation of any Fact. Yet Religion allowing men the use of the judicium discretionis about the sense and importance of the Writ divinely inspired they modestly employed their Discretion in considering what by the Dii nominales was published and if any thing therein seemed above their reason and not contrary to it their faith rested therein But the Loyal soon found that the fears and jealousies of Popery began more and more to turn into fears and jealousies relating to the Witnesses Veracity and they could not without a profound horror and astonishment reflect on the intoxication of a gaeat Body of Men believing some incarnate Devils in accusing one that had appeared to Christendom as great a Saint of her Sex as the steady practice of all Moral Vertues glorifying a heavenly mind on Earth could render her and who with such a Character must shine as a Star in the History of the Age. That many of the Popish Clergy about that time vainly endeavoured to have their Religion Paramount and had hopes to get their Lands again none will think impossible who have since seen some of our Schismatical Pastors so infatuated as to think it practicable for them again to thrive by their old Religion-Trade And that such particular Persons as were by the late Earl of Clarendon in his Book against Cressy printed in the Year 1673. remarked for the petulant and unruly Spirit that swâ—yed too much among them might continue in the year 1673. no wise man doubted for the said Earl there said The wisest and soberest Catholicks of England did all they could to restrain that petulant and unruly Spirit Many sagacious Protestants who knew the irreligious Principles that the Iesuits Writings swarmed with were apt to fear that there were then endeavours to have some of them practised by some ill men who were Bigots or Paupers and whom necessity might prompt to be mercâ—nary in making disorders in the State. The Iudicious and Learned Bishop Morly was observed then to have some Notion or Idea of a Popish Plot peculiar to himself And as then many had their various Conceptions of the noised Plot so many loyal and serious thinking Persons supposing it to be very unreasonable and barbarous to involve the whole Body of a Religion in the guilt of some particular Persons and on any pretence to bereave them of that freedom in the profession of their Religion that both the Law of the Land and of God allowed them did employ their thoughts and fancies for the reclaiming the Age from the humour of severity then shewed to the Persons of Papists in general The Earl of Anglesy one of his Majesties Great Ministers publickly moved him in the hot Conjuncture to release all Papists and even Priests out of Prison who were not charged with any thing of a Plot. And the Disloyalty of many Nominal Protestants then appearing in their many published Prints it seemed very horrid to all ingenious men that the lives and liberties of Loyal innocent Papists should be sacrificed to feed the humours or appetites of any Beasts of Prey in the Ark of the Protestant Church I speak with Allusion to those thousands of harmless Sheep in Noahs Ark employed in feeding about 20 pair of Carnivorous Beasts there I thank God that while I was a sharer With many of the Loyal in the hatred of the Irreligionary Principles formerly maintained by the Court of Rome and many of its Churchmen and particularly of those of the Iesuits which that Court hath lately disclaimed I have likewise shared with them in the Disclaiming of hatred or enmity to any mens Persons whether Iesuits or Iesuited Protestants and I desire to live no longer than I shall with the most perfect hatred abhor the Popery of founding Dominion in Grace and endeavour to perswade all pretended Protestants but real half-Papists so to hate the same but likewise with a perfect Love to love the Persons of their Brethren-Papists And it is with Justice to be by all men to our Popish fellow-Subjects acknowledged that whatever petulance some of them were formerly guilty of or of any ambitious design of making too great a Figure in the internal Government of the Nation yet that the deportment of the generality of them hath of late appeared with such a face not only of Loyalty but Modesty and Complaisance with his Majesties measures in employing the hands and heads of Protestants of the Church of England in the Management of the great matters of State as is necessarily attractive of our Christian Love and Compassion and the rather for that we have seen at the same time many Factious Anti-Papists to have made a greater Figure in the internal Government of the Kingdom than ever any Papists did in the Reigns of King Iames and the Royal Martyr and to have thereby given disturbance both to the External Government and the Hereditary Monarchy I did observe for some Considerable time after the Plot-epoche somewhat of a becoming Humanity and Gentleness in many Anti-Papists relating
THE HAPPY Future State of England OR A DISCOURSE by way of LETTER to the late EARL of ANGLESEY Vindicating Him from the Reflections of an AFFIDAVIT Published by the HOUSE of COMMONS Ao 1680. by occasion whereof Observations are made concerning Infamous WITNESSES The said Discourse likewise contains various Political Remarks and CALCULATIONS referring to many Parts of Christendom with Observations of the Number of the People of ENGLAND and of its Growth in Populousness and Trade The Vanity of the late Fears and Iealousies being shewn the Author doth on Grounds of Nature Predict the Happy future State of the Realm At the End of the Discourse There is a Casuistical Discussion of the Obligation of the KING His Heirs and Successors wherein many of the Moral Offices of Absolute and Vnconditional Loyalty are Asserted Before the Discourse is A large PREFACE giving an Account of the whole WORK with an Index of the Principal Matters ALSO The Obligation resulting from the Oath of SUPREMACY to Assist and Defend the Preheminence or Prerogative OF THE Dispensative Power Belonging to the KING His Heirs and Successors In the Asserting of that Power various Historical Passages occurring in the Vsurpation after the Year 1641. are mentioned and an Account is given of the Progress of the Power of Dispensing as to Acts of Parliament about Religion since the Reformation and of diverse Judgments of Parliaments declaring their Approbation of the Exercise of such Power and particularly in what concerns Punishment by Disability or Incapacity LONDON Printed MDCLXXXVIII To the Right Honorable the Earl of Sunderland Lord President of His Majesty's most Honorable Privy-Council and Principal Secretary of State and Knight of the most Noble Order of the GARTER MY LORD FOR one who is sensible how little he knows of things past or present to Dedicate a Discourse of the future State of his Country to your Lordship who are by the Age allow'd to be as Critical a Iudge of Men and Things as any it affords may seem to have in it somewhat of Presumption But when your Lordship shall have had leisure to consider the plain Grounds of Nature on which my Prediction in the following Papers hath gone I will not so much hope that what I have attempted may appear to have been no Presuming as I will expect that your Censure will cast the Presumption on the other side namely on such who were Predictors with a continuando of the Unhappy State of their Country and especially on the account of the Religion of our most Gracious Prince And were I now to have my Iudgment tryed only by that of the Mobile who measure all things by the Events I account I should be out of the Gunshot of Censure since the course of Providence after my writing of the following Work having Conducted His Majesty to fill the Throne of his Ancestors with so many Royal Virtues it has been Conspicuous to them that the Glories of his Reign have transcended the highest flights of my mentioned Expectation And indeed as I remember to have long ago heard one of the Fathers cited for a Passage to this purpose namely that on a Supposal that God recounting to him the Perfections of the Creation should ask him what he could name wanting and that he could wish he would answer Unum Laudatorem Domine so it might till of late be said that in this new Creation or Restoration of England under His Majesty's Reign the only thing we had with anxiety to wish and desire from God next to the ennabling us to Praise his divine Goodness was one whose Talent of noble thoughts and words might be adequate to the celebrating the many Talents of our Prince and their successful Improvement both for the Honour and Security and Ease of his People But neither is such one Praiser now wanting for he who shall read the many late Loyal Addresses from all Parts of the Kingdom will find the People of England to be the Unus Laudator My Lord as I in the following Discourse almost wholly Printed long ago in the last Reign during the freedom of the Press adventured on Grounds of Nature to predict such a growth of Loyalty as would make all England become one sober Party of Mankind and that the more ingenious sort of Iesuits would by natural Instinct throw off those Principles condemned in this Pope's Decree and with Iustice then acknowledged a Sober Party in that order and have at large in p. 322. particularly shew'd my Abhorrence of charging the belief or practice of those Principles on all Persons in that Order So I have likewise in p. 238. given my Iudgment that all Seditious Principles own'd by any who call'd themselves Protestants must naturally decay and have at large in my Preface opposed my measures of futurity to those of a late Father of the Church of England concerning the two Plots that he thought the Papists and Dissenters would be ever carrying on and without his Lordships excepting the Loyal in those religionary Parties But having said this I must likewise say that these happy births of Fate having been but as it were the Births of a Day under the Powerful Influences of His Majesty's Government or as I may say a Nation 's being thus born in a Day are beyond what I did expect and I did little think that with the suddenness of the motion of Lightning when it melts the Sword and spares the Scabbard His Majesty's Declaration of Indulgence to Dissenters would at the same time melt so many hearts and all hostile Principles of the Doctrine of Resistance wrapp'd therein as it spared the Persons of the deluded Opiners I account that any indifferent Observer of the extraordinary sweetness of the way of painting their Loyalty in their Addresses and which resembleth the way of Corregio and is as excellent in its kind as that of the Sons of the Church of England after the way of the bolder touches of Titian in their former Addresses with the Style of LIVES AND FORTUNES was in its must be very hard-hearted if he likewise be not melted into a new kind of Compassion toward such his Brethren and into a noble sense of a great and good Prince having made his Subjects of all Religionary Perswasions Lachrymists for Joy and turned all their hearts to invoke Heaven in wishing for him according to that old Style a long Life a secure Kingdom a safe House valiant Armies a faithful Senate loyal Subjects the world at Peace c. The comparatively narrow Idea's of Charity and Beneficence that Subjects Minds are capable of toward one another do incline them to think chiefly of particular Toleration and such as we call Dispensation and that too with the nicety of Caution and upon Persons making the notification of their Principles and their particular disclaiming of all Disloyal ones previous to their Toleration and beyond this pitch the flights of my poor thoughts have not gone in the following Work. But His Majesty having
I concluded with the Observation That it was not for nothing nor without some end that Divine Providence permitted so many Protestants to erre in one great Point and that probably it might be to the end to produce in their Minds so great a degree of Compassion and Charity toward the Persons of all Roman-Catholick Christians as may not only last in this Conjuncture but be operative in them by all Moral Offices of Humanity and Christianity during their Lives But the Course of Providence having further honoured His Majesty's Government by bringing to light in it the Truth about those odious Matters that particular Roman-Catholicks were charged with and for which in the general Iudgment of the Impartial they appear now to have been put to Death by false Testimony the cry of such Blood may well I think pass for a loud Call against making the Body of the Roman-Catholicks uneasie by the Penal Laws and while the Reason for their Severity hath so apparently ceased As toward the latter end of the Preface which was committed to Writing in the latter end of the last Reign I mention'd it as the Concordant vogue of the Populace to throw off the belief of the only Person referr'd to as a witness in the following Discourse so it must be acknowledged that Time hath by its births of Discovery now given a just occasion for the laying aside all the Aggravations there against any Principles in the Canon-Law or the Casuistical Morals of the Iesuits that my self and others then built on the Fate of Godfrey and hath aâ—cording to what I have predicted concerning the Fate of the Principles of the Iesuites Condemned by this Pope tacitly evaporating by Fear and Shame made them appear obsolete And it is one of the Glories of His Majesty's Reign that all those Principles in terrorem which gave occasion formerly for the Continuance of the Laws in terrorem do now appear offer'd up as Sacrifices to the Iustice of it And tho from the account I found in The Policy of the Clergy of France of the Fact of some of the Iesuits having opposed the Publication of that Decree in France as having issued from the Pope in his Court of Inquisition I took occasion to dilate on the Aggravations of their Disobedience to the Pope yet upon my having since enquired into the Transactions of the Papal World I have found Cause to absolve them from any Censure of that kind And accordingly as the Ingenious Dr. Donne in his Pseudo-Martyr saith that Chrysostom expounding that place in Jeremy Domus Dei facta est spelunca Hyaenae applies it to the Priests of the Iews as hardest to be converted and saith That the Hyaena having as Chrysostom observes but one Back-bone cannot turn except it turn all at once so that the Romanist Priests having but one Back-bone the Pope cannot turn but all at once when he turns it must be acknowledged that the Pope having by that his noble Decree done so much right to his own Honour and that of his Church and indeed of Humane nature as to damn those tenets the aversion of the whole Order of the Iesuites from them was necessarily and naturally to happen And from the Doctor in that Book applying further to the Iesuites saying Christ said to those whom he sent what I tell you in darkness that speak you in light and what you hear in the Ear that preach you in Houses and fear not them that kill the Body and if no other thing were told you in darkness and whispered in your Ears at your missions hither then that which our Saviour delivered to them you might be as confident in your publick preaching and have as much comfort of Martyrdom if you died for executing such a Commission and then reflecting on the instructions that were delivered them in darkness in that Conjuncture for the promoting those Papal Vsurpations on the Regal Rights whereby they were delivered from all subjection to the King it may be here occasionally observed that many persons of our several Religionary Perswasions having for Curiosity gone to hear the publick Preaching of these Missionaries have there met with such ingenuous Explications of the Moral Offices that concern the most Vital parts of Religion and those so pathetically applied as that they have looked on such men who were formerly dead in Law to be as it were sent from the dead to make others better Christians and better Subjects and to be thankful for the Dispensative Power animating those for that purpose and have found no Cause to fear that they had any Politick whispers in their Missions to oppose the Power of our Monarch more then their Brethren do that of the Great Neighbouring one and to whom in the litis-pendentia between him and the Pope about the Regale they adhered My Lord as to what I adventured to predict of the success of his Majesties Political Measures his past Prudence so eminently appearing in the Series of his Great Actions might sufficiently encourage me without any help from Enthusiasme for Nullum numen abest si sit prudentia And the Supposal about his coming to the Throne in great maturity of years a thing that the prudence of the Romans had strict regard to in the Age of their Consuls and for which Office none was qualified under the Age of 43 years and his bringing to the Throne a vast Treasure of Knowledge and Experience refin'd and solid by many Experiments of Providence on himself according to the Divine words of Seneca de provid Deus quos amat indurat recognoscit exercet might well raise the highest expectation of his Conduct But yet neither was I without some regard therein to the common Course of Divine Providence even in this Life rewarding in any Illustrious Person a signal tenderness for Religion and inquisitiveness in any Controverted Point about it and at last contrary to the most valuable secular Interest determining his thoughts one way tho perhaps erroneously and I will venture to conclude that if it had imported the salvation of such an exemplary inquisitive honourer of God and who with great holy Exercise had defecated his thoughts from settlement on any local Religion as such to have found out the truth in that Problematick Point God would have honoured him so far as to have sent an Angel to direct him to it and will expect that such a one whose delight was in the Law of the Lord and therein did meditate day and night tho he perhaps comprehended not every thing aright in it yet that he shall be like a Tree planted by the Rivers of Water that brings forth his fruit in his Season and that his Leaf shall not wither and that whatever he doth shall prosper and that his ways thus pleasing God he will make even his Enemies to be at peace with him and that he who makes peace in his high places and who can make peace between high and low and makes men to be of one
of the House of Commons on the 20 th of October 1680. and printed by Order of that House and in which Affidavit and Information he was Charged with Endeavours to stifle some Evidence of the Popish Plot and to promote the belief of a Presbyterian one and with encouraging Dugdale to recant what he had sworn and promising to harbour him in his House and that his Lordships Priest should there be his Companion and likewise watch him his Lordship being thereupon desirous that right should be done him by a printed Vindication was pleased to Command my Pen therein and I was the less unwilling to disobey his Commands because in that Conjuncture wherein so many Loyal and Noble Persons were sufferes by the humour of Accusation then regnant I held it a Patriotly thing to withstand its Arbitrariness Sir W. P. in an Excellent Manuscript of his called The Political Anatomy of Ireland hath one Chapter there Of the Government of Ireland apparent or external and the Government internal and he describes the apparent Government there to be by the King and Three Estates and with the Conduct of Courts of Iustice but makes the internal Government there to depend much on the Potent Influence of the many Secular Priests and Fryars on the numerous Irish Roman Catholicks and on those Priests and Fryars being governed by their Bishops and Superiors and on the Ministers of Foreign States governing and directing such Superiors and thus while England was blest with the best external Government namely of Monarchy and with the best Monarch and a Loyal Nobility and Commons yet after the detection of a Popish Plot several Persons under the Notion of Witnesses about the same made so great a Figure in the Government and were so Enthroned in the Minds of the Populace that the Office of the King's Witnesses was as powerful as ever was that of the high Constable of England and the internal Government of the Kingdom was then very much as I may say a Martyrocracy and by that hard name the Noisy part of Protestants Endeavoured to gain Ground as much as ever any peaceable ones did by the old known Name of Martyrology But as all external Forms of Government have some peculiar defects as well as Conveniences so did this internal Government appear to have and those too so dreadful that the Air of Testimony having sometimes got into the wrong place was likely to have made Earth-Quakes in the external Government and as the Militia that after the Epoche of 41 was called the Parliaments Army did before the fatal time of 48 produce the Revolution of the Army's Parliament so were we endangered after the Plot-Epoche of 78 to have heard of the Office of the King's Witnesses changed into another namely of the Witnesses Kings And whoever shall write the English History of that part of time wherein that Martyrocracy was so powerful and domineering will if he shall think fit to give a denomination to that Interval of Time and to found the same on most of the Narratives he shall read or the Sham-Papers that many Papists and Protestants after the Plot Attaqued each other with be thought not absurd if he gives the old Style of Intervallum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 incertum or of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fabulosum It was in the time of the most Triumphant State of this Internal Government that I undertook to weigh its Empire as I have done in p. 33 34 35. discussing the points of Infamous Witnesses and their Infamy and of their Credibility after pardon of Perjury or Crimes and Infany incurred and a bolder man than my self would hardly have dared in that Conjuncture to have sifted their Prerogative and as I may say to have put hungry Wolves into Scales and to have taken the dimensions of the Paws of Lions or to have handled the stings of Serpents without expressing against some of the Romanists Principles he thought Irreligionary all the zeal he thought consistent with Charity and Candour to the Persons of Papists which is so much done in the Body of this Discourse and without the expressing of which my Vindicating a Noble Person from being a Papist had been an absurdity However I have been careful in any Moot-points of Witnesses not to disturb in the least the Measures of the External Government about them and out of the tender regard due to the safety of Monarchs from all Subjects have in p. 205 asserted the Obligation of doing every thing that is fairly to be done to support the Credits of Witnesses produced in the Case of Treason and have there given a particular reason for it and have in p. 36. with a Competent respect mentioned Dugdale on the occasion of the Shamm sworn against the Earl of Anglesy as if his Lordship had undertook to have unjustly patronized him and have shewed my self inclined enough to belief credible Witnesses by the Concurrence of my thoughts with the Iustice of the Nation in Godfrey's Case and the fate of which Person and the Casuistical Principles that allowed it I had perhaps not mentioned but out of a just indignation against the infamous Shamms about it spread by some ill Papists to the dishonour of that Excellent Lord the Earl of Danby But there was another consideration that induced me to write with such a Zeal as aforesaid against such Romanists Principles and their effects and but for which the following Discourse had not swollen to a large Volume I observed that since the late Fermentation in England such a Panique Fear of the Growth of Popery and the numbers of Papists had been by Knaves propagated among Fools that made the English Nation appear somewhat ridiculous abroad and that during its Course many considerable Protestants were so far mis-led as to think the State of the Nation could never be restored to it self but by disturbing the Succession of the Crown in its lawful Course of Descent and therefore resolving to do my utmost to free the Land from the Burthen of another guess Perjury by the general Violence done to our Oaths Promissory I mean to those of Allegiance and Supremacy then that of any Witnesses in their Oaths Assertory I thought fit at large to shew the Vanity of any Mens fearing that Popery can ever humanly speaking be the National Religion of England and to direct them that they may not by the imaginary danger of Popery to come run with all their swelling Sails on the Rock of it at present by founding Dominion in Grace and out-rage those Oaths that do at present bind us without reserve to pay Allegiance to the King's Heirs after his demise And for any one who being concerned to see so many of his Country-men lying as it were on the Ground and dejected with unaccountable fears of the extermination of their Religion and themselves and besmearing themselves with the dreadful guilt of their great Oaths was resolved to endeavour to help them up and by perswasion gently to lead them
with a Person of so great Morality and Vertue as the present Pope is and a Pope that would brand the sicarious Principles of those Ianizaries of former Popes the Jesuites and that he would be by so many Roman Catholicks called the Lutheran Pope and that the Papists numbers would be here so comparatively small long before this time as to render it absurd to think that without the Execution of Heavens Peanal Law of an infatuation upon them they will ever attempt any such desperate design against such vast Numbers protected by the best of Princes under the best of Governments Whatever Principles of Irreligion any particular dissolute Papists might by any be supposed to retain it is not to be supposed but that they who shew respect enough to Numbers and their weight in spiritual Matters and particularly in the Divine Concourse with the Majority of Numbers in the Election of the head of their Church and in the determinations of a General Council and in their valuation of their Church by its Universality will not contemn the power of Numbers in Matters Political and I believe it will never among their innumerable Miracles and Revelations be Revealed to them that numbers are by them in things Political to be dis-regarded But as I observed of Mr. Hooker's Prophecy in this Discourse viz. That he guessed shrewdly so one thing hath happened that may partly salve the Credit of this Prelate's Conjecture And that is that some Nominal Protestants but too justly to be thought Popishly affected having robbed the Jesuites of their Doctrine of Resistance and of their Principle of Dominion being founded in Grace Endeavoured to robb them of their Massacre and as his Majesty's Declaration of Iuly the 28th 1683 mentioned did plot an execrable Out-rage of that kind and some of the Dissenters that appeared to me for sometime after I began this Discourse only as Sheep straying from the Flock as they did to that Great Minister of the State who bestowed on them that expression were afterward turned ravenous Animals and as the effect of Nycippus's Sheep according to Aelian bringing forth a Lion in one of the Greek States was resented as portending a Change of the Government these mens producing the Principles of the Iesuites was to be much more regarded as an Omen of our Future Mischief than what any former predictions could import and it was shortly accompanied with a real design to have effected it and as I hope it will be with such a sense of shame in others of them when they shall survey the Circumstances of that bloody design notified in the King's Declaration as Mr. Iohn Geree an Eminent and Learned Presbyterian Minister of S. Faiths in London did express in a Dedicatory Epistle before a Book of his called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 published some Weeks before the Fate of the Royal Martyr and in which Epistle he importunes the Lady Fairfax to shew the Book to her Husband then Lord General to prevent his participating in the guilt of the Regicide then feared and saith O Madam let us fit down and weep over our Religion and we whither shall we cause her shame to go How shall we now look Papists in the Face whom we have so reviled and abhorred for their Derogatory Doctrine and Damnable Practices against Kings or any in Supreme Authority O study that it may never be said that any Person of Honour and of the Protestant Religion had any hand in so unworthy worthy an Action as the deposing and destroying of a King whose preservation they stand bound to endeavour by so many Sacred Bonds I have accorded with our timid Protestants that Popery may gain ground perhaps in some turbid Interval and how by the Divine Omnipotence and Iustice the Course of Nature in its continuing the Protestant Religion may be over-ruled and that on the account of our having justly deserved the Visitation of Popery we may reasonably apprehend the dangers of it p. 140. but have never recurred from shewing them the Future prosperous Estate of Protestants and Protestancy in England but to advance the more forward into the following Representations thereof But having thus with Compassion to the timid endeavoured to discharge my duty as to the Moral Obligation of Complaisance an Obligation that Mr. Hobbs hath so well shewn to be most clearly rising from the Law of Nature and which the Christian Doctrine so strongly inculcates and by vertue of which we are to bear one anothers Burthens and sometimes to the weak to become as weak I thought it afterward proper by the strength of Argument desumed from the nature of things to fortifie the minds of the Loyal against Un-Christian and Un-manly Fears But as to the Dis-loyal and Factious let them by my consent fear on I shall not trouble my self to bear the burthens of them who resolve to be Burthens to the Government and who would if they could load it with Presbyteries dead-weight while they give that term to our Bishops Let those who would have both Protestant Princes and their other Subjects fear them be laughed at for fearing of Papists and for not having a better understanding with the Persons of Papists when there is so good an understanding and coincidence between the Principles of such Nominal Protestants and that very part of the Principles of some Papists that is Irreligionary and subversive of the Rights of Princes and their Governments and when yet they seem not to understand that and let Papists by my consent afford themselves recreative smiles if ever in any Conjuncture of time that may come they shall behold the Factious Revilers of the Church of England to come under its Wing for shelter after their so long endeavouring to deplume it But because I have observed some well meaning and loyal Dissenters frighted both by Cholerick and Melancholy Expositions of the Apocalypse a good Book in which some ill men have found the obscurest passages to be the clearest for their ill purposes and in the dark places of which Book many having long lain in Ambush have thence sallied out to cut Throats and subvert Governments I have here rear'd up a Bull-wark of Nature that may secure them from the imaginary dangers of Castles in the Air or Visionary Armies in the Clouds of any Mens fancies and in compassion to the Loyal Protestants of the Church of England whose Melancholy Suppositions I had a while closed with both as a Friend and Wrestler that I might give them a fair and soft fall I thought it then proper to warn them of the danger of extravagant Suppositions and acquainted them that most Bedlams were founded on Suppositions and the thought of Quid si caelum ruat and of Peoples imagining Earth-quakes to happen in the State from falling Skies and have shewn them how irrational a thing it is to suppose that a lawful Prince how unlawful or heterodox any of his Tenets in Religion may be will injure his Laws and the Religion by
Religion under a Lutheran or Calvinian or Popish Successor and that all might be really afraid of dishonouring God and wounding their Consciences by prejudicing the Inheritable Rights of those Princes Successions it is thus further determined by the 7th Article of the Instrumentum pacis Caesareo suecicum § 1. viz. Vnanimi quoque Caesareae majestatis omniumque ordinum consensu c. 'T is likewise thought fit by the unanimous Consent of the Emperor and all the States of the Empire that whatever right or benefit both all the other Constitutions of the Empire and the Peace of Religion and this publick agreement and the decision of all Grievances therein do allow to all Catholick States and Subjects and to those addicted to the Augustan Confession the same shall likewise be allowed to those that are called the Reformed i. e. Calvinists with a Salvo to the States called Protestants i. e. Lutherans as to all things Covenanted and agreed between themselves with their own Subjects and as to all Privileges and other dispositions whereby Provision was made for Religion and its exercise and the things thereon depending by the States and Subjects of each place and with a Salvo to each for the freedom of their Consciences Now because the Controversies of Religion which are in Agitation at this time among the forenamed Protestants have not been hitherto reconciled but have been referred to a further endeavour of agreement so that they still make two Parties therefore concerning the right of reforming it is thus agreed between them that if any Prince or other Lord of the Territory or Patron of any Church shall hereafter change his Religion or obtain or recover a Principality or Dominion either by the right of Succession or by virtue of this present Treaty or by any other Title whatsover where the publick exercise of the Religion of the other Party is at present in use it shall be free to him to have his Court-Chaplains of his own Religion about him in the place of his Residence without any burthen or prejudice to his Subjects but it shall not be lawful for him to change the publick Exercise of Religion or the Laws or Ecclesiastical Constitutions which have been there hitherto in use or take from those their Churches whose they formerly were or their Schools or Hospitals or the Revenues Pensions and Stipends belonging thereunto or apply them to the men of their own Religion or obtrude on their Subjects men of another Religion under the pretence of a Territorial Episcopal or Patronal Right or under any pretence whatsoever or bring about any other hinderance directly or indirectly to the Religion of the other Party c. In fine here hath been a great Pacification and the same agreed on to be a perpetual Law and pragmatick Sanction and as strongly binding as any Fundamental Law or Constitution thereof comprhending in behalf of the Emperor all his Confederates and Adherents first the Catholick King and House of Austria the Electors and Princes of the Empire the Hanse Towns the King of England the King of Denmark and Norway and all the Princes and Republicks of Italy and the States of Holland and others and in the behalf of the Queen of Sweden all her Confederates the most Christian King the Hanse Towns the King of England the King of Denmark and the Dutch States c. Well but yet it may be by our timid Protestants objected that all these Roman Catholick Princes thus projecting the Peace of Germany and that of Christendom did in this great Instrumentum pacis and the pacta Conventa referred to but reckon without their Host I mean the Bishop of Rome and that one Bull against it from Rome would thunder it to nothing and render it voidable or void and that all the Concessions to Heresie and Hereticks and hindring their Extermination were nugatory and that such a written Treaty carried in it it s own deletion and that of Hereticks and that the Bulla Caenae every Maundy Thursday Excommunicates and Curâ—es all Lutherans Calvinists Hugonots and their Receivers Fautors and Defenders and that the many immunities granted to Hereticks by this Peace as likewise Lands and Territories and the Erecting of Bishopricks into Secular Principalities and settling them on Heretical Princes and their Heirs forever whereby so much prejudice accrued to the Roman Catholick Religion and the Apostolick Sea would probably engage the Pope some time or other to quash it as null and to damn both the Peace and all that made it I answer that within two days after the signing that Peace the Popes Nuntio at Munster protested against it declaring that he made that Protestation by the Pope's express Commands and on the 26th of November 1648 Pope Innocent the 10th issued out his Bull against it from Rome called Sanctissimi Domini nostri Innâ—centii divina providentia Papae X. Declaratio nullitatis articulorum nuperae Pacis Germanicae Religioni Catholicae sedi Apostolicae Ecclesiis aliisque locis piis ac personâ—s juribus Ecclesiasticis quomodolibet praejudicialium ad aeternam Rei memoriam And he therein blames the Emperor and his Confederates and the most Christian King on the account of the perpetual abdication of some Ecclesiastical Goods and Rights possessed by Hereticks and for their permitting to Hereticks the free exercise of their Religion by that Peace and their being further Authorized by it to bear Offices and enjoy not only Church Livings but Bishopricks and Arch-Bishopricks and in fine that Pope having made it null and void further declares That if any have sworn to observe the Articles of that Peace such Oath shall not bind them But what did this Declaration from his Holyness signify in that Case No more than one from Prester Iohn would have done The Emperor and Princes of Germaâ—y did gloriously stand to their Pacta conventa and took care to see the same solemnly ratified and executed notwithstanding the Papal Declaration of their Nullity They knew the Pope's Nuntio would soon protest and the Pope himself declare against the Peace and had therefore in Terms therein agreed That no Canons or special Decrees of Councils or Concordats with Popes or Protestations or Edicts Rescripts Mandates or Absolutions whatsoever should in any Future time be allowed against any Article of it And they likewise knew that the Pope's Declaration of the Nullity of that Treaty would contain no Threatnings of Excommunication or Damnation against their Persons but only Quelques choses or things of Course or to speak more properly Nullities of Course and that while all Christendom was embarqued in that Treaty and going with full Sail and favoured with a strong Gale of Nature into its Haven of Rest and being to pass by the Popes Fort and had resolved against lowering their Flag to it the Pope would of Course fire some Bulls of Nullity at them Charged with no significant Shot and as it is usual for the Forts of Princes to do to Ships that pass
same thing almost the same words used in a Prophecy of the times of the Gospel Zech. 13. 3. He saith indeed that by those words in Deut. the meaning is not that his Father or Mother should presently run a Knife into him but that they should be the means to bring him to condign punishment even the taking away his life Calvin likewise in giving his sense of that place of Zechary foresaw the Odium of having any killed without going to the Iudge and there saith Multò hoc durius est propriis manibus filium interficere quam si ad Iudicem deferrent But here Mr. Burroughs and Calvin have Categorically enough asserted what the Iudges duty is in the Case and I have said what Calvin effected by going to the Iudge about Servetus Gundissalvus doth not determine the lawfulness of burning an Heretical City without going to the Iudge and the lawfulness of Protestant Princes judging the Persons or Cities of Idolaters to be destroyed by the pretended Obligation of the Mosaic Law is chargeable on the Anti Papists I have mentioned and I believe there are few of our Presbyterian or Independent Enthusiasts but who think it as lawful to burn Rome as to roast an Egg. But the Church of England abhorreth this flammeum sulphureum evangelium and Dr. Hicks in the Preface to his Iovian taking notice of the Reasons which the Papists urge for putting Heretick and the scotising Presbyterians for putting Popish Princes to death saith thereupon I desire Mr. J. to tell me Whether he thinks in his Conscience the Bishops of the Church of England could argue so falsly upon the Principles of the Iewish Theocracy to the like proceedings in Christian States And saith if this way of arguing be true then the Queen meaning Queen Elizabeth was bound to burn many Popish Towns in her Kingdom and smite the Inhabitants with the Sword c. I have therefore thought it Essential to the advancement and preservation of Loyalty to endeavour to have the Papal and Presbyterian Error as to the Iewish Laws exterminated And the setling of this point is the more important to the Measures of Loyalty because the same Chapter in Deuteronomy viz. the 13 th that hath been the Popes Palladium for his power of firing Heretical Cities hath likewise been made use of by our deluded Excluders as theirs to recur to in a practice so scandalous to Loyalty and to the Protestant Religion and which hath too much appeared in the many Factious Pamphlets for the Exclusion and as I hinted that that Chapter of Deuteronomy was impiously applied in a former Conjuncture for putting the Queen of Scots to death so the pretended lawfulness of the Exclusion by arguing from the greater to the less was by the deluded generally inferred from that Chapter and the place I just now referred too in the Preface of Iovian mentions Mr. I's arguing from Deut. 13. 6. If thy Brother the Son of thy Mother c. in citing of which saith the Dr. it is evident on whom our Author did reflect The very exposing the absurdity of the Papal power of destroying Heretical Persons and Cities on the account of the Mosaic Law will I believe as by Consent of the sober of all Parties much help to exterminate the aforesaid Error which hath cost the Papacy so dear and naturally tempted so many Calvinists to own the same Error partly by way of retaliation and not altogether through defect of Judgment and I doubt not but if the Papacy were now to begin to claim the allowance of exercising the Jurisdiction over all Christians in the World as the High Priest did over all proselyted to the Iewish Religion and as appears by not only the Inhabitants of Palestine but others of the most remote Countries and particularly by the Aethiopian in the Acts of the Apostles owning subjection to the Iewish Priesthood it would stop at the Conquest of that Oecumenical Power and Tenths of the Levites thereby without demanding the Power to destroy Hereticks Towns and to exterminate the Persons of Hereticks by Crusado's as other dependencies on it But the Papacy hath long ago passed that bloody Rubicon of the Iudicial Law and cannot in Honour or Politicks go back nor will any Pope expressly renounce the Power of compelling Princes to exterminate their Heretical Subjects tho yet the Fashion of the exercise of this Power be thus as I have shewed tacitly passed away and as a thing necessarily impracticable in the more populous World. And no Iesuited Papist dares disclaim this Power in the Pope's behalf or impugn the same however it was a thing that the Pope could not but foreâ—ee that his quashing the Iesuites Power to kill men by retail would render the Iesuites averse from writing for his Power to kill Hereticks by whole-sale and by Crusado's or for the power to fire Heretical Cities if there were occasion to have any such power asserted in behalf of the Papacy as I believe there neither is nor ever will be But partly according to my Conjecture of the Result of the Fermentation about the Regale in France I suppose that tho the Papacy will no more be brought to disclaim its pretended Monarchy over other parts of the World in ordine ad spiritualia than the Dukes of Savoy will the Title of their being Kings of Cyprus yet it will be neither able or studious to prosecute its Claim of such power by disordering the World as formerly All the personal Vertue and Probity of any Popes will never incline them to pronounce against their Iurisdiction however they may thereby and by want of strength to execute it be kept from the old injurious ampliating it and on this slippery Precipice the Papacy still remains and from whence through the natural Jealousie of Crown'd Heads and States in the point of Power it will probably fall down to its tame principium unitatis and its Patriarchal Figure and in time to nothing But by many of the Anti-papal Sects and such as call themselves The only true Protestants still owning the Obligation of the Iewish forinsec Laws a Necessity is by God and Nature put on the Protestants of the Church of England to Combat such pretended Obligations by dint of Reason and thereby to support the Rights of their Princes without Condition and Reserve and which no Jesuited Papists or Protestants either can or will do Nor is it safe for other Papists to own Principles that touch the Pope's imaginary Monarchal Power For Power how fantastick soever would seem a serious thing and will endure no raillery and the honest Father Caron whom I have mentioned as citing 250 Popish Authors who denied the Pope's Power to depose Princes doth tell us that the Pope's Nuntio and 4 Popes condemned his Doctrine and the Inquisitors damned his Book and his Superiours his Soul I mean they very fairly excommunicated him for it There is another thing that may render the knowledge of this Papal Tenet worthy
settlement of the same proving Abortive in several Parliaments ib. The French King in the last War did forbid the Importation of Sail-Cloath to England ib. A presage of the future happy State of England and the Authors Idea thereof at large ib. and p. 252. An account of the Rough Hemp and Flax and Sail-cloth and all other Manufactures of Hemp and Flax yearly brought into England and from what Countries deduced out of the Custom-house Books p. 254. All the Hemp and Flax sown in England is observed to be bought up by the years end p. 257. Almost as much Hemp and Flax yearly brought into Amsterdam as into the whole Kingdom of England ib. The Authors judgment of the effects of the necessity that will drive us on to the Linen Manufacture ib. An Account of the fine Linen lately made by the French Protestants at Ipswich and of the Flax by them sown ib. The Author's Censure of the excessive Complaints of the danger of Popery ib. His belief that the future State of England will make men ashamed of their pass'd fears of Popery ib. The Vote of the House of Commons for the recalling the Declaration of Indulgence carried by the Party of the Nonconformists p. 258. Most of the Papists of England in the Year 1610 computed to be under the guidance of the Jesuites p. 260. Many Popish Writers have inveighed against Gratian the Compiler of the Decrets of the Canon Law ib. That Law never in gross received in England ib. Binds not English Papists in the Court of Conscience ib. A Tenet ridiculously and falsly in the Canon Law founded on Cyprian ib. Gratian's founding it on Cyprian gives it only the weight it could have in Cyprian's Works p. 261. Pere Veron's Book of the Rule of Catholick Faith cited for Gratian's Decrees and the gloss claiming nothing of Faith and Bellarmine's acknowledging errors therein ib. One definition in the Canon Law and gloss held by all Papists ridiculous ib. The Author thinks he has said as much to throw off the Obligation on any Papists to obey the Pope's Canon Law as they would wish said ib. He thinks himself morally obliged in any Theological Enquiry to say all that the matter will fairly bear on both sides ib. Heylin and Maimbourg cited about the firing of Heretical Villages in France p. 262. Parsons and Bellarmine cited by Donne for rendring some things obligatory that are said by Gratian p. 263. The Author expects that the growing populousness of England will have the effect of rendriâ—g men less censorious of any supposed Political Errors in the Ministers of our Princes p. 265. Mr. Fox cited for his Observation of many Excellent men falsly accused and judged in Parliament and his advice to Parliaments to be more circumspect ib. The Author minded by that passage out of Fox to reflect on the severity in a late Parliament in their Votes against the King's Ministers ib. The injustice of the Vote against the Earl of Hallifax p. 266. The Earl of Radnor occasionally mentioned with honour ib. The Constancy of the Earl of Anglesy to the Protestant Religion further asserted p. 267. Mention of his Lordships being injuriously reflected on in a Speech of Sir W. J. ib. The unreasonableness of the Reflections on the Lord Chief Justice North for advising and assisting in the drawing up and passing a Proclamation against Tumultuous Petitions ib. The great deserved Character of that Lord Chief Justice p. 268. throughout A reflection on the popularity of Sir W. J. and on the â—â—â—essive Applause he had from the House of Commons after his Speech for the Exclusion-Bill p. 269. Sir Leolin Jenkins mentioned with honour ib. The Cabal of Sir W. J. observed to be full of fears of the Exclusion-Bill passing and their not knowing what steps in Politicks to make next ib. The Earl of Peterborough at large mentioned with honour ib. and p. 270. A further Account of the Authors prediction of England's future happy State ib. and p. 271. The Author observes that the most remarkable late Seditious Writers have published it in Print That they feared the next Heir to the Crown only as Chief Favourite to his Prince and that they judged that the Laws would sufficiently secure them from fears of his power if he should come to the Crown p. 271. An Assertion of his never having advised his Prince to incommode any one illegally and of his not having used his own power to any such purpose ib. The Author judgeth such Persons to write but in jest who amuse the People about being Lachrymists by that Princes Succession ib. The Author reflects on our Counterfeit Lachrymists for not affecting as quick a prevention of any future growth of Popery as was 〈◊〉 care of in Scotland p. 272. He observes that few or none in Scotland fear that Popery can ever in any Course of time there gain much ground ib. The Papists in that Kingdom estimated to be but 1000 ib. The Author believes that the fears of Poperies growth will be daily abated in England and in time be extinguished ib. More Popish Ecclesiasticks observed to be in Holland then Ministers in France and that yet none in Holland pretend to fear the Papists ib. The Authors judgment of the Dissenters Sayings being usefully published ib. Some Notes on the Geneva Bible seditious ib. The same Tenet of firing Heretical Cities that is in the Popes Canon Law founded on the 13 th of Deuteronomy is chargeable on our late Presbyterians ib. The Assemblies Annotations cited to that purpose ib. The Church of England illuminates us with better Doctrine p. 274. Bishop Sanderson cited for that purpose ib. Calvin as to this point did blunder as shamefully as our Assembly-men p. 274. Several of the Calvinistick and Lutheran Divines imbibed the error of Hereticidium from the same mistaken Principle of Monk Gratians ib. The Presbyterians here fired the Church and State with a Civil War ib. The Authors belief that there will never be any new Presbyterian Synod in England nor General Council beyond Sea ib. The Popes Pensions in the Council of Trent that sate for 18 years came to 750 l. Sterling per Month â—b The Author predicts the extermination of all Mercenary Loyalty in England ib. The reason of such his Prediction p. 275. The Lord Hyde first Commissioner of the Treasury mentioned with honour ib. What the new Heaven and the new Earth is that the Author expects in England ib. The reason that induced false Prophets to foretel evil rather than good to States and Kingdoms p. 276. at large The same applied to our Augurs who by enlarging our fears and jealousies and their own fortunes thereby rendred the Genius of England less august ib. The Authors measures of the future State of England are taken only from Natural Causes and Natures Constancy to it self p. 277. A short account of several great Religionary Doctrines having naturally pierced through the sides and roots of one another p. 279. The
I think that an eximious man impeacht in Parliament and there acquitted will need no Herald to proclaim his worth nor his deserving to be restored in integrum to the Royal Protection and Favour when that his own works have praised him in the gates that is in the Jurisdiction where they were so strictly scann'd My Lord if any could prove your Lordship to be a Papist he need not call that accumulative Treason in you nor need he go about by torturing the Law to make it confess many Felonies to be one Treason many Rapes to be one false coming But Popery in you would be plain down-right palpable and rank Treason by vertue of the Statute of 23 of Elizabeth Ch. 1. which makes it High Treason for any person in the Dominions of the Crown of England to be withdrawn from the Religion then established to the Romish Religion That your Lordship hath been bred a Protestant and been so as it were ex traduce there needs no other evidence then the contents of this Letter and that you have not been withdrawn to the Romish Religion you have declared by the Series of your actings against it that shew your Mind beyond the power of words and 't is by the help of that great Wisdom God has given you that our English World expects that a way may be found how to make it more clearly appear to the eye of the Law when any others have been or are withdrawn to the Romish Religion a thing perhaps at present of somewhat difficult proof For without supposing that the Pope can or will give them dispensations to take all Oaths and Tests that can be devised doth not a reserving some fantastic sense to themselves make nonsense of all Oaths and that one word Equivocation make them proof against all other words Doth not that with them sanctify or at least justify all other words they can use May they not on these terms safely swear there is neither God nor Man nor Hell nor Devil that is meaning not in a Mathematical point or in Vtopia and that they saw not such a Man such a day that is not with the eyes of a Whale And have not the late dying Speeches of some of these Imposters and particularly Father Irelands shewn us that in the points of mental reservation and equivocation they persevere in the impudent owning of that which would unhinge the World and turn humane Society into a dissolute multitude And do we not believe many to be Papists who we know have taken the Oaths and Tests Hath not a Papist some Years since writ of the lawfulness of the taking of the Oath of Supremacy I speak not this my Lord to derogate from the Wisdom of our Ancestors that appointed these discriminations nations and do think that when we have used all the lawful means we can to know who among us are Papists as certainly as we do what is Popery and to keep Papists from hurting us and themselves we ought to acquiesce in the Results of the Providence of God. But what all those means are tho I know not yet I am apt to believe that your Lordships comprehensive knowledg of men and things and of the true interest of the Kingdom hath qualified you to tell your Royal Master and His Houses of Parliament nor do I believe that the difficulty of either finding out such means and making practicable things be practised will blunt but rather whet the edg of your Industry in this case as being of Quintilians mind who Judged that there was Turpitude in despairing of any thing that could be done I think his words are Turpiter desperatur quicquid fieri potest â—Tis certainly the interest of the King and Kingdom that the numbers of the Papists here and especially of those withdrawn from Protestancy to the Church of Rome should be known in the case of which Apostates tho it be impossible without seizing on the Papers and Archives of one certain Priest to see the Original Acts of their Recantation of Protestancy yet is it most certain and on all hands confessedly true that Eminent Overt-Acts of abhorrency of Protestantisme are alwayes required at the admitting one who was of that Religion into the bosome of the Roman Catholic Church which any one will be convinced of who reads the Letter of Cardinal D'Ossat to Villeroy of the 20 th of Octob. 1603. from Rome where he gives his Opinion against the Queen of England being made Godmother at the Baptism of Madam That Cardinal who had incomparable skill in the Canon Law and the knowledg of all the Customs of the Papal See and who had lived at Rome above 20 Years saith in that Letter I account it my duty to write to you freely that that cannot be done without very great Scandal to good Catholicks nor without the extream displeasure and offence of the Pope You presuppose that the Queen of England is a Catholic but Here we know the contrary tho some believe that she is not of the worser sort of Heretics and that she has some inclination to the Catholic Religion And I will tell you moreover that tho she were in her heart of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Religion as much as the Pope himself so it is that she having been bred up in Heresie and outwardly persisting in it as she doth she cannot according to the Canons be held for a Catholic in public acts of Religion till she hath first both viva voce and by writing under her hand abjured all Heresie and made profession of the Catholic Faith. Nor was it ever known that in the case of any Protestants Apostacy to the Church of Rome any Pope ever dispensed with those Canons and therefore it may well hence be inferr'd That if evidence just so much as the Law requires as to such Apostacy be given that no superpondium or proof of overt-acts more then necessary ought to be expected for that overt Acts almost impossible to be proved may yet necessarily be presumed but this by the way And therefore now further my Lord if fas est ab hoste doceri be adviseable in the case as strict Circumstances may be required in the conversion of Papists to our Church as are in the withdrawing of any from our Church to theirs Indeed if I were a Member of Parliament and any one there should be so happy as to invent a way and propound it whereby the present Lay-Papists in England might let us have a Moral Certainty that they neither consented to nor concealed the late Plot and likewise that they did really detest all those desperate Popish Principles that are fundamentally destructive to the Safety of the King and Kingdom and that they would harbour no Priests born in the Kings Dominions nor send any of their Children to be bred in Forrain Seminaries and on the contrary that on occasion they would discover to a Magistrate any such Priest or one who sent his Children to such Seminary
least one World of hereticks the author of the Compendium needed not by his Rhetorick to reflect on my Lord Bishop of Lincoln's Candour gentleness in saying yet if it be a breach of Christianity to crush the bruised reed and of generosity also to trample upon the oppressed I wish his Lordship may be found guilty of neither c. for behold any single Jesuite according to Campian tho but like a reed shaken with the wind is able to bruise all Protestant Scepters and any little toe of that Order can trample all Heretical crowned heads to dirt and the Number of the Papists in England if reduced to the least of Numbers is not according to Campian to be slighted if one of them be a Iesuite for that that one Jesuite will carry the advantage of odds against all Protestant Kings and Princes that one may say my Name is legion for we are many but as that legion-spirit could not without the Divine permission ruin a herd of Swine off from a Steep place so neither can all the legions of Iesuited evil Spirits in the World drive a King Kingdom from Precipices at their pleasure And Queen Elizabeth in spight of all the arts and power of Rome outlived eight Popes and lived to change all her Counsellors but one all her great officers twice or thrice some Bishops four times and died full of years and did see and leave peace upon Israel And now I shall Entertain your Lordship with a further Reason of my charging the present Popes declaration aforesaid about some opinions of the Casuists as carry with it a face of some thing like shamme and my reason is grounded on what was said in a publick Sermon before an honourable Audience namely that the propositions of the Casuists therein were not Condemned by the Pope in the Consistory which would have made the Censure more authoritative but by the Pope and Cardinals of the Court of the Inquisition upon which a remarkable thing follow'd the Iefuites in France who were much provoked at this Censure moved the Procureur de Roy or Attorney general at Paris to put in a Complaint against the publishing that Decree since it came from the Court of the Inquisition which not being acknowledg'd in France nothing Flowing from that authority could be received in that Kingdom upon which the decree was prohibited and suppress'd And may not the English Popish Priests say the same thing the Inquisition was never received in England and therefore that declaration of the Popes obligeth us not here and we will prohibit and suppress it as much as we can No doubt but the present Pope fearing that the Noysome and Infectious smell of those Opinions of the Casuists being more offensive to the minds of Men then any snuff of a Candle can be to their Nostrils they were ready to cry for the removing of the Candlestick of his Church out of its place went about to extinguish them in the most Summary Manner that he could and therefore attempted to do it by the Court of the Inquisition well knowing that in the Consistory of Cardinals all proceedings are so dilatory and the old magi there so used to do every thing pian piano that they would consume many pounds of new Candles in debating whether or no and how the old snuff should be removed and perhaps would have thought to have contented the World in the mean time with giving it some perfumes but the Pope being afraid of the Iesuites perhaps as sometimes the Grand Signior is of his Ianisaries doth not for fear himself should be extinguished by them so far as I may say follow the light within him as to throw away or tread out that snuff of those opinions as containing a malum in se or declare any of them to be ill as contrary to the principles of the law of nature in which case neither he nor God himself indeed could have dispens'd with them tho yet any honest and ingenious Heathen would on the least occasion given have declared them so As Cicero and Seneca and many others have done and which had the Pope done and the Iesuites or any Papists persevered in the making those principles the Rules of practice his Kingdom had thereby been ipso facto divided against it self and a diffinitive sentence had been thereby given by the Pope that all who had dy'd owning those principles and practices had been sunk for ever into the burning lake Therefore as I said before I hope this declaration of the Popes such as it is will give an alarm to our English Papists to deal seriously with their Souls and to consider as if it were for their eternities these and other Principles of their Religion and that if they will not be thereby perswaded to be almost Protestant Christians yet to be altogether Masters of as good Moral Principles as the Heathens I named and If any of them can but give us a Moral certainty of their Principles being but such I shall never repine at any favour that any new Law may afford to such of them If therefore any of our Lay Country men Papists not guilty of the late Plot shall desire to be heard and to say any thing toward this effect some of us have heard of these principles before mention'd as own'd by our Casuists and Priests and Confessors that are now thus condemned by the Pope and we did not believe that those our spiritual guides did own such Principles but now our Eye seeth by the condemnation thereof that they were before own'd and made rules of Practice Wherefore we hope that who ever do own them will abhor themselves and repent in dust and ashes and others of us did formerly think them Consistent with the Christian faith and the peace of Kingdoms and with humane Society but we now abhor those principles and repent in dust and ashes We are ready to let the King and Kingdom and the World have a moral certainty that we desire no power to change the Religion in England by Law establish'd and we are willing to receive Instruction from any that shall be appointed by publick Authority to give it to us concerning what other principles beside these Condemned by the Pope are inconsistent with Religion or the publick Peace and in case any shall offer to give us dispensations either for principles or practices contrary to those we renounce as inconsistent with the publick peace we shall be so far from accepting of such dispensation that we shall detect the offerer thereof before a Magistrate as much as we would an enemy to His Majesty We are ready to give active or passive obedience as to all the Laws in being We believe not the Bishop of Rome to have more power in His Majesties Realms by Gods word then any other forraign Bishop as was by Acts of Parliament and publick Recognitions declared in the Reign of Henry the 8 th We are willing to render the Kingdom as secure from
great vehâ—menâ—â— and Master-like in the Councel about two hours proving that the Power of Iurisdiction was given wholly to the Pope and that none in the Church besides â—ath any spark of it but from him and that while Christ liv'd in the flesh he govern'd the World with an absolute Monarchical Government and being to depart out of the World he left the same form appointing his Vicar St. Peter and his Successors to administer it as he had done giving him full and total Power and Iurisdiction and subjecting the Church to him as before to himself That in Councels be they never so frequent if the Pope be present he only doth decree neither doth the Councel any thing but approve and therefore it has been always said Sacro approbante Concilio yea even in Resolutions of the greatest weight as was the Deposition of the Emperor Frederic the Second in the General Councel of Lions Innocent the Fourth a most wise Pope refus'd the approbation of that Synod thaâ— none might think it to be necessary and thought it sufficient to say prâ—sente Concilio How comes the Case now alter'd when we behold the Iesuites now crucifying the Decree of their King the Pope after all their former Hâ—â—anna's to him while he was mounted on the World as his Ass and after all their deaâ—â—ing of the World with Blessing him in nomine Domini and see them now putting but a reed of Infallibility in his hand and see his Scepter in theirs and see their fourth Vow to the Pope annull'd and what performance then can Hereticks expect from any Promises they make to them and might not the Iesuits wiâ—â— the salvo of a Protestation against the Inquisition or with a thousand Expedients if they had pleas'd allow'd Receipts from the Inquisition to rid the World of a Pestilence as frankly as Protestants use the Jesuits Powder against Agues and without intending more Honour to that Court than the Sacred Writ did to the Devil in recording for our instruction several things by him spoken And have not we a candid account of this Arcaâ—um in a very Ingenious Discourse lately Translated into English and call'd The Policy of the Clergy of France to destroy the Protestants of that Kingdom and writ in the way of a Dialogue between a Parisian and Provincial where p. 67 and 68. Le Cheise and the Iesuits Party are said to have effected the suppression of the said Decree in France upon pretence that it issued from the Tribunal of the Inquisition and that in the Draught of an Order of a Parliament in France for the suppressing the Publication of this Decree these words were put viz. Tho that these Propositions are justly Condemned and that Father Le Cheise caus'd these words to be raâ—ed out and has put in their stead That even the good things which come to us from the Tribunal of the Inquisition ought not to be receiv'd But if upon occasion of what was discours'd by that Author it be further said that the setting up of those unmoral Casuistical Tenets in France was the erecting a Pillar of ignominy against God I will ask if one who is revera an incompetent Iudge shall go to demolish any such Pillar set up against my Father and I have already own'd that that Iudge doth infallibly know the bounds of his Iurisdiction and have obliged my self to him by the foremention'd fourth Vow that what thing soever he shall Command that belongs to the profit of Souls and the Propagation of the Faith I will without any tergiversation or excuse execute as far as I am able for this is the Jesuits fourth Vow to the Pope shall I then be active in the hindring a Decree of this Nature given by this Judge from being executed at the same time I Protest against it shall I make no Protestation for the honour of my Father And do you think in this Inquisitive Age the Cheat of an Inquisition will elsewhere pass long since that Court that is used by ordinary Inquisitors for the torturing the Bodies of Christians and mutilation of the Image of God cannot be allow'd to shew severity to the body of Sin to the Image of the Devil in depraved Minds and that while your unerring Iudge of Law and Fact is in Person there praesiding Are not you that surpreâ—â— the Dictates of your own Vniversal Pastor such unreasonable Men as we may well pray to be delivered from All our Jesuited Papists must still expect Expostulations of this Nature Their Head was before at Rome and their Brains too but if they now make a Schism from the Pope himself they will come under the Denomination of Acephali the Name of some ancient Heretics that is the People without a Head unless they will own the Hydra of the Jesuits for their Head which it seems the Hercules of Rome could not subdue I believe many of them will consider what sure footing they have where they are while they see their Moses flying from his own Staff when made a Serpent I mean his Order of Jesuits and see the Collusive or Sham-Serpents of the Jesuits devour those of their Moses and Juglers by Deceptio Visus and lying to impose on the eyes of the World against the sence and reason of Mankind and even of the Pope himself and 't will be very ridiculous for them who have been cheated out of their own Religion to think that some who are the Jesuits Bubbles can cheat us of ours and that while they are grown Seekers they should make us loose our Church and that when the Spiritual Monarchy of the Pope is in a manner Run Down by the Republic or Society of the Iesuits they should think to cheat us of our King and Church and that our Religion can be run down by such Spiritual Outlaws and Rebels against the Pope himself and such as perhaps the Pope may in time be induced to oblige the World by suppressing after their Injuring all Morallity and the most vital parts of Christian Religion and the great avow'd use of his Power in the whole Christian Common-wealth by their Suppression of his said Decree I hope while the Fan is in his hand he will throughly purge his floor and esteem the Disposals of rich Benefices in France to be poor Regalia sancti Petri for him to vindicate in Comparison of the lives of the Souls of his Flock that he and all ingenuous Knowing Mankind Know must be destroy'd by such Casuistical Principles and without his doing which he cannot in the least deserve the Title of his Holiness For the determining the truth about such Principles he need not say as one of his Predecessors did about the Iansenian Speculations that he had no skill in Divinity A very little skill in Natural Divinity and such as may be had by the Reading a few Lines in Tully's Offices would accomplish any one with what would demonstrate the things allowed by the Casuists to be unworthy both of the Divine and
giving decent burial to any of their undecent Plotts and for the exasperating any Protestants by despising them and endeavouring to impose on their Understandings as some did on a raw young Country Gentleman whom one day treating at a Puppet-shew they persuaded that the Puppets were living Creatures and after he had found out his gross ridiculous misconceit therein they on the following day attending him to the Theatre engaged him to believe that the Actors were Puppets I mean their endeavoring to make us believe that Sham-Plots were real ones and that a real one was Shamme I shall never wonder at the encrease of the passion of anger incident to humane Nature even in great and generous Souls on the occasion of gross Calumnies invented against them about a matter of weight when I consider the Example of the Great Royal Prophet a Person of a great Understanding and of so great Courage that he was not afraid of Ten thousands of men who set themselves against him round about and tho an Host should encamp ogainst him his heart would not fear and a Man that had in his Nature and temper the Gentleness of a Lamb mixt with the stoutness of a Lyon and one to whom the Divine Promise had ensured a Kingdom and yet was he by the Sycophancies and little Shammes rais'd against him by Saul's great Courtiers wrought to so high a pitch of anger that he did with exquisite forms of imprecation and such as perhaps are not to be found in any other Story frequently devote those Calumniators to the most dire Miseries his fancy could lead him to express But the Cause of his being so highly provoked by those that would turn his glory into shame and did seek after leasing and whose deceitful tongues used all-devouring words as he saith to Doeg the Edomite in one of his Psalms and whose tongue he there sayes did devise mischiefs like a sharp razor working deceitfully may be ascribed to the Shammes of his Enemies wounding him in the most sensible Part namely the Reputation of his Loyalty to his Prince whose Life he spared when 't was in his power to destroy him and who was so far from the use of Shammes against him that he doom'd the Amalekite to dy that shamm'd himself the author of Saul's death And therefore No marvel if the Calumnies of Jesuited Papists attaquing Protestants in that Case too of their Fidelity to their King render the passion of anger in them against those Shams so intense and vehement And tho the English Courage or a very little Philosophy would help them to bestow only a generous neglect on other Calumnies they can never forget those that strike at the heart of their allegiance and consequently of their Religion that so strictly enjoyns it Nor if according to the Example of that great man after Gods heart who said Away from me all ye that work vanity and who would have No lyer tarry in his sight is it to be admired if every true English Protestant shall say too odi Ecclesiam malignantium and shall feclude all dictators of Calumny from his company and banish them home to their own And tho the abuse of Excommunication by the Papal Church and Presbyterian hath been so horrid that the primitive use of it is in a manner lost and grown obsolete yet will that which includes somewhat of the Nature of it be still kept alive in the World by private persons who practice the Christian Religion they profess and to whom tho the Precepts of the New Testament have not given that hateful thing to humane Nature in charge namely to be Informers or Promoters or judicial accusers of any of Mankind accordingly as under the Mosaic oeconomy 't was said Tu non eris criminator yet have they obliged them to withdraw themselves from men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth and not to eat with any one who is call'd a Brother and is a railer and to turn away from men that are truce-breakers and to mark those who cause divisions and to avoid them and to reject a Heretic who is subverted and self-condemned and by men of Cultivated educations and tempers who value themselves on the Company they keep and on it are valued by the World and will therefore abandon or excommunicate from their Conversation such Monsters of men who have renounced the obligations of humane society and who are guilty of Notorious Contumacy in matters that concern the very Salvation of Souls and the Safety of Kingdoms The being staked down therefore to a Narrower Tedder in Conversation or being Civilly Excommunicated from Protestants Company must by necessity of Nature in my opinion be the fate of our Jesuited make-bates and criminators of Protestants that have been so unweary'd in raising Jealousies between the King and his People and between Protestant and Protestant and all such that go to part whom God and Nature and Interest have joyn'd will probably come at last to be the derelicts of humane Society when they shall Come to be understood and especially when there shall be that good understanding between Protestants here of several persuasions that may be expected to arise from their having found out the authors of their divisions and seen how ridiculous Protestants have been in the view of the World while they have appear'd like the Cat to draw one another through the Pool and the Jesuits and their Pensioners stood behind undiscern'd and pull'd the Rope My Lord I know we may justly fear that Popery may during some turbid intervals gain ground in England and as the Renowned Historian of our Reformation hath in a public Sermon Judiciously observed that Sure none believed themselves when they say we are not in danger of Popery and none can think it but they who desire it But without presuming to make my self one of Heavens Privy Councellors and without pretending to a spirit of Prophecy I shall on the basis of the Course of Nature ground this affirmation That whatever alterations Time can Cause yet while the English Nation remains entire and defended from Forraign Conquest the Protestant Religion Can never be exterminated out of this Kingdom nor the public profession of it suffer any long interruption therein I will grant it possible that hereafter under a Prince of the Popish Religion Popery may like the vibration of a pendulum among Certain persons have the greater extent in the return of it as Becket's Image was by Gardiner set up in London 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with much pomp in Queen Mary's time after its being pull'd down in Harry the Eighth's and himself unsainted and some people may undertake devout Pilgrimages hereafter to some such Images and Reliques as my Lord Herbert saith were in Harry the Eighth's time exploded and we may again hear of our Lady's Girdle shewn in eleven several places and her Milk in eight the Bell of St. Guthlac and the Felt of St. Thomas of Lancaster both Remedies for
by some accidents be made to cast Anchor or they may be sunk but they cannot be forced to go back When a man hath long been compell'd to creep with Chains on him through a toilsome dark Labyrinth and having extricated himself out of it and being come to enjoy his liberty in the light of the Sun the persuasion of words cannot make him go back again My Lord I lately mentioned the Motto of the Royal Society of England of which your Lordship is a Member and I look on the very constitution of that Society to be an inexpugnable Bulwark against Popery In which Society many of our choice English Witts have shew'd as much subtilty and curiosity in the Architecture of Real Science and such as tends to the edification of the world as any of our Countrey men heretofore did in those curious but useless Cobwebs of holy Church call'd School Divinity And the constitution of that Society hath not only been useful in encreasing the Trade of Knowledge among its members by a joyned stock but moreover hath tended to the raising in the Kingdom a general inclination to pursue Real science and to contemn all science falsly so call'd and the Raising of this inclination I will call a Spirit that can never be Conjur'd down nor can the knowledge that depends on number weight and local Motion be ever exterminated by Sophisms or Canting or terms of Art Nor will they who have from this Society learned to weigh Ayre give up their Souls to any Religion that is all Ayre without weighing it or notwithstanding any hard name that may come to be in vogue ever forget that bread is bread His Majesty by the founding of this great Conservatory of knowledge presently after his Restoration wherein his great Minister then the Earl of Clarendon was an honourable Member did convey real knowledge and a demonstration of his being an Abhorrer of Arbitrary Power to all that can understand Reason and affect not the ridiculous Treasonableness of Bradshaw's Court to say that they will not hear reason for had he like the Eastern King 's affected Arbitrary Power he would have used their artifice of endeavouring to cast mists before the understanding faculties of his Subjects and to detain them from knowledge by admiration and to deprive them of sight like horses that are still to drudge in the Mill of Government by blind obedience But to shew that he abhorr'd both such obedience and implicit Faith and that he intended to establish his Throne as well in the heads as in the hearts of his Subjects he presently setled this Great Store-house of Knowledge that shew'd it was his desire and ambition by the general Communication of Knowledge in his Dominions to Command Subjects whose heads were with the Rays of Science crown'd within And therefore I think His Majesties Munificence to the Royal Society in giving them Chelsey-Colledge at their first institution was very Consistent with the Primary Intention of the erecting that Colledge which was to be a Magazine for Polemical-Divinity wherewith to attaque the Writers for Popery for the very planting of a general disposition to believe nothing contrary to Reason is the cutting of the graâ—s under Poperies feet and His Majesty providing for the growth of reason did apparently check the growth of Popery as well as of Arbitrary Power without the prop of which Popery can never run up to any height more then the Sun-flower without a supporter and the setling in men an humour of Inquisition into the truth and nature of things is as I partly said before an everlasting barricade against the Popes darling Court of the Inquisition That great and noble notion of the Circulation of the blood took its first rise from the hints of a common persons enquiring what became of all the blood that issâ—â—d out of the heart seeing that the heart beats above Three Thousand times an hour thô but one drop should be pump'd out at every stroke and if any one shall tell me that he believes that Popery with its retinue of implicit faith and ignorance can over-run us I will ask him what will then become of all that knowledge the vital blood of the Soul that hath issued from the heads of inquisitive Protestants and been Circulating in the World for above a Hundred and Fifty years and I doubt not but it will be in mens Souls as long as blood shall have its Circular Course in their bodies and maugre all the Calumnies cast on the Divines of the Church of England for being fautors of Popery I shall expect that our learned Colledge of Physicians will as soon be brought to disbelieve the Circulation of the blood of our Royal Society to take down the Kings Standard that they have set up against implicit faith as our learned Convocation the learnedest that ever England had be brought to believe the principles of Popery I know My Lord ' tâ—s obvious against this my hypothesis of the unpracticableness of Popery being here the state-State-Religion to say that in little more then Twenty years time Four great changes in Religion happen'd in England and that the generality of the people then like dead Fishes went with the stream of the Times but I ask if the generality of the people had been throughly enlighten'd in the rationality of the Protestant Principles Twenty years together would they have return'd to the belief of the Popish Will they now do it after the establishment of a Rational Religion for above a Hundred years together Can Popery now find the way into most Mens brains here presently after the whole Nation almost were Preachers and when all our great and little unruly disagreeing Sects yet agreed in this as a fundamental that the Bishop of Rome is the Antichrist If Printing had been free in Turky for a Hundred years and a libera Philosophia and Theologia had been there in fashion for a Hundred years and every man had been allow'd his Judgment of discretion so long about the sense of the Alchoran or of the holy Scripture and of all Books of Religion could ignorance even there come into play again or if the Turkes had drank Wine for a Hundred years together could any one Conjure the glasses out of their hands by telling them there was a Devil in every grape If that Law in Muscovy that makes it death for any Subject to travel out of that Kingdom without the Emperors Licence lest his Subjects having seen the freedome of other Countreys should never again return to the Arbitrary Power in their own again I say if that Law had been repeal'd for a Hundred years and multitudes of oppress'd mankind had thence found the way to breath in the ayre of Liberty like men could they be persuaded to return to the Yokes of Beasts again When a floating Island has been a Hundred years fixt to the Continent can any teach it to swim again Consulitur de Religione is likely to be the eternal
their Guardian and account it a very preposterous thing that since our Saviour refused to divide an Inheritance his pretended Vicar should do nothing else Moreover Holy Churches resuming all its Lands out of Lay hands would appear the more strange in England when we see as my Lord Primate Bramhal saith in his vindication of the Church of England p. 212 that the very Kings of Spain impose Pensions usually on Ecclesiastical preferments to the 4th part of the value and particularly one Pension on the Arch-Bishoprick of Sivile in favour of an Infant of Castile of greater value then all the Pensions there imposed by the Pope and when we know that the French King doth for the behoof of so great a number of Lay-men impose so many and great Pensions on the Abbeys without saying to the Abbots more then Car tel est nostre plaisir Sir Edwyn Sands in his Europae Speculum writ in the Year 1599 and in the time of Harry the 4 th of France speaking of that Kingdom saith That there the Church Prelacies and other Governments of Souls are made the Fees and Charges of meer Courtiers and Soldiers and our excellent Animadverter on Monsieur Sorbier reflecting on that Country Intimates in effect how there the chiefest spiritual dignities are entailed upon Families and possest by Children They who unjustly cry out of the Constitution of the Church of England for interrupting the Trade of the Kingdom would be loud enough in their Complaints of Omnia comesta à Belo under Popery He who knows not that the Revenue of the King now depends in a manner solely upon Trade and that Trade depends on populousness and that the encouragement of people to live under any Government is that great thing call'd Property in their Estates Religion and Laws and that therefore any thing that calls it self Religion that goes to exterminate above a hundred and fifty persons for every one it leaves for so the Proportion between Non-Papists and Papists by the Bishops survey made about the Year 1676 was return'd to be and to call them Hereticks and which makes their Goods and life ipso facto a forfeit of the Law will not ipso facto exterminate Trade is fitter for the Galleys or a Trading Voyage to the Anticyrae then for any discourse of Trade and Commerce Your Lordship hath in your Travels sufficiently seen it long since exemplified that the Protestant Countries for the quantity of Ground exceed the Popish in Trade and numbers of People and that thus the Protestant Hanse Towns have eclipsed their Roman Catholick Neighbours and Amsterdam Antwerp and the Vnited Provinces Flanders and that in Flanders where the Ecclesiasticks are Proprietors of seven parts of ten of the whole Country Levies of Men and Money for the defence thereof have been made with so much slowness and difficulty and been so inconsiderable as not to have secured themselves against Invaders Nor did the Ecclesiasticks there think it worth their while to strain themselves in Contributions to resist an Invader who is of their own Religion the which made the French Kings Victories there flie like Lightning more then our over-rich English Regulars did to oppose William the Conqueror when he came here under the Popes Banner And thus were they here and in Flanders are like Wenns in the Body which draw to themselves much nourishment and are of great trouble and no use and thus ridiculous is it that so over great a part of the property of the Land should be linked to persons who are no way linked to the interest of the Country more then professed Gamesters and Empyrics and Soldiers of Fortune and are no more damnified by Popish Invaders then Fishes of the Sea are by Earth-Quakes But on the other hand in the United-Provinces how easily and soon are vast Taxes raised when their All is at Stake to what a prodigious encrease of the numbers of their People have they attain'd since the Reformation insomuch that the Author of a Political discourse of the Interest of Holland Printed in Dutch in the Year 1669 and Licensed by Iohn de Witt and by Van Beaumont makes the People in the Province of Holland to be 2 Millions and 400 thousand and so likewise doth Pellerus in his Learned Notes on Klockius de Aerario p. 300. and there cites that Book of the interest of Holland when as Gerard Malynes in his Lex mercatoria makes the People in Flanders in the Year 1622 to have consisted of a hundred and forty thousand Families and he reckoning each of them one with an other at 5 persons makes the Total of the people in Flanders to have then amounted but to seven hundred thousand Souls And yet as that Author of the interest of Holland saith the Province of Holland can hardly make 400 thousand profitable Acres or Morgens of Land Down and Heath not put in and that the 8 th part of the Inhabitants of Holland cannot be nourished with what is growing there but tells us what prodigious Granaries they there have and that Amsterdam that in the Year 1571 was about 200 Morgens or Acres of Land was in the year 1650 enlarged to 600 Morgens or Acres of Land in Circumference and to have in it three hundred thousand Souls And the defence of the Zelanders Choice Printed in the Year 1673 mentions Aitsmas Liere to have reckon'd the publick Incomes of Holland alone in the Year 1643 to have amounted to 1100 thousand pound Sterling and the Author of the Interest of Holland saith that in one Year in a time of Peace viz. In the Year 1664 the Inhabitants of Holland did over and above the Customes and other Domains of the Earls or States of Holland pay towards the publick Charge as follows viz. To the States of Holland 11 Millions of Gilders To the Admiralty of the Maze 472 898 Gilders To the Admiralty of Amsterdam 2 Millions of Gilders To the Admiralty of the Northern Quarter 200 thousand Guilders Which comes to in all about 14 hundred 87 thousand Pounds Sterling How meanly do the Atchievements of Venice and their Efforts to aggrandize their Republick compared with Hollands shew in story for the quantity of years many times doubled since the Dutch threw off the Yoke of the Papacy History hath recorded the longevity of the Venetian Government as it has of Methusalem of whom we read not 〈◊〉 great thing he said or did or attempted but a few days of the short life of Alexander in the Ballance of same weighs down the 999 years of the other The very Religion of Popery makes the Venetians more narrow in their principles and even in their Rules of Traffick then are the Inhabitants of Protestant Countries The Popish Religion doth hamper its devout Professors as to Trading with Hereticks and holding Communication with such as are ipso jure ipso facto excommunicated and giving any Quarentine to men said to be infected with Heresie insomuch that we are told in D'
places that made no returns as for example in the Arch-Deaconry of Colchester 11 Parishes made no returns and in the Decanatus Tendring twelve Parishes in the Decanatus Colcestre seven Parishes in the Decanatus Lexden ten Parishes in Decanatus Witham eleven Parishes in the Arch-Deaconry of Middlesex and Decanatus Braugling and Harlow fourteen Parishes in the Decanatus Dunmo◠7 Parishes in the Decanatus Henningam 9 Parishes in the Decanatus of Middlesex 16 Parishes some of which were St. Clements Danes St. Mary le Bow Vxbridge and in the Arch-Deacony of London St. Bartholomew Exchange are therein express'd to have made no returns it may hence seem rational for any Man to suppose in general that the number of the People of England reverâ is very great beyond the said total of 5,199,567 and that it would have risen to a much greater number if exact returns had been made of all the heads of Families in England and Wales and much more if all Persons in all Families above the Age of 16 had been return'd But yet according to the Returns that were de facto made in that Survey I observ'd that in some where the totals for Counties were cast up that they doubled the totals of the People return'd for the same Counties upon the Poll Act of 66. as for example the Poll for Devonshire and Cornwel was fourteen thousand three hundred Pound and the number return'd for those Counties by the Bishops Survey was two hundred and thirteen thousand doubling which number for those under the Age of Communicants there makes 426000 Souls there so then the 14000 l. at 12 d. the Head makes there 280000 Shillings or Persons at 12 d. a Head to which as I shew'd the number in the Bishops Survey is double And further to shew the Omissions of great Numbers of People returnable in that Survey I shall acquaint your Lordship that in the year 1676. in the which the Bishops Survey was made there dy'd within the Bills of Mortality 18730. and according to the rule of 1 in 30. there yearly dying there will be suppos'd to have then liv'd there 533,170 and the total of the People return'd of all Persuasions of Religion above the Age of 16 in the whole Diocess of London in the year 76. was 286,347 and the doubling of that number for those under the Age of 16 in that Diocess makes the total of the People there then to be 572,694 But here it is to be Considered that tho the Peculiars of the Arch-Bishoprick of Canterbury in London were de facto return'd then within the Survey of the Diocess of London yet the great and populous Parishes in Southwark and others in Surry within the District of the Bills of Mortality were not return'd with any respect to the Diocess of London but were in that Survey by the Bishop of Winton return'd as belonging to his Lordships Diocess and that in a late year of ordinary health viz. in Anno 1677. there dyed in the Parishes in Surry that are within the Bills of Mortallity 2803. and therefore according to the Rule of the 30 th part then dying there it is to be judged that there then lived there 81287. and therefore we being to Substract that last mention'd Number out of the 533,170 then the number of all the Souls in the other Places in the Bills of Mortallity will be 451,983 and so at that rate the number of all the Souls within the whole Diocess of London will be but 120,711 more then those that were in the other Places within the Bills of Mortallity the which Diocess takes in all the other Places in Middlesex that are without the Bills of Mortallity and all Essex and part of Hartfordshire And to conclude this point the omissions of Great Parts of the Numbers of the People and particulary of Sons Daughters Servants being supposed to be in other places proportionable I am hence induced to believe that on the occasion of any actual and exact Survey of the People of England to be made their number will rise to a greater height then what it hath been advanced to by the most judicious Calculators And now if after all this one should tell me that any vast encrease of the numbers of the People of England beyond the quota supposed by Cautious Calculators is incredible and to be added to the number of things incredible I will answer him out of Salust Incredibile est memoratu quantum adepta libertate in brevi Romana Civitas creverit and will tell him that 't is almost incredible to relate how much we have gain'd by our abandoning Popery and its Incredibility and the almost incredibile as well as intolerable Servitude that the Papacy so often oppressed both our Kings and People with We are told by the Observator on the Bills of Mortallity that anxiety of mind hinders Breeding and from sharp anxieties of divers kinds hath the Protestant Religion rescued English minds and from their former daily yariness for their daily Bread and their fears of being Arbitrarily dispossest of it What Princes as I may say are the English Infantry and even the Boors of Holland to the Pesants of France who with Chains on do propagate their Species and Servitude it self And what pity was it that Commerce which with its infant Smiles cheer'd our Isle in the Reign of Edward the 6 th was almost frighted away from it by the Frowns and Arbitrary Practices of Queen Mary and that after that Edward the 6 th consulting the Advancement of our Trade had legally Suppressed the Corporation of Merchant-Strangers and null'd their Monopoly Queen Mary endeavour'd the Suppression of our Native Merchants and that too by Illegal Impositions It is not denyable that in the fourth year of her Reign she did lay an Impost upon our Cloth and one who had been a Iudge of the Realm and who had no spight to her Story mentioning it in his Book call'd The Rights of the People Concerning Impositions saith there This Religious Prince Inviron'd with infinite Troubles in the Church and Commonwealth and Impoverish'd by her Devotion in Renouncing the Profits of the Church Lands that were in the Crown was the first that made Digression from the steps of her worthy Progenitors in putting on that imposition without assent of Parliament And the same Author in pag. 91. mentions another unjust Imposition of hers on Gascoyn Wines And her expulsion of the Dutch Church and their Pastors from London and her Canselling of the Legal Priviledges that Edward the 6 th for himself his Heirs and Successors gave them and other Strangers by his Letters Patents was an Arbitrary blow given to the Trade of the Kingdom in general and of that City in particulars The Copy of her Proclamation for the Expelling them is Printed in Fox in which they are stiled a Multitude of evil disposed Persons being Born out of her Highnesses Dominions in other sundry Nations flying from the Obeysance of the Princes and Rulers
flatter a Prince with Insinuations of the Greatness and Extent of his Power is not more unusual then for Mendicant Poets to over-act their part in Panegyricks or for the Celebrators of any particular bright beauty in Verse to represent her as the Empress of all Hearts and thus the Famous Campanella after he had made his Present of the Universal Monarchy to Spain sent it too a Begging into France as appears out of Arch-Bishop Laud's Book against Fisher pag. 210. where he saith that lately Friar Companella hath set out an Eclogue on the Birth of the Dauphin and that permissu Superiorum in which he saith that all the Princes are now more affraid of France then ever for that there is provided for it Regnum Universale the Vniversal Kingdom or Monarchy The words there are in the Margin Quum Gallia alat 20000000 hominum ex Singulis Centenis sumendo unum collegit 200000 strenuorum militum stipendiatorum commode perpetuoque propterea omnes terrae Principes metuunt nunc magis a Gallia quam unquam ab aliis Paratur enim illi Regnum Vniversale F. Thoâ—ae Companellae ecloga in Principis Galliarum Delphini Nativitatem cum annot discip Parisiis 1639. Cum permissu Superiorum Yet with a Non obstante to the Politicks of Campanella and his pittyful great Flatteries I shall venture to pronounce the Great French Monarch who is certainly as great a Prince in the Intellectual World as in the other and is truly by the bright Sun of Reason non pluribus impar no Designer of taking the Dimensions of the whole Globe of the Earth with Chains and do think the most Christian King out of his Royal Prudence less inclined to favour the servile Flatterers who would set him up to be King of Christendom then was formerly the Catholick Monarch to encourage those who render'd him aspiring to be the Vniversal one a Title which according to the excellent saying of Mr. Cowly in his Brutus None can deserve but he who would refuse the offer Nor do I doubt but that if ever the greatest Prince in Christendom should be abandoned to the Vanity of attempting the particular Conquest of Great Britain and Ireland his Power in the Ballance of the VVorld would as soon and as sensibly grow insignificant thereby as did the King of Spains ' by the Design of 88. And as the Fate of the great temporary Disturbers of Mankind hath been their constant Augmentation of their own Expences which was a just pecuniary mulct from Heaven on their Ambition for their encrease of the charge of divers Nations in the posture of Defence so is it likely to be more and more to the end of Time And it was sufficiently exemplified in the Result of the Pope's and King of Spain's Politicks in 88 which reduced them to attempt the Remedying of the Prosuâ—ion of their Treasure by sending as I may say Canonical Waste-Paper to the West-Indies and the loss too of their Cargo of that as appears by Malynes in his Lex Mercatoria where he saith pag. 126. That in the year 1561 Pope Sixtus Quintus caused two Ships to be Laden out of Spain for the West-Indies with a 100. Buts of Sackâ— 1400 little Chests containing each of them three ordinary small Barrels of Quick-Silver weighing 50 l. apiece to refine the Silver withal in the VVest-Indies and a great number of Packs of Printed Bulls and Pardons granted at that time to make Provision against Hereticks because the year 1588 had so much exhausted the Treasure of Spain These two Ships were met with at Sea by Captain VVhite who was Laden and Bound for Barbary and brought into England by him where the Commodities were Sold But the Popes Merchandise being out of request and remaining a long time in Ware-Houses at the disposal of Queen Elizabeth at the last at the request of her Physician Doctor Lopez she gave all that great quantity of Bulls to him amounting to many thousands in number And he and another sent those Bulls into the VVest-Indies where they were no sooner Arrived but the Popes Contractors for that Commodity did Seise on all the said Bulls and caus'd an Information to be given against them that they were Infected as having been taken by Hereticks T was alledged that they were Miraculously saved but they were lost and Confiscated Malynes further mentions That he was employed to appraise the Lading of those Prizes and to certifie what it cost and what it might have been worth in the VVest-Indies according to the rate of every Bull tax'd at two Rials of Plate and some four and some eight Rials according to their Limitation every one being but one sheet of Paper and by Computation the Lading did not cost 50000 l. and would have yielded above 600000 l. He had before said That every Reasonable Soul of the Popish Religion in America must have one of these Bulls yearly and that these Bulls contained a Mandate that their Beds should be sold who would not take off one of them It seems by the way that all that Treasure of Indulgences bestowed by Queen Elizabeth on Doctor Lopez could not oblige him from designing afterward to take away her Life by Poyson But this was the result of the Trage-Comedy or rather Farce of 88. and Broyl on the Coast when Spains Invincible Fleet that had in it but 8350. Seamen proved the sport of Fortune and of the VVinds and the fatal VVrack of its Treasure insomuch that it could never since if then aw the world by the Number of Mariners Men who love not to be paid with Tickets even in this VVorld and much less to receive them as payable in another the which is the true Notion of Paper-Indulgences It is agreed on by all Writers that the Spanish Armada consisting of 130 Ships then had in it but the Number of Seamen before-mention'd and of those too a great part borrowed from diverse Countries and 19290 Land Soldiers which Naturally clogg'd its Sea Service for the Antipathy between those and Seamen in Ships is such that unless the Seamen are the Major part there they are apt to look on those as intruders and as such who stand in their way and in their light But in a Remonstrance to the Earl of Nottingham Lord High Admiral from the Trinity House Anno 1602. Extant in Sir Iulius Caesar's Collections 't is mention'd that in 88. The Queen had at Sea 150. Sail of Ships whereof 40 only were her own and 110 were of her Subjects and that in the same year there were English Ships employed in Trading Voyages into all Parts and Countries to the Number likewise of 150 Sail of about 150 Tunn one with another and that all those 300 Ships were Manned with 30000 Seamen that is the Queens Forty with 12000 and the 110 with 12000 and that in the other 150 were 6000 Seamen But it is not unworthy to be remark'd that notwithstanding the Concurrence of Providence with the Gallantry and Numbers
of Father Parsons about the Succession part 2 d where he weighs the several parties of England in the Ballance of State and saith It is well known that in the Realm of England at this day there are three different and opposite Bodies of Religion that are of most bulk and do carry most sway and power which three Bodies are commonly known by the Names of Protestant Puritants and Papists and afterward speaking of the Great Power of the Protestant Party for wealth and force He saith p. 140. A chief Member of the Protestant Body is the Clergy of England especially the Bishops and the other Men in Ecclesiastical Dignities which are like to be a great back to this Party at that day c. meaning the time after the death of Queen Elizabeth when her Successor should enter on the Stage and then having weighed the Puritan Party and its interest he saith The third Body of Religion which are those of the Roman who call themselves Catholicks which is the least in shew at this present by reason of the Laws and Tides of the time that run against them yet are they of no small consideration in this Affair to him that weighs things indifferently and this in respect as well of their Party at home as their friends abroad for at home they being of two sorts as the World knows the one more upâ—n that discover themselves which are the Recusants and the other more close and privy that accommodate themselves to all external preceedings of the time and State so as they cannot be known or at leastwise not much touch'd we may imagine that their Number is not small throughout the Realm c. The Vigour of the hopes that Popery had in that Conjuncture appears out of that great Historical Letter of D'Ossat to his King Anno 1601 where he makes such a judicious abstract of this goodly Book of Parsons for so he calls it Ce beau livre and Animadversions on it and saith 'T is about four years ago that the Pope did Create in England a certain Arciprestre to the end that all Ecclesiasticks and Catholicks of the Realm should have one to whom to go and have recourse about the things relating to the Catholick Religion and by means thereof to be united among themselves and to understand what shall be good to be done for their preservation and the re-establishment of the Catholick Religion and some have given his Holiness to understand that by that means he would make a great Party of the Catholicks in England for what he would effect and then acquaints the King That the Pope had sent three Briefs to his Nuntio in the Low-Countreys for him to keep till the death of Queen Elizabeth and after that to send them to England one to the Ecclesiasticks another to the Nobility and another to the third Estate by which the said three Estates are admonished and exhorted by his Holiness to remain united together to receive a Catholick King that his Holiness shall name and such a one who shall appear acceptable to them and honourable and all this for the Honour and Glory of God and for the restoring the Catholick Religion c. Here was it seems one Brief more sent to England then Mr. Marvel mentions in his Growth of Popery where he saith That the Pope sent two Briefs in order to exclude King James from the Succession to the Crown In fine Popery was in a Storm during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth and in it the Papists were sometimes carried up to the Skyes and then down again and in their Enterprizes with variety of success in some conjunctures their fortune was to reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man and as in a Storm many hands are necessary so on the whole matter they found need of the numbers of more hands then they could command and their Numbers decreased in the ballance of the people here as much by the King of Spains Ambition as did the numbers of the Papists in the United Provinces thereby And as they look'd big on the account of their numbers in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's Reign so they did in the beginning of King Iames's and as D'Ossat said in that Letter to Villeroy of April 2d 1603. You will find that the Spaniards who are most troubled about this Event meaning of the Succession will be the first to Congratulate the King of Scotland so it happen'd here with the Papists as appears by a Book in 4 to Printed for Ioseph Barnes at Oxford Anno 1604 called A Consideration of the Papists Reasons of State and Religion for toleration of Popery in England intimated in their supplication to the Kings Majesty and the States of the present Parliament where in their Supplication at large Printed they in the beginning thereof in a profession too as inauspicious as was possibly say that His Majesties direct Title to the Imperial Crown of the Realm both by Lineal Descent and Priority of Blood and your Highness most quiet access to the same do exceedingly possess and englad our hearts The Tide of the Succession against which they had striven was made by Fate to run smooth and clear and they were resolved to appear on the Surface of it with a nos poma natamus Gabriel Powel of St. Maryhall in Oxford the Publisher of that Book saith in his Animadversion on the said beginning of that supplication How can Papists without blushing acknowledge his Majesties Title to the Crown of England to be direct seeing they have heretofore most indirectly and most unjustly oppugned the same which Traiteâ—ous Parsons confesseth albeit for excuse he assureth himself that whatsoever hath been said writ or done by any Catholick against his Majesty which with some others might breed disgust hath been directed to this end to make his Majesty first a Catholick and then our King as if Treason and Treachery against his Highness could make him a Catholick and impugning of his direct and just Title tended to make him King. Rob. Parsons in his Treatise of three Conversions in the dedicat Addition to the Catholicks But tho they gave themselves as it were an Act of Oblivion as to the many Treasons of Parsons his Book of the Succession yet in this supplication they forgot not again in effect to use Parsons his division of the people of England into three parts and so to shape the Estimates of their Numbers and they say in their first reason of State the World knows that there are three Kinds of Subjects in the Realm the Protestant the Puritan and the Catholicks affected and by general report the subject Catholickly affected is not inferiour to the Protestant or Puritan either in number or alliance c. And saith Powel in his Notes on that Clause If by Catholickly affected you mean plainly Papists the World knows that in comparison of the Protestants they are but as it were a handful of Thieves among honest Subjects however
Reign of the Royal Martyr their Numbers decreased faster in many active Conjunctures of time then they encreased in any lazy one The Author of the Regal Apology and supposed to be Doctor Bate the Physitian saith in p. 39. It is well known there are not 24000 Papists Convicted in all England and Wales And if we should suppose the Number of the Papists then not Convicted to be double to that of the Convicted yet would such their number appear considerably dwindled from what it was swoln to in any Conjuncture before in King Iames's Reign And I believe if our Civil Wars had not happen'd one Canon even of the Convacation of 1640 as ill as that Convocation heard among many I mean the third Canon would have effected the extermination of Popery from England in the Reign of the Royal Martyr The Title of the Canon is for Suppressing of the growth of Popery No doubt but a little before that time Popery did again lift up his head as if its Redemption were to draw nigh in Ireland and England and therefore the Convocation then with great conduct and skill did lead up our Ecclesiastical Hierarchy to confront its growth and I do not remember to have found that Phrase of the growth of Popery which has in later days so filled our Mouths used in any Author before the writing of that Canon and do think that all the Committees that have been appointed to prevent the growth of Popery or Books of that Subject have not produced to the World any means or expedient so likely to make Popery have done growing here as is the excellent Scheme for that purpose drawn in that Canon and which when ever it shall be with vigour executed will make our fears grow out of fashion either of the number of the Arguments of the Papists or of the Argument of their Numbers That since that Restoration of our King and Laws and of the discipline of our Church a Conjuncture hap'ned that made the barren Womb of Popery here fruitful of Numbers none will deny who consider how all our great Divines of the Church of England did so lately lift up their voices like a Trumpet against it as I before observed In the account of the Numbers of the perswasions in Religion in the Province of Canterbury that Dr. Glanvile said he had seen and which is contained in a Sheet of Paper among the nine Preliminary Observations the first is That many left the Church upon the late indulgence who before did frequent it I believe by the many there are meant those that veer'd toward Popery and I suppose that few had for several precedent years repaired thither from fear of the Penal Laws We have a Remark given us by that Learned States-man and Noble Confessor of the Church of England the Earl of Clarendon in his judicious Animadversions printed Anno 1673 on Cressy ' s Book against Dr. Stillingfleet That the rude and boisterous behaviour of some of the Roman Catholicks here disturbed the happy Calm they all enjoyed and the vanity and folly of others made that ill use of the Kings bounty and generosity toward them that they endeavoured to make it believ'd that it proceeded not from Charity and Compassion toward their persons but from affection to their Religion and took upon them to reproach the Church of England and all who adhered to it as if they had been in a condition as well as a disposition to oppress it and to affront and discountenance all who would adhere to it and so alienated the affections of those who desired they should not be disquieted and kindled a jealousie in others who had believed that they were willing to attempt it and had more power to compass it then was discerned c. and this mischief the wisest and soberest Catholicks of England have long foreseen would be the effect of that petulant and unruly Spirit that sway'd too much among them and did all they could to restrain it c. And afterward saith As if they could subdue the whole Kingdom and so care not whom they provoke A friend of mine in the Kings Loyal long Parliament wrote to me for News after one of their Sessions that the Speaker of the House of Commons Mr. Seymour opening according to the customary manner in a publick Speech to his Majesty in the House of Lords the nature of the Bills then ready for the Royal Assent spake thus concerning that sharp one that will forever here cut Popery to the quick viz. And for the severity of this Bill to the Papists they may thank their own petulant insolence The word petulant being very significant and importing sawcy malepert impudent reproachful ready to do wrong one would suppose that those two great observing persons would not apply it to any body of men without just occasion It seems the House of Commons at their next Session in an Address to the King October 31. 1673. had this Clause That for another age at the least this Kingdom will be under continual apprehensions of the growth of Popery and the danger of the Protestant Religion and in an Address to his Majesty November the 3 d 1673. Speaking of the Popish Recusants they have these words whose numbers and insolencies are greatly of late encreased c. It was then high time for that Great Minister of the King the Earl of Danby when he saw that of all Dissenters chiefly the Popish ones had sascinated so many with a belief of their Numbers to cause that great enquiry into them to be made and it was his fortune by the very enquiry to strip the Papists of many of their valued number for the very next observation to that I before mentioned is this The sending forth these Enquiries has caused many to frequent the Church Alsted in his Chronology ventures to say p. 112. David ex merâ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 numerat populum and the thing perhaps done with an ill intent was punish'd with a Plague from God but the Fact of our Noble and Profound States-man did abate the Plague of the late Conjuncture of pragmatical insolence and too the Plague of the fear of Papists that was then so epidemical among Protestants and did in effect console us as with the words of Elisha viz. Fear not for they that be with us are more then they that be with them and indeed the numbering of people in the Bills of Mortality who dye of the Plague is not more necessary to the State then is the numbring of the Souls infected in any Conjuncture with destructive opinions and the omission thereof in a publick Minister when ever it should be as necessary as at that time it was would appear in him a Lethargy that would be as Penal as a Plague to a Kingdom That useful undertaking of his Lordship as it was worthy of his very great abilities and vigilance for the publick so was it of the great power he had in the Government and
to have wherewithal to eat Bread if they be executed according to the said Proclamation It was but about October 1673 that the House of Commons in an Address to the King took occasion to say It is now more then one Age that the Subjects have lived in continual apprehensions of the encrease of Popery and the decay of the Protestant Religion but what Mr. Coleman's apprehensions were of the Growth of Popery on the 5th of February 1674 I have shewn before and am of opinion That though possibly in the following course of time to the birth of the Popish Plot the coming of many Romish Missionaries here might make some accession to the Number of the Papists that however the Laity of them here Inhabitants hath in its Numbers sensibly decreased and will do so more and more till the most timid Protestants shall be no more aggrieved at their Number then of that of the Muggletonians or of the Sweet Singers of Israel That the discovery of the Popish Plot hath had a natural Tendency to the abating the Number of their perswasion must be granted by all who believe there was one and who know that the blustring attempts of the Conspirators to subvert the Protestant Religion and which have therein failed must end in the better settlement of it as all Storms that do not overthrow a Tree confirm its growth Mr. Care in his History of the Popish Plot mentions That the Iesuites and Seminary Priests in England at the time of the Plot were about 1800 a Number far inferior to that in the Conjuncture in King Iames ' s time before mention'd And short of the Number mention'd by Prynne in a Book of his Printed Anno 1659 called A True and Perfect Narrative of what was done spoken by and between Mr. Prynne the old and new forcibly Secluded Members and those now sitting c. where he saith p. 44 That an English Lord return'd from Rome about four years since averr'd that the Provincial of the English Iesuites when he went to see the Colledge in Rome assured him That they had then above 1500 of their Society of Iesuites in England able to work in several Professions and Trades which they had there taken upon them the better to Support and Secure themselves from being discovered and infuse their Principles into the vulgar People Mr. Coleman complains of a Conjuncture as to Popery that he writ in that tho the Harvest was great the Labourers were very few but Mr. Prynne supposeth the Labouring Jesuites who wrought in the Trade of Religion and in other Trades too were here after the year 50 above 1500 and it may therefore be well conceived that there were many Jesuites here beside who could only manage their Tools in the former Trade and perhaps as many Seminary Priests as Jesuites And no doubt without some hint of notification from some one of the Iesuits Provincials their Number in any Protestant State can hardly be conjectured in regard of their Proteus-like varying their Shapes accordingly as a Description of them is given in the Book called The Emperor and the Empire betray'd where 't is said There are in the Society of Iesus Men of several sorts some of which are dispens'd with not only to lay aside the Habit but to marry and bear all sorts of Dignities and he further presumes to say That the Emperor was thus in this Order in his younger days Mr. Prynne in p. 42. of that Book averrs That Oliver Cromwel declared to his Parliament Anno 1654 That the Emissaries of the Iesuites then came over in great swarms and that they had then fixed in England an Episcopal Power with Arch-Deacons and other Persons to pervert the People a thing they never since the Reformation I think attempted in any Conjuncture till Quarto Caroli and then as appears out of Rushworth ' s Collections in a Conference between the Lords and Commons and managed by Secretary Cook he said There was at that time a Popish Hierarchy established in England that they had a Bishop Consecrated by the Pope and that Bishop had his subalternate Officers of all kinds as Vicars General Arch-Deacons Rural Deans Apparitors and that they were not Nominal or Titular Officers only but they all Executed their Iurisdictions and made their ordinary Visitations throughout the Kingdom kept Courts and determin'd Ecclesiastical Causes But it appears not that they had any such Hierarchy here at the time of the Plot or that they have any thing like it at this time in this Realm Mr. Prynne tells us in p. 49. of that Book That in that Conjuncture in Cromwel's time above 30000 Popish Pamphlets were permitted to be Printed and Vended in England and that of this the London Stationers complain'd in Print But 't is very little that they have Printed here since the King's Restauration and the same private Presses which gave Birth to the few Pamphlets they printed would have done it to as many Volumes as ever Tostatus as Mr. Prynne writ if they had pleased The great Number of the Protestants must still be naturally attractive of the lesser to it for the preservation of their Persons tho at the price of the diminution of their Numbers as a drop is best preserved in the Sea tho it be there swallowed up This Notion is well confirm'd by Edmund Spencer in his Observations of the History of Ireland in former times where he shews in what course of time a handful of English planted among the Numerous Irish must of necessity become Irish as indeed his own Family there did as I am told and that Cromwel speaking to the Grand-child of Spencer in English that on the account of the Fame of his Ancestor he should enjoy his Estate was not by him understood And there is no doubt but time will illuminate the Papists as to the Pope's Politicks being inconvenient to them and only convenient to himself For the same Principle in Politicks that makes every lesser State have a regret against being United to a greater namely for fear of its being absorbed thereby a Notion lately in vogue when the Union of England and Scotland was agitated engageth the Pope to keep the Papists from a Coalition with the Protestants here that would drown the visibility of their Numbers and consequently the appearance of the Numbers of his Subjects in this Realm for so in effect they are The true Cause therefore in Nature that made the Pope by his Bull in Queen Elizabeth's time prohibit the Papists from continuing to come to our Churches and to our Common-Prayer a thing they would else still have done was the Pope's being enabled by such Prohibitions to put Marks on his Sheep whereby to know them and their Numbers And which had he forborn there had probably been no Number of them returnable in the Bishops Survey 'T is therefore not to be wondred that our Church got nothing but the destruction of its Hierarchy in the last Age by the Policy
Chesible and other pretended holy Vestments and see him use Crossing Turning Ducking Lifting Whispering Gaping mingling of Wine and Water Lickings and other variety of Gestures and to hear Prayers in Latine and to the Saints and for the Dead and to have our Bells Baptised to have Vailes Holy-Water Holy-Ashes Palms c. Erasmus saith in his Epistles p. 108. Ep. 10. An hic sacrificulum illum malâ—unt imitari qui suum mumpsimus quo fuerat viginti usus annos mutaâ—e noluit admonitus à quopiam sumpsimus esse legendum The Verse of Scripture in which he read that word was Iosua 9. 12. En panes quando egressi sumus de Domibus nostris ut veniremus ad vos Calidos Mumpsimus nunc sicci facti sunt vetustate nimia Comminuti no other Verse appearing to me by the Concordance of the Vulgar Latine to have Sumpsimus in it And the folly of the Priest in so reading was so famous as to come to the knowledge of our Harry the Eighth and to occasion his saying as my Lord Herbert tells us Some of the Clergy are too stiff in their old Mumpsimus others too curious in their new Sumpsimus But that Verse in Iosua was as unlucky and as ill boding a one to Popery for a Priest thus to signalize en ridicule as any he could have found in Holy Writ and carries in it self a revenge for its barbarous usage For it naturally suggests to People that the Antiquity of the Doctrine of Popery is but a Gibeonitish or meer pretended one and that even its Transubstantiated Bread is not brought from so far a Country as is pretended and that it was no longer ago then Anno 1212 that Innocent the Third in the Lateran Council brought in Transubstantiation as an Article of Faith and Decreed those to be Exterminated who did not believe it And that Kings were to be compelled to Exterminate them and that the Pope had power to depose Kings an effectual way to put not only the nature of Things but Men on the Wrack and then make them say they believe any thing But we having been used to the New Sumpsimus these hundred years shall be so Curious in it as to make what is barbarous the object of our Mirth as much as Harry the Eighth and Erasmus did and the Novelty of Popery coming again here in the Masquerade of Antiquity would appear as nauseous as would the moudly Bread of the Gibeonites to the Men of Israel if they had come to treat them with it a Second time From what hath been in this Historical way glanced at concerning the gradual decreasing Popery here in the several past Conjunctures we may without the Amentia Prophetiae as Tertullian calls it say That in any Conjuncture that can hereafter come it will more and more decrease and that under any new Prince Protestancy will be the Rising Sun whose light will be then encreasing and Popery acquire no more lustre then the short one of a parelius Doleman alias Parsons in his Book Of the Succession publishing his thoughts how ponderous the Papists would be in the Ballance of State in the Conjuncture of time attending the next Successor speaks thus as if it were before him in Vision With these many others do joyn Et omnes qui amaro animo sunt cum illis se conjungunt as the Scripture saith of those that followed David ' s Retinue 1 Kings 12. pursued by Saul and his Forces which is to say that all that be offended grieved or any way discontented with the present time be they of what Religion they will do easily joyn with these Men. And when I consider how many there are qui amaro sunt animo by reason of their Condition being embitter'd by Poverty and that it hath pursued them like an Armed Man and is likely so to do when I consider that the Multitude of Free-Schools in the Kingdom diverting the Education of the poorer sort of our Youth from useful laborious Trades to the uselesly appearing Scholars and Gentlemen or according to the Dutch word Idlemen hath at last brought them but to fragments of knowledge and likewise of Bread and tho wearing better Habits then their Ancestors yet to be little better than Thiefs in a handsome disguise robbing the World of their Labour and its own quiet by their being Sollicitors Make-bates Informers proulers into the rights of other Mens Estates Tamperers with Witnesses Tales-men Promoters of Office Suers of others in the way of qui tam c. quam c. And when I consider what is so truly observ'd by the Author of Britannia languens That of all other employments we have the greatest questing after Offices that Men will almost give any thing say any thing do any thing for an Office so that some Offices that were thought hardly worth the medling with of late years will now yield near Ten years Purchase for one Life And when I every where behold the tâ—rn Limbs of the Estates of so great a Party among us as may be call'd the Luxuriants and who have sold the same Estates and Consciences three or four times over and do likewise recollect the Number of all such Idle men who have been observed of late years in Shoales so much to depopulate the Country to plant themselves about London insomuch that tho according to the Observator of the Bills of Mortality there usually did come out of the Country to live in London but 6000 yet there dying within those Bills 17249 in the Year 75 and 18732 in the Year 76 and 19064 in the Year 77 and 20678 in the Year 78 wherein the Popish Plot was discovered and 21730 in the Year 79 whence according to the Rule of one in 30 Yearly dying and there having dy'd gradualy above a 1000 a year since the year 75 to the year 80 altho all years of ordinary health so the remaining part in London did thence appear gradually encreased proportionably that is as a 1000 dy'd each year more than other so 29000 lived there each year more than in the other and that there lived in the year 79 in London 120000 more than did in the year 75 and that many of these People having broke in the Country through the Poverty that the Plot occasion'd came to London to hide themselves and their shame I say when I consider all these things I may well conclude that all these Indigents will be ready to hope for a Golden Age and call any thing a Religion that will bring it them And by a new shuffling of Religion will be indeed hoping for better Cards in this World. Some of those who have been Trumpeters to the Puppet-Shows of little Enthusiastick Religions and movers of the Wyres there would if ever the great one of Popery should come on the Stage be glad to be sharers or quarter sharers in it and to be either Actors or Ministerial to them and especially to be applauding Spectators
most vital part Sincerity hereby in danger to be exterminated For as 't is a thing well known to Merchants and Goldsmiths and Mint-Masters that if the Par as they call it or exact Proportion between Gold and Silver be not observ'd in any Country either the Gold will carry all the Silver out of it or the Silver all the Gold so it may be affirm'd too That if there be not a Par or Proportion observ'd as to Religion and Profit or Wealth either the Religion of a Country will carry out all the profit or Proventus of it or the profit will carry out or exterminate Religion I will not therefore here Prophecy that the World will never but say that it can never be fixed in a quiet and orderly State and free from the Importunity and Sedition of Hypocrites till its Present State be such that Men can neither get nor lose by Religion And till the World recovers this Golden Age namely that Gold cannot carry out our Religion and People us with Hypocrites or our Religion Gold the World will be but a great disorderly House and scarce worth any Mans being Monarch over it As the Irish call their last Rebellion by the name of the Commotion so some have happen'd to call the Present State of Peoples Minds in England which is so disorderly by the name of a Fermentation and this Fermentation can never be over in our English World till there shall here be neither profit or loss by Religion and that no Man shall be more or less Rich by more or less Combining with any Party to cry up or decry any Religionary Tenets or Propositions One would wonder that since Religion and particularly the Christian with its Credenda doth Crown the reason of Man and likewise annex by the exuberance of the Divine benignity a Crown of Glory hereafter to the Believers that any Men should for their belief of Propositions not contrary to reason and wherein the credit of the propounder was supported by Miracles expect to be rewarded in this World a humour that hath been regnant even among Christians from the time of our Saviour's being on Earth to the present Age and a humour that so poyson'd the Iews of old that they thought it not Tanti to have their minds freed from the slavery to Error unless the Messias would have deliver'd them from the servitude of the Romans and because he did not and did decline the being made an Earthly King when the Iews with their Hosannas were tempting him to it they Accused him Capitally for saying That he was a King whenas it was not he but they that said it and they put him to Death reverà because his Kingdom was not of this World and a humour that would not quit the Stage when the first Christians did but boldly still faced the World as appears by the notion of the Millennium having been so much applauded by all the Fathers of the Church and the Christians before the first Nicene Council But methinks from the Example of the Christians of old who did Ambire Martyrium to such a degree that St. Gregory saith Let God number our Martyrs for to us they are more in number then the Sands as if the work had been too hard for another Archimedes with his Arenarius to Calculate the number of the Martyr'd Christians and one Author accounts that excepting on the first of Ianuary there is no day for which Records do not allow 500 Martyrs at least and that for most days they allow 900 and who did ennoble the Christian Religion by shewing to the World an Example of Contempt of Death and even of Life beyond that of the Ancient Romans I say from the Example of those Christians who did in shoals dye daily for their Religion Ours may if they please be taught the modesty not to expect daily livelihoods from it and to account they have very fair play if they do not lose their livelihoods by it 'T is moreover observable that under the Iewish Theocracy Providence had then so ordered things that no Man should get or lose by Religon The Tribes had then their shares of the good Land by lott and the Levites only had that affluent proportion of the Proventus of the other Tribes that I have before Calculated and which would have tempted many of the other Tribes to have march'd over to the Officium and Beneficium of the Priesthood had not God their Monarch provided against that by the confinement of the Administration of the Priesthood to one Tribe and its descendents by natural generation But as to the notion of getting or losing by Religion I shall recommend to your Lordships reading a small Pamphlet printed in two sheets of Paper in Folio and call'd The great Question to be consider'd by the King and this Parliament c. to wit How far Religion is concern'd in Policy or Civil Government and Policy in Religion c. On the disquisition of which a sufficient Basis is proposed for the firm settlement of these Nations to the most probable satisfaction of the several Parties and Interests therein and subscribed by the name of Philo-Britanicus Who the Author of it was I cannot learn but do easily find by the Book that he is a Man of great Acumen of thought and that Matters of Religion and State especially relating to this Kingdom have been very much thought of by him and that the Author was certainly neither Papist nor Presbyterian and so far from being a favourer of the Church of England that he doth interminis make the publick Maintenance of the Clergy to have been the Bone of Contention in these Nations p. 8. and there saith It will be found to stand on the same foot with Abbies and Nâ—â—neries and their Lands and there further as a propounder would give all the Church-Lands to the Crown and the Tithes to the People and then tells us That all Fears and Iealousies and Animosities on the account of Religion will be pluck'd up by the Roots That Author in p. the 5th doth very acutely observe That Popery hath two Parts the one is that which is meerly Religious that is which relates properly to Religion or Conscience and which is peculiar to them such as the believing of Transubstantiation Purgatory Adoration of Saints and Images yea and the superiority of the Bishop of Rome over other Churchmen all which and those of this kind may be believed and professed without prejudice to Civil Society and as being matters relating to Conscience come not properly under the Magistrates Cognizance the other part is the opinion of the Pope's Power over Princes and States his obsolving the people from their Obedience his giving them dispensations to kill Princes and destroy them and allowing them not to keep faith to Hereticks and such like which as they are destructive to Government are truly no part of Religion but a politick contrivance long hatch'd by the Bishop of Rome and his dependants
and five hundred of Prebends after so many shall have drawn Blanks in the Lottery of Preferment those few that shall draw those Prizes need not be envyed for what they have acquired by the Theological Profession It was both with Justice and Prudence by our Laws caution'd that so great a part of the Clerical Maintenance should arise from Tithes for by that means our Clergy are engaged to make the interest of their Country and its improvement their own and had they not had so much of their maintenance sounded on Tithes but on Money out of the Exchequer as they had before this time lost excessively by Religion so Religion would have lost their Calling for that the price of Silver falling by the plenty of it and the plenty or encrease of our people making all the Products of our Country dearer it hath been advantageous to our Clergy to receive their Tithes in kind as it hath been to Colleges to receive a Quota of their Rent in Corn. But that still the maintenance of the inferior Clergy was too mean will appear even by the late Enemies of our Hierarchy being Judges for Mr. Nye in that Book of his called Beams of former Light having spoke of the Ministers Calling being once a gainful one saith p. 123. It is vtterly otherwise now not but that there is a very liberal Maintenance appertaining to Ministers and greater by the bounty of the Honourable Parliament then the Preaching Ministry have formerly enjoyed The gradual encrease of our People and Trade hath proportionably encreased the Clerical Revenue which on the beginning of the Reformation was presently sunk so that Latimer in his Sermon before Edward the 6 th said We of the Clergy have had too much but that is taken away and now we have too little and what Iewel in his Sermon notified to Queen Elizabeth of that kind I have mention'd and so languid was the State of the maintenance of the Inferior Clergy in her time that She by one of her Printed Ecclesiastical Injunctions Anno 1599. did under great Penalties forbid all Priests and Deacons to Marry any Woman without the Advice and Allowance first had by the Bishop of the Diocess and two Iustices of Peace which I suppose was caution'd by the Queen that the many Ministers who had not competent Livings to maintain themselves might not marrying Wives without Dowries by new Births encrease the number of Paupers in Parishes It is observable that in the late times the Iesuites did publish many Pamphlets in Print against Tithes and did animate the people to make Tumultuary Addresses to the Usurpers to abolish that maintenance of the Ministers wherein as their Politicks were so unjust to our Monarch that had they succeeded they would have barricaded the way for his return in the minds of too many of the People for fear that the payment of Tithes should return too so likewise were they so ridiculous by cutting off all hopes of the return of Popery here in any Conjuncture of time that less then an Army of Bellarmines would never have perswaded the common People to hear with patience any talk of Holy Church's re-establishment here Tho as I have shewn that Tithes by reason of the equality in the Imposition of them and the diuturnity of time that hath habituated People to the payment thereof are a gentle part of the Yoke of our Ecclesiastical Government yet if the payment of them or any other Tax whether of Excise Customs or Chimny-money were for many years discontinued there would be no probability of bringing either the old Stagers or new Comers in the World to consent or hearken to their being re-established The Critical Observers of the Iewish State after Ten Tribes had made a Schism from the other two judge that there were two Conjunctures of time wherein their piecing together was fesable and that the great true Cause in Nature that hindred the Re-union of the Tribes was the aversion in the Ten Tribes to make three chargeable Journeys yearly to Ierusalem and to pay a double Tenth yearly out of their Estates besides Offrings and other Casualties to the Priests and Levites from which trouble and charge they had been relaxed by Ieroboam and by his Model of Idolatry and therefore the People having most inclination to that Religion that was cheapest and knowing that if they return'd to their old Religion they must likewise return to their old Payments to the Priests and Levites did venture to adhere to the cheaper Golden Calf and had the Iesuites here effected from the Usurpt Powers the Abolition of the Clergies Tithes which would have made the Return of the Church of England so difficult I may well argue that it would have made the Return of the Papal Religion and its chargeable Idolatry impossible whose Yoke of Payments neither we nor our Forefathers were able to fear But when senseless â—anaticks came with those Petitions against Tithes the more sagacious of the Usurpers knew that the hand of Joab was in them and they knew that hardly any Observation was more trite then that Popery gained ground chiefly in the poorer parts of the Kingdom where the despicable maintenance made the Ministry so too and where too the Pope would no more hunt for Converts then among the poor Norwegians but that it was of use to him to have the number of his Subjects increas'd in any poor places in a rich Kingdom where he tho a spiritual King might yet call his Subjects to Fight Sir Benjamin Rudyard takes notice of Popery's being an intruder among the poor Benefices of the North in the Speech before Cited and there saith p. 1. That to plant good Ministers in good Livings is the strongest and surest means to establish true Religion and will prevail more against Papistry then the making of new Laws and executing the old and there p. 3. relates what King Iames had done for the supporting of the Protestant Religion in Scotland where saith he within the space of one year he caused to be Planted Churches throughout that Kingdom the High-Lands and the Borders worth 30 l. a year a piece with a House and some glebe-Land belonging to them which 30 l. a year considering the cheapness of that Country is worth double as much as any where within an 100 Miles of London And p. 7. he mentions some Passages of Bishop Iewels Sermon before Queen Elizabeth where the Bishop having in general reflected on those that then caused the diminution of the maintenance of Ministers he further saith howsoever they seem to rejoyce at the prosperity of Sion and to seek the safety and preservation of the Lords Anointed yet needs must it be that by these means Forraign Power of which this Realm by the mercy of God is happily delivered shall again be brought in upon us Such things shall be done to us as we before suffer'd in the times of Popery c. 'T was there before mention'd how that Man of God with
the World will never be quiet till its allay from the true Silver be separated by melting it down and it takes the name of Religion only when it deserves it What is more ordinary then for Clamour to raise this question Will you punish any man for his Religion and will you have any man lose by his Religion and I see no end in the disputes of the question but by this Answer and by this it must find a Period viz. I punish no man for his Religion for that Tenet that I quarrel with him about is not and indeed cannot be Religion It is pure and rank Sedition and Rebellion and if any Papist or Presbyterian shall write or speak to make the Kings Power a bubble blown up by the breath of the People and so dissolvable I shall esteem him fit to be proceeded against by the new Statute of the 13 th of this Kings Reign against Sedition and as a Subverter of the Fundamental Laws and do suppose 't will be ridiculous for any one to plead his Religion in bar of that Indictment and he doth moreover deserve to be punish'd as a Cheater for abusing the World and himself and Religion too by calling such a particular Tenet Religion or a Complication of many Tenets by that Name where the vertue of them all is not strong enough to correct the Poyson of one The Scripture doth punish those with a denunciation of a Wo who call evil good and good evil that put darkness for light and light for darkness and in this particular Point of the calling any of the Idolatries or Impostures of the Heathens or others by the name of Religion I remember not any instance in holy Writ tho yet in other Cases 't is not infrequent for the inspired Pen man to speak cum vulgo I observe that in the New Testament the name of Religion is several times applyed to the Iewish after the World was freed from the Obligation of it but one of the holy Pen-men speaking in one Chapter of false Apostles useth the Style of hating the Deeds of the Nicolaitans and of holding the Doctrine of the Nicolaitans and of holding the Doctrines of Balam And another of the Amanuenses of the Holy-Ghost speaks of Doctrines of Devils If any man shall offer to my consideration a Scheme of Doctrines that relate to Theology and I find it is too subtle for my understanding to penetrate I shall yet be so evil as to allow the Propounder to call it a Religion and thus if Papists or Protestants would agree to call Dr. Gibbon's Scheme a Religion or demonstration of it I would not oppose theit calling it any such thing and the rather since it enjoyns not to me any thing that would break my own or the Worlds quiet but when Popery doth enjoyn so many Tenets to be believed that are incredible to a rational Man and some things that are clearly impossible to a Moral Man I will call Popery in the gross any thing rather then Religion just as Tully saith of those Law-givers who did perniciosa injusta a populis praescribere that they did quidvis potius ferre quam leges I find not that since the year 1605. Popery hath so discriminated it self by any alteration for the beter as to overthrow the weight of King Iames's saying then to both his Houses of Parliament viz. That as it is not impossible but many honest men seduced with some Eâ—rors in Popery may yet remain good and faithful Subjects so on the other hand none that know and believe the grounds and School conclusions of their Doctrine can ever prove good Christians or faithful Subjects There is one Tenet in the Doctrine of Popery that your Lordship shewed me once discust in Print by a Canonist and by whom I was directed to trace it both to the Gloss and Text in the Canon Law that I having discours'd of to a Pious and Learned Neighbour of mine who is a Roman Catholick he obliged me to write to your Lordship that you would please to let any of your Amanuenses transcribe and to send hither to me the Resolution of that Lawyer and determination of the Pope in his Law about it and hath declared to me that he will joyn issue with me in the Plea about Religion in that being a Tenet or Principle approved by the Church of Rome and your habitual inclination to afford any one tho a stranger to you lumen de lumine will I doubt not make it easie to you to gratifie my request in his behalf He grants to me that if that Tenet can be shewn to be one approved by the Church of Rome that he believes there will be no occasion for disputants any more to attaque the Roman Catholick Religion and that as an Independant Author in the late times writing a Pamphlet against Presbytery had this Title for it An end of one Controversy it might be supposed that a Sheet of Paper that without strain'd Inferences could fasten that Tenet on the Doctrine of Popery would with better success make an end of that Controversy My Lord this Point discussed in Print that I refer to is as I find it in the Notesâ— I took thereof in your Lordships Study in Gundissalvus his Tractatus de Haereticis Question 24. before which the Summarium is thus 1. Civitas in quâ aliqui insunt haeretici an tota possit igne exuri aut alias destrui 2. Civitas quando dicatur haeresim committere ut universa destrui possit 3. Vniversitate punitâ de haeresi an singuli quâ—que puniti videantur ita ut amplius puniri non possint The Gentleman being of a nice tenderness of Conscience and having a quick sense of any thing that looks like gross impiety was at the very nameing of the first and second Question surprized with a kind of trembling and was somewhat more discomposed when I told him that upon consideration of the whole matter it appear'd even from the most moderate of the Canonists that a whole City might lawfully be destroyed with Fire if the Majority of it were Hereticks and that there were the Judgment of the Church in the Case and like a Man of a large and candid Soul he said that he was sorry that Humane Nature could in any men so far degenerate as to deliberate about such their destroying a whole City by Fire but would reserve his judgment on the Point till he saw it before him in the Quotations out of the Canon-Law as well as Canonists What the Event of his Judgment will be I know not and I confess I have been very sparing of my time in discoursing with Roman Catholicks about any Point of the Doctrine of their Church since I read it in Cardinal Tolets Inst. sacerdotum lib. 4. cap. 3. and 7. p. 612. and in our Countryman Holcot a Famous Schoolman in lib. 1. Sententiarum Quest. 1. ad sextum principale in replica That if he hears his Prelate Preaching
to be walked on in a Frost after a Thaw We are told by the Conformist in the Friendly Debate in p. 112. That he has heard some of the Nonconformist Divines acknowledge that they did not scruple what the Conformists do but thought it unhandsome for them to do it c. And the meaning was in plain English that they were ashamed to confess their error But if some of those Divines whose low Education conducted them perhaps from being Servitors in the University to domineer in their Cures and who through the Track of their Lives might be traced by the slime of their Pedantry and whose Trade was or should have been the Study of Divinity the Precepts of which and their fragments collected out of Augustinus and Aquinas as well as the example of the former obliged them to retract those Errors publickly that they had so utter'd I say that if they were yet so Picquez d' Honneur that they would not let their fallibility appear in Villages and even the falsity of those Principles of theirs by which as many Hundreds of Thousands here were slain as were bare hundreds murder'd in the inglorious Reign of Queen Mary they have true Cause to think it dishonourable for them to restrain their Compassion from any high born Prince the brightness of whose great Martial Atchievements has dazel'd the Universe and will continue to do it when he is in the shades below and one who may say as the Pope did to the Iansenists that he had never studyed Divinity and they are very unfit to Cashiere him from the Church Militant if he doth not in the view of Mankind appear to make a Retreat at the Call of their Trumpet which has been known to give so uncertain a sound and such may be ashamed to dispair of his finding out any false Notions he may have received in Religion and to conclude that he hath not privately discovered them because he doth not openly recant them and to expect that after perhaps he hath erred in the Tenet of Confession he should yet presently make the World his Confessor about it and grant him nothing of the Guard of Honour in the Case but Monopolize the temptations from honour to their sinful obscure selves But as no man can take the measures of anothers Sins without taking those of his temptations so none but a Prince can know the temptations of a Prince Dic mihi si fueris tu Leo c. The like Pedantry therefore in the great St. Ierom was inexcusable as to that sharp saying of his Miror si aliquis Rex salvabitur and that Satyrical fancy of his hath since met with its Match by some that have sent St. Ierom to the Devil as fantastically for so I find it said in Dr. Donnes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 After so many Ages of a Devout and Religious Celebrating the Memory of St. Jerom Causaeus hath spoken so dangerously that Ratio 5. Campian says he pronounceth him to be as deep in Hell as the Devil Moreover I think it great injustice to any Prince who has changed his Religion of Protestancy for Popery that Protestants should at the same time be jealous of his retaining no tincture of his former Principles that the Bigotted and Jesuited Papists are jealous of his scarce retaining a tincture of his new ones and by jealousie too as cruel as the Grave as appeared by the fate of Harry the 4 th who because he did not and indeed could not devest himself of that humanity toward his Protestant Subjects that was riveted in his nature after he was absolv'd by the Chair of Infalibility and reconciled to the very Scorners Chair of the Iesuites yer merely because he had not a window to his breast through which every capricious Priest might look in at and might thereby put in what Principles he pleased they were resolved to cut one there and after Iohn Chastel had begun to practice his incision an execrable Apology for it was Published in which Apology Printed in Latin at Lyons Anno 1611. the Assertion or Head of Chapter 3d Part 2d is Chastel had no purpose to kill a King and of Chapter 4th there Henry of Burbon cannot be called a King by reason of his pretended Conversion and of Chapter 8th there Neither can he be King tho absolved by the Pope and of Chapter 9th Neither can he be called a King by the Right of Succession and of Chapter 11th Hereticks and especially relapsed ones are Juâ—e Divino Humano to be put to death and of Chapter 12th Hereticks and especially relapsed ones may be killed by private Persons if it cannot be done otherwise The Assassination of Harry the 3 d of France bears with it a Memento mori to any Roman Catholick Prince who will not be thorow paâ—ed in obeying the Precepts of Bigotted Priests against Hereticks and to this effect runs the Clamour of the Actions of such Bigots either you must go our pace to Heaven and Travel by our Mapp see with our Eyes and let us ride you when we will and make you ride over your Heretical Subjects or we will precipitate you to the Devil I mention'd it before out of D' Ossat that it was known at Rome that Queen Anne the Wife to King Iames had some inclination to the Roman Catholick Religion and no doubt but she was perverted to it in some measure by some of the Romish Priests who were then as since insolently over officious to tempt Princes to change their Faith and tho none of our Histories mentions any thing of her being a Papist or inclining to be so yet D' Ossat as I said relates how Villeroy supposed her to have turn'd Papist but our Historians unanimously mention one thing that she was designed as well as the King and Prince and others to be blown up by the Gun-Powder-Treason a thing that may give one who turns Son of the Church of Rome cause to say Mallem esse Herodis porcum quam filium No doubt but the mind of any Popish Prince coming out of the cool and sweet Air of a benign and rational Religion to that of such a torrid Zone and Shambles of mans flesh as the Doctrine of Popery presents will be oftener in his thoughts travelling back to that Religion then the prying World can know But the Gentleman my friend is not any way tempted in point of honour to delay his Return to the Church of England and he lately mentioning to me his wishes of the speedy Arrival of your Lordships Papers told me that possibly he and I should be both gainers thereby and that I should gain the Victory and he the Truth and that he would never account those Priests of Rome to be the Missionaries of Christ who if their Doctrine be refused shall instead of shaking off the dust of their feet in any house reduce it to Ashes and further affirmed that it were less absurd and extravagant to wish there were no Religion
Oxford Antiquities said to be Dr. Bate the late Eminent Physitian in p. 49 estimates That the Revenues of King Queen Bishops Deans and Chapters and Delinquents in the hands of those Vsurpers were almost one Moiety of the Kingdom besides many rich Offices c and as to the multiplicity of Offices then a very ingenious Pamphlet written in those days call'd the City Alarum with a Treatise of the Excise mentions in p. 33. That 't was easie to demonstrate that more then 200,000 l. per Annum was then consumed by superfluous Officers which by the way sufficiently shews the ill Managery of the publick Treasure in those days and tho I have put the rate of the Heirs of such above that of common Inexperts yet I am not without hopes that possibly some what like a sort of Experience that many of those Heirs have from the latest Histories and Traditional Accounts had of the breath of the People having blown away that mighty Ballance of Land out of the hands of the unjust Possâ—ssors and all their Models of Government built thereon and of many of their Ancestors who had by their Swords acquired ample shares of the Spoyles of the Crown and Church and Cavaliers Estates growing ashamed of their unjust Victories and the Yoke they have brought upon themselves and the Kingdom and affraid of their Estates and Liberties not being ensureable under a fluctuating Military Oligarchy thought it the best of their Game to aspire with their All to the feet of their Lawful Soveraign and to be his Restorers without Capitulation may incline a considerable part of such and who are not desperate in their Fortunes and have perhaps inherited the Blessiing of their Ancestors penitence by their Peaceable Morals to make such an exception in this case as may confirm the Rule and make them according to the expression before used become sound parts of the State. Another momentous thing cannot but be obvious to the thoughts of the Considerate among them and all Orders or Parties of men here that if the devesting the unjust Proprietors of about half the Land of England by the necessary Course of the Law at the Kings Restoration did in making so many persons and their dependants Paupers and useless in the improvement of the Land and many to be Nusances in it as troublesome Sollicitors and Barrettors and many likewise to withdraw to our Forraign Plantations and to our insula Sanctorum call'd Ireland unavoidably make the price of our Land sink to the proportion it hath since done that if any Sons of Belial and disloyal persons should be ever able by a new Commotion to introduce the old Confusions among us and dispossess the Proprietors of about half our Land as formerly that England it self would turn Ireland and our Land perhaps be valuable but at ten years purchase And tho the Experts now in being among us are comparatively few yet is the work of the Loyal part of them so easie to demonstrate to their Vicinage every where the dreadful inconvenience of essaying to mend the World by War that one Harvy could not more easily among the judicious propagate a general Notion of the Circulation of the Blood then may a thousand of these shew to Millions of others the impious folly of Blood guiltiness again incircling our Land and especially when all our Blood and our Treasure is necessary to be preserved for the Defence of the Realm in a Conjuncture that hath put Christendom in procinctu and therefore 't is but according to the Course of Nature that in such a season the generality of Peoples minds here should manifest such an Abhorrence of both the Irish and English in 41 and that the Religion-Trade which had us at its feet being now at ours if it should again struggle to get uppermost as formerly is to expect from so many to find the salute of the rising blow And as I love to think of these things without asperity or offering the least Violence to the Sacredness of the great Established Amnesty so do I observe the same inclination to be very prevalent among the weightier persons of the several Parties The smalness of the Number of Persons now living that wanted that Amnesty makes men generally concur in not esteeming it taâ—ti to wish it broken but tho most of our former Empirical State-Physicians are covered with Earth their Errors are not and People seem generally sensible that both the present and in likelyhood the future State of England will not allow of Political Physicians trying more Experiments on us and particularly the former churlish ones that succeeded ill and especially in a Conjuncture when nature is by necessity leading us to a Convalescence As in Boccalines Politick Touch-stone Where the Monarchy of Spain is represented throwing her Physician out of the Window and Apollo desiring to know the Cause of it she told him how about 40 years ago she asking Counsel of her Physician he prescribed her a tedious and chargeable Purge of divers Oyls of Holy Leagues of Insurrections of People of Rebellions of Cauteries and other very painful Medicines that had wasted and weakened her spirits and that he prescribing just such another Purge as before was therefore thrown out at Window so would such Purges and such Purgers as we were troubled with forty years ago be here deservedly dealt with now How ridiculous will any Demagogue now appear that should in an English Parliament harangue it against supplying the King in such a manner as Sir Iohn Elliot and Mr. Pym did 4 to Caroli who then as Rushworth's Collections tells us moved in the House of Commons not to yield the King Tunnage and Poundage till they had first settled Religion touching the Points of Ariminianism They might as well have moved that the King might have no Money till they had found out the Longitude and likewise discovered the Quadrature of the Circle and they by that motion would have ensured to him the name of Pochi-Dinari that my Lord Herbert in his Harry the 8 th says was given to Maximilian the Emperor for his famed want of Money But that wantonness of Popularity did shew the worse in those two great Demagogues of their Age for the ingratitude it carried with it they moving so in the House of Commons as they did so soon after the great Royal Concessions as to the Petition of Right and might well excuse the Great Earl of Strafford's then quitting their Company But I shall here observe to your Lordship that after the discovery of the Gun-powder Treason viz. 3 Iacobi the Parliament gave him three Subsidies and six Fifteenths and Tenths of the Layety and four Subsidies of the Clergy all which by estimation amounted to 453000 l. and it was but just in them then so to supply the Crown after the detection of that Conspiracy because it appeared by several Examinations That if it had taken effect an Association of Forraign Roman Catholick Princes by a Solemn Oath
Papal World must be surfeited with it at last And indeed the experience Popish Polititians have had of their success by dividing us formerly as was said would tempt them to omit other courses and to persist still in that if it were not now generally seen through 'T is in viridi observantiâ how our Famous great Usurper Cromwel who founded his Dominion in pretended Grace or Religion and was afraid of Thunder from every Cloud of Enthusiasme he saw over his head and was awed likewise by the Serene and Rational Religion of the Church of England had no other Game to play in order to the dividing the several Religionary Parties but by in some manner tolerating all according to the Mode of Iulians Politics The Papists were the first who miscalled any of our English Princes by the name of Iulian and that they did in the Case of King Iames as appears in his Learned Apology for the Oath of Allegiance printed Anno 1609. where being much concerned for his being so termed and that too by no meaner a man then Bellarmine he doth with great strength there largely prove that that name was congruous as his words are in no point save one that is that Julian was an Emperor and I a King and indeed 't is a very impotent humour of Calumny in any Protestant to call any one an Apostate or especially the Apostate merely for the alteration of his Judgment in some controvertible points of Faith between Papists and Protestants and which are denominable by the name of Religion and 't is a great folly to cherish immoderate fears that any English Prince who possibly may happen in such Controvertible Points to change his perswasions in Religion will if a Papist attempt á la Iulian to plant Divisions among his Subjects by the Instrument of Religion for that their being kept undivided and all of a piece will be essential to the life of the Kingdom as the State of Christendom is likely to continue nor is it probable that any such Prince can ever think in the single course of his life to make this Nation all of a piece or united under the perswasion of Popery For if any one would suppose it possible that in the Reigns of three or four Successive Princes of that perswasion the nature of things might be so far forced as that Millions of men might by artifice be made to abandon a Rational Religion and one that is framed to support the Government for one that is not so such one Prince must be supposed to have acquired the gift of long life that Ante-diluvian Patriarchs had and to extend the Span of his life to that of three or four Princes It is a known Rule relating to Mathematics That there is no reconciling time and force and he who would have one man do as much as four must allow him to be as long a doing it as four one after another But the surviving Experts have seen too much of the effects of the shaking all Civil and Ecclesiastical Polity by a Protestant Usurper ever to wish for another in any Case and to have the ballance of Christendom again broken and the Kingdom be again divided to preserve his Families interest and to keep that entire which is notorious to have happen'd under the aforesaid Usurper both of Religion and the Kingdom and the name of Iulian is most properly applicable to him or any Protestant Usurper and who will be necessitated to follow him in his Track of Politics and the notion of which Ammianus Marcellinus lib. 22. set us right in where he shews that Iulian that he might weaken the Power of the Christian Religion which he feared knew no way so easie as to endeavour to do it by it self and therefore recall'd the Bishops banish'd by Constantius and gave them and the People leave to be Christians tho himself was a Heathen Nullas infestas hominibus bestias ut sunt sibi ferales plerique Christianorum expertus i. e. because he had never found Beasts so cruel to one another as he had most Christians and therefore as he travelled through Palaestine cryed out O Marcomanni O Quadi O Sarmatae tandem alios vobis inquietiores inveni Thus did the Usurper promote the Animosities among Religionary Parties and was enforced thereby to weaken the Kingdom to strengthen himself some indulgence he shewed to Congregations where Divines of the Church of England worship God in the way of its Church yet permitting none to have Benefices but such as were of the Presbyterian perswasion generally and among such and the Independants he distributed his Donatives of preferment in the Universities and he took care that no form of Church Discipline or particular Church might preponderate by his being a Member therein He made some Lay-men and some Divines differing in Judgment about Presbytery and Independency to be Tryers of Ministers fitness for Livings and Commissioned many ignorant Lay-men in the several Counties to be Judges of the sufficiency of Ministers for their continuing in Livings The press was open to all unlearned Wranglers about Religion Many of his Military Preferments he placed on Anabaptists and did suffer many of the Fifth-Monarthy Religionaries to disturb the Apocolypse and the World thereby gave freedom to Muggleton the Impostor to set up for a Prophet and one of the two Witnesses and was a particular Patron to Manasseth ben Israel and in treaty with him here to introduce the Iews and tolerated Biddels Congregated Church of Socinians further likewise so far giving an occasion to Mr. Marvels Writing a Book then of the Growth of Popery that Mr. Pryn in his Book called A true and perfect Narrative of what was done c. Printed in the Year 1659. saith in p. 57th That Sir Kenelm Digby was his particular Favourite and lodged by him at White-hall that Maurice Conry Provincial of the Franciscans in England and other Priests had his Protections under Hand and Seal and that he suspended Penal Laws and Executions against Popish Priests and Iesuites tho sometimes taken in their Pontificalibus at Mass and were soon after released and that he endeavoured to stop the Bill against Papists the very Morning he was to pass it by his White-hall Instruments who moved its suspension for a time as not suting with the then present Forraign Correspondencies against whom it was carried by 88 Votes that it should be sent up with the rest then passed and that he writ to Mazarine to excuse his passing that Bill as being carried on by a violent Presbyterian Party much against his Will and that yet it should not hurt them tho passed c. And I suppose an Author more profound in his Observations than Mr. Pryn doth in a Loyal Pamphlet Printed in the Year 1656. Called a Letter from a true and lawful Member of Parliament c and generally conceived to be writ by the late Lord Hollis there in p. 58. and the following ones charge Cromwel home for the
the taking the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and thereby the laying on the takers an Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors that was to outlast the Life of the King and without any distinction of the Religion true or pretended of such Heirs and Successors Of the Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors arising from those Oaths Mr. Pryn in his Concordia Discors Printed in the Year 1659. hath writ usefully but because since the time of the late fermentation many Pamphlets have been writ pro and câ—n of the Political part of the Question relating to a Popish Successor and none that I have heard of has professedly writ of the Casuistical Part thereof and particularly with relation to those Oaths and because I have heard that in some discourse about the same in some good Company where the Obligation by those Oaths to the Kings Heirs in point of Conscience hath been asserted some good men have been blundered but of their apprehending the same by mistaking the saying in the Civil-Law that nemo est haeres viventis and likewise some things obvious in the Common-Law and I did fear that it might thence grow a common and vulgar error that there is no such Obligation resulting from those Oaths and that as a Supine neglect of the use of means to find the true sence of the same would be very culpable so that a serious and dispassionate representing the same would to all men that regard the weight of an Oath be very acceptable I have with as much recollection of thâ—ught as I could faiâ—ly and impartially writ my opinion thereof Casuistically and shall very shortly send it your Lordship for your perusal And indeed as I should not think I dealt candidly with any person of the Popish perswasion if I should be severe to him before I had a Moral Certainty of his having imbibed any of the Principles imputable to Popery that may be called unmoral or inhumane so it would especially seem to me somewhat like the drawing on a naked man for a Protestant at this time to write for the devesting any Popish Prince of his legal Property when few or no Writers of the Church of Rome either do or dare for fear of offending the Pope draw their pens for the preservation of such his property without respect to any Religionary Tenets he may hold What the Pope did to obstruct King Iames's Succession I have mentioned and what favour any Protestant Prince can hope for from the Holy See may appear out of D' Ossat's Letter to Villeroy in the Year 1598. Book 4th where having spoke of the Artifices used to the Pope to make him believe that if Harry the 4th recovered the Marquisate of Salusium it would be Commanded by Hugonots he thereupon adviseth the King to declare the Contrary to the Pope and adds I would not interpose to write this to you if I did not know that the Pope and all this Court hold that to maintain the Catholic Religion in a Country and to preserve it from Heresie his Holyness may and ought to deprive the true Lord and Possessor of it and give it away to any other who hath no property therein and who shall be more able and willing there to preserve the Catholic Faith. I met with some passages lately in a Pamphlet that concerned the Succession where the Author having liberally descanted on the words Heirs and Successors in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy saith as I will not take up Arms without the Kings Commission nor enter into any Association to commence in his life time against his Consent c. so any one by whom or for whom any resignation of his Majesties Power shall be extorted shall not reign over me and there was another very course expression there applyed to a very fine Person and one so every way truly great that every Age doth not produce viz. That the House of Commons conned little thanks to George Earl of Hallifax c. but according to the licence of Speech used by that Author I shall venture to declare that where ever I have a Suffrage in the Choice of a Parliament-man if any Candidate shall tell me that he served in the place before and was for an Exclusion Bill rather then the Kings Offers and without advising with his Country would have any one of the Royal Line Secluded from his Title to the Throne on the account of any Religionary Tenet for our English Antiquities afford Footsteps of Parliament-men on some weighty matters consulting their Towns or Counties that chose them such a one if I can help it shall never represent me and moreover he who doth not with acknowledgments of Honour and Gratitude to the Earl of Hallifax mention that Bill that he brought into the House of Lords in order to the extermination of Popery that I spake of before and with it lodged in our Statute Book that man if I can help it shall never represent me I am not so rash in my efforts against Future time as perhaps that Author was and can cite a great Name for the reasonableness of Representatives advising with those they represent in matters of great moment to the State and to this purpose the Lord Viscount Falâ—land Secretary of State in a Printed Draught of a Speech concerning Episcopacy c. saith p. 4. Mr. Speaker Tho we are trusted by those that sent us in Cases wherein their opinions were unknown yet truely if I knew the opinion of the Major part of my Town I doubt whether 't were the intention of those that trusted me that I should follow my own opinion against theirs and thereupon his Lordship advised the House of Commons not to do any thing against Episcopacy and at least to stay till the next Session and consult more particularly with their Electors about it And if according to the example of that great man any of our Contenders against Popery had thought fit to consult with those they represented about the meeting those Royal and Frank offers with hearty embraces they would perhaps have found the generality of those they represented zealous for their so doing and if they that perhaps with a well intended Gallantry of Courage and scorn of Popery threw out the Bills that came from the Lords in the Year 1677 should ask those they represented if they do not now wish those Bills had then passed into Laws I believe they would say they did and if they were asked whether that Bill I mentioned before that was brought in by the Earl of Hallifax had not likewise passed into a Law I believe they would wish it had I presume not to inveigh against any of our late Loyal Parliaments whatever slips in Politics were by any there made or Arbitrary Votes there passed against particular Persons and am as impatient when I hear any inveigh against our Representatives who in the contention of Popery exerted all the strength of the faculties of their minds what
water and the Sea and like that they are apt to be eating towards the Roots of the Powers of Soveraigns but while the Mountains of their Power are bottom'd on Natural Justice all the preying of the Sea of the People there makes but the promontory more surely guarded and appear more majestic as well as be more inaccessible And of this Sea of the Peoples as I would wish every Prince in the just observance of the Municipal Laws of his Country to espouse the Interest as much as the Duke of Venice doth his Adriatic yet should I see one for fear of Popular Envy or Obloquy forbearing to administer Iustice and to follow the real last Dictates of his practical understanding rightly informed and servily giving up himself to obey any mens pretended ones I should think it to be as extravagant a Madness as Hydrophoby or fear of water on the biting of a Mad Dog and while a Sovereign observes the immutable Principles of Justice he may acquiesce in the results of Providence and expect that the troubling of the waters may be like that of the Angel before the time of healing or a Conjuncture of the Peoples being possessed of healing Principles and in fine a King when he finds the Waters of Popular Discontent more tumultuous by Religionary Parties as two Seas meeting as for example Papists and Presbyterians he may depend on his being near Land that being always near where two Seas meet and let every Prince be assured that 't is not only Popery but Atheisme in Masquerade to do an unjust Act to support Religion I know that it hath been incident to some good men to strain pretences beyond the nature of things for justice Causes of War abroad in the World to advance the Protestant Religion And thus in the last Age the Crown and Populace of England being clutter'd with the Affair of the Palatinate the Prince Palatine had here many well-wishers to his Title for the Bohemian Crown and Rushworth tells us in his 1st Vol. Ann. 1619. That he being Elected King of Bohemia craved Advice of his Father in Law the King of Great Brittain touching the acceptation of that Royal Dignity and that when this Affair was debated in the Kings Council Arch-Bishop Abbot whose infirmity would not suffer him to be present at the Consultation wrote his mind to Sir R. Nauton the Kings Secretary viz. That God had set up this Prince his Majesties Son in Law as a Mark of Honour throughout all Christendome to propagate the Gospel and protect the Oppressed That for his own part he dares not but give advice to follow where God leads apprehending the work of God in this and that of Hungary that by the Pâ—ece and Peece the Kings of the Earth that gave their power to the Beast shall leave the Whore and make her desolate that he was satisfied in Conscience that the Bohemians had just Cause to reject that Proud and Bloody Man who had taken a Course to make that Kingdom not Elective in taking it by Donation of another c. And concludes Let all our Spirits be gathered up to animate this Business that the World may take notice that we are awake when God calls Rushworth saith that King Iames disavowed the Act of his accepting that Crown and would never grace his Son in Law with the Style of his new Dignity And in King Charles the Firsts time in the Common-Prayer relating to the Royal Family the Prayer runs for Frederick Prince Palatine of the Rhine and the Lady Elizabeth his Wife yet in the Assemblies Directory afterward as to the Prayer for the Royal Family that Lady Elizabeth is Styled Queen of Bohemia But our Princes not being satisfied it seems that the Palatine of the Rhine had a just Title to the Bohemian Crown thought it not just for them to assert it However that Arch-Bishop Abbot the Achilles of the Protestants here in his Generation thought that the English Crown ought to descend in its true Line of Succession whatever profession of Religion any Member thereof should own appears out of Mr. Pryns Introduction to the History of the Arch Bishop of Canterburies Tryal where having in p. 3. mentioned the Articles sent by King Iames to his Embassador in Spain in order to the Match with the Infanta and that one was That the Children of this Marriage shall no way be compelled or constrained in point of Conscience of Religion wherefore there is no doubt that their Title shall be prejudiced in case it should please God that they should prove Catholicks and in p. 6. Cited the same in Latin out of the French Mercury Tom. 9. as offered from England Quod liberi ex hoc matrimonio oriundi non cogentur neque compellentur in causâ religionis vel conscientiae neque leges contra Catholicos attingent illos in casu siquis eorum fuerit Catholicus non ob hoc perdet jus successionis in Regna Dominia Magnae Britanniae and afterward in p. 7. mentioned it as an Additional Article offer'd from England That the King of Great Brittain and Prince of Wales should bind themselves by Oath for the observance of the Articles and that the Privy Council should Sign the same under their hands c. He in p. 43. mentions Arch-Bishop Abbots among other Privy-Counsellers accordingly Signing those Articles and further in p. 46. mentions the Oath of the Privy-Council for the observance of those Articles as far as lay in them and had before given an account not only of Arch-Bishop Abbots but of other magna nomina of the Clergy and Layety in the Council that Signed the same and particularly of John Bishop of Lincoln Keeper of the Great Seal Lionel Earl of Middlesex Lord High Treasurer of England Henry Viscount Mandevile Lord President of the Council Edward Earl of Worcester Lord Privy-Seal Lewis Duke of Richmond and Lennox Lord High Steward of the Houshold James Marquess of Hamilton James Earl of Carlile Lancelot Bishop of Winchester Oliver Viscount Grandison Arthur Baron Chichester of Belfast Lord Treasurer of Ireland Sir Thomas Edmonds Kt. Treasurer of the Houshold Sir John Suckling Comptroller of the Houshold Sir George Calvert and Sir Edward Conway Principal Secretaries of State Sir Richard Weston Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Julius Caesar Master of the Rolls who had done the same Mr. Pryn afterward in p. 69. having mentioned the Dissolution of the Spanish Match gives an account of the bringing on the Marriage with France and saith It was concluded in the life of King James the Articles concerning Religion being the same almost Verbatim with those formerly agreed on in the Spanish Treaty and so easily condescended to without much Debate and referreth there to the Rot. tractationis ratificationis matrimonii inter Dom. Carolum Regem Dom. Henrettam Mariam sororem Regis Franc. 1 Car. in the Rolls The Demagogues of the old long Parliament who made such loud Out-cries of the danger of Popery
hold that he still retaineth and ought to retain entirely and solidly all that aforesaid Supreme Power and Authority over the Churches of this Dominion in as ample a manner as if he were the most Christian Prince in the World. If therefore any shall think it reasonable to pronounce that the substantial Interest of Protestancy and of the Kingdom doth Stare moribus antiquis virisque I have pointed them to Arch-Bishop Abbot to Bishop Andrews the Antagonist to Bellarmine under the weight of whose Arguments Bellarmine fell in the Certamen and to others of our old Counsellors of State and particularly Arthur Baron Chichester of Belfast Lord Treasurer of Ireland your Lordships Noble God-Father in comparison of many of whom when we look on some of our great Politic and Protestant-would-be's of this Age and who would let none be Protestants but themselves we may well cry out In qualem paulatim fluximus urbem and have shewn how those great Confessors by their Overt Acts provided against the belief of the Doctrine of Popery without the barring any of the Royal Line from the inheriting the Crown And when I see some of our till of late unheard of Statists so eager to dispossess the Land of the Evil Spirit of Popery by illegal means and the use of the great Name of Protestancy as a Spell I fancy to my self that they may be call'd on by it as the Iewish Exorcits were in the Acts of the Apostles who taking on them to call over them which had evil Spirits the Name of the Lord Iesus saying we adjure you by Iesus whom Paul preacheth the evil Spirit answered and said Jesus I know and Paul I know but who are ye Thus to any who shall say that there is no way possible to secure English Mens continuing Protestants but by breaking in on the Succession in the Right Line may it be returned by Popery the old Protestants of the Church of England I know and the old Nonconformist Protestants and the old Covenanting Presbyterian Protestants I know who knew otherwise to secure Protestancy and likewise the French Protestants I know who never practised any Out-rage against the Great Harry the 4th of France's Government after he had left Protestancy but who are ye The truth is the Protestants in France so vastly numerous in his time which any one may imagine who considers that the most careful thinking men in that Realm make them now to be two Millions and that a judicious French Author hath writ that the Iesuites have lately computed them to be above a Million and a half have shewn the World a great example of their Protestant Loyalty in that they were ready as chearfully to obey their Prince when he was a Papist as when they served him in set Battles against the Power of the holy League and the majority of his Nobles and of his Metropolis and of the chief Cittadels in his Realm After they saw him go to Mass they never call'd him Iulian or Lampoon'd him in Hymns or demurred to his Beard or had any fears or jealousies of his touching a hair of their heads nor threatned him that the Galilean would foil him and no Language could have more truly expressed their Sentiments then that of the Famous Pierre du Moulin in his defence of the Faith Nous sommes prests d' exposer nos vies pour la defence de nos Rois contre qui que ce soit fust-il de nostre Religion Quiconque feroit autrement ne defendroit point la Religion mais serviroit son ambition attireroit un grand blame sur la verite de l' evangile i. e. We are ready to expose our lives for the defence of our Kings against whomsoever it be although of our own Religion And whosoever should do otherwise should not defend Religion but serve his own ambition and would draw a great reproach on the truth of the Gospel Considering the indeleble Character of Hary the 4 ths Protestant Good Nature his Subjects of that Religion did prepare their thoughts to be Lachrymists for him rather then themselves and knew that by his Coversion to Popery if in this life only he had hopes he was of all men most miserable and that his absolution left him only in the State of a Crown'd Victime I have before mentioned the Apology for that Scholar of the Jesuites Iohn Chastel which endeavours to prove that Harry the 4 th was by that Assassin not only wounded very fairly according to the Language of the Brothers of the Blade but in the Style of their Honour according to the Iesuites Morals very heroically and as the Contents of Cap. 1. Part. 3 d of the Apology expresses it Actus Castelli heroicus est in substantiâ suâ He moreover tells us in plain terms Part. 2. Cap. 7. that Excommunicatio quae â—b haeresim irrogatur remedium potius est ecclesiae quam excommunicato c. and that Excommunication for Heresie doth quite take away any Regal Right And in Cap. 8. before mentioned viz. Neque etiam à Papa absolutus Rex esse potest he asketh Quod si quaeratur quid ergo absolutio praestet si jus amissum non redeat And it followeth Quòd si absolutus impaenitens existat effectus alius non foret quam is de quo supra ita si quod Deus velit paenitentia foret vera certe effectus propterea non exigâ—us esset futurus utpote in spiritualibus remittendo illum in ecclesiae gremium regni Caelorum Capacem reddendo temporalium vero respectu quicquid illa operari posset foret ad reddendum eum compotem novi juris per electionem auferendo impedimentum in foro fori quo durante is ille esse non posset And then he saith The Pope cannot confer such new Right to the same Kingdom on him for that it depends not simply on the power of the Keys so to do and in fine makes the Right to the Crown irrevocably devolv'd on the next person capable who has a right to it quum saith he ratum sit inter jurisconsultos incapacem haberi ut mortuum non impedire sequentes In the 3d Chapter of the 2d Part namely That Henry of Bourbon cannot be called King by reason of his pretended Conversion the vile Apologist derides the Conversion of this Great King and labours to prove by fifteen Instances That after his Conversion he did favour the Cause of Heresy more then ever and particularly by his observance of his Leagues and Agreements with the Queen of England and other Hereticks ut experientia saith he per novas ejus actiones locupletissime testatur Etenim primò faederum pacta cum haereticis sarta tectaque servat quibus ut hactenus nondum renunciavit ita neque dum renunciare cogitat Secundò ipsi haeritici in Germaniâ Genevae alibi ejus actiones comprobant Tertio contemnit Catholicos promovet haereticos illos repudiat atque rejicit hos
Crescent there should so powerfully dâ—ive away the Cross. And thus too when Italy was over-run with the barbarous Nations partly of the Pagan and parâ—ly of the Arrian Belief Pagâ—nism and Arrianism being then Dotard Trees in the World the Seed of the Christian Doctrine falling on them from the Pious and Learned hands of Gregory the Great did easily work through them and for the Conversion of them and likewise of our English Nation about the Year 600 from Heathenish Idolatry the greatest Celebrations are due to him and no wonder if the Papacy then yielding so good Fruit did then cast so venerable a shade in the World. But that Tree afterward being observed to degenerate and decay within Six Years as the general Observation of our Apocalyptick Men is Valeat quantum valere possit and who thus tells us of the aetates Antichristi viz. Nascentis in Bonifacio circa Ann. 606 Iuveniliter exultantis in 2. Consilio Nicaeno Anno. 787. Regnantis in Hildebrando successoribus post An. 1075. Triumphantis in Leone Decimo Ann. 1517. Vltima senescentis est and say that shortly after it began to be consumptive and the decays of it being obvious to the view of the gazing World and the Branches of the Lutheran and Calvinistick Tenets appearing through its sides the quiet and gentle Order of Capuchins was invented for the praying for its growth and flourishing in the Year 1530. and ten years afterward the Active Fiery Order of the Iesuites was invented to extirpate the Men that wished ill to its growth and after that the Fathers of the Oratory were set up to extoll and preach up the Tree but Nature would not be extirpated the Potent Seminal Virtue of the Rational Religion dropt on the Tree of the other hath passed its roots through and through and as I may say transubstantiated it self through them and rooted it self deep both into the intellectual World and into States and Kingdoms and their Laws and will in time probably leave not one Fibre or Capillamentum of the Roots of the Irreligionary part of the Tenets of Popery remaining in Nature and shew the World that the Schisma Anglicanum that Sanders and other Papists cry out of as so unnatural was a mere natural Scissure or Rupture of the parts of the decaying Tree of the Church of Rome that came to pass from the Seed of the Protestant Religion being cast thereon And such a Natural Scissure hath the Religion of the Church of England made through the sides and roots of Protestant Recusancy and the Seeds that by the hands of Non-conformists probably guided by Iesuites have been laid on the Royal-Oak of the Church of England which they vainly thought decay'd were in effect thrown away and as the old Prophetic Fiction represents it that every great Tree included a certain Tutelar Genius and still living with it it may be said that Nature it self is the Tutelar Genius of that Plant of Renown that according to the Scripture expression we may call the Church of England and will ever live with it The Numbers of our Non-conformists are daily decaying and the names of their Tenets will probably be in a short time forgotten We are told in Townsend's Collections that Sir Walter Raleigh mention'd it in one of the Parliaments of Queen Elizabeth viz. in Anno 1593. That there were then near 20000 Brownists in England a number somewhat near as great as that of the Papists to be estimated from the Bishops Survey The name of those Schismaticks is evaporated and their Tenets are not more known or enquired into by the Populace then are the Heresies of the Bardesanistae the Aquei the Abelonitae the Messaliani and some others As was remarked concerning the late Non-Conforming Divines not having bred up their Sons to Non-Conformity the same thing is much observable among the Lay-Dissenters and that their Children do not generally imbibe their Parents principle of Dissentership but rather the contrary The Gross of their Numbers always consisting chiefly of Artisaâ—s and Retail-Traders in Corporations where before the King's Restoration they were numerous and naturally hating Popery and its Parade of Ceremonies cannot but be sensible of the sharp hatred against the same in the Professors of the Religion of the Church of England as by Law Established and how vastly such Professors do every where over-shoot the Dissenters in numbers and how the Seed of the Church of England hath as naturally and with as much ease pierced through the Body of theirs and dissolved its Roots as doth the Seed of an Oak often growing in the Body of a decayed Willow The times were known in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth King Iames and King Charles the first and likewise since till within these late years that some States-men when their Court-Interest was decaying and in danger of Extirpation could by wheadling Dissenters into a belief that they would plant their perswasion in the Church plant themselves the better in the State but humanly speaking such Conjunctures of time will come here no more and the seeming Eradication of such a Religion-Trade in Church and State is a strong Indication That our Heavenly Father or as I may say the God of Nature never planted it But if there were no Laws in being to extirpate any Dissenters Schism or separation from our Church or to Mulct or Excommunicate the obstinate Separaters or if any of those Laws were never Executed as through the vigilance of our Magistrates they have been yet is there one apparent way whereby the Conformists to the Church of England could now as easily lessen their numbers and consequently extirpate their Potency every where as they can frame a thought or resolution to do it and by no other Engine than that with which our Universities of Oxford and Cambridge batter the Contumacy of particular Towns-men namely not by Excommunicating but by discommuning them that is to say by forbidding the Scholars to Trade with them Their own forbearance of buying from Conformists the Wares that those of their own Sect do sell may reasonably invite such a reâ—aliation While heretofore they were so numerous in England their Congregated Churches helped many of the mean Artists and poor Traders thereof with the pretence of Liberty of Conscience to force a Trade by Combination among themselves and their doing it then turn'd to some account but would now be altogether insignificant in this wane of their Numbers And thus without sweat or blood or one Information brought on Penal Statutes or the least occasion or colour for their Out-cry of Persecution may the many Millions of Conformists here humble the Comparative handful of Popish and Protestant Recusants both in Corporations and out of them too when they please and in effect reduce them to the Condition the many Empericks in our Land would be in if they only sold Physick to one another I affect not to be a Propounder of any new Law or of the execution of any old that
his Orations that Est aliquid quod non oporteat etiamsi licet and when he in his Offices renders it to be inhonestum injuriam alteri non propulsare and when the Rules of Law could tell us that Non omne quod licet honestum est and when Seneca could contemn the innocence as poor that was not more than the Law required and thereupon say Quaâ—to latiùs officiorum patet quam juris Regula Multa pietas humanitas liberalitas justitia FIDES exigunt quae omnia extra publicas tabulas sunt and when that St. Paul hath ennobled the Moral Offices of Christians by enjoyning in his Epistle to the Philippians the practice of whatsoever things are true whatsoever things are honest whatsoever things are just whatsoever things are pure whatsoever things are lovely whatsoever things are of good report c. it may well be expected that the true faith of a Christian should prevail on Christians not to attempt the compassing of any thing by a new Law contrary to what they have by their Oaths promised to defend and contrary to the old Fundamental Laws of the Land. And having thus far proceeded my 8th Conclusion shall be that our Obligation thus relating both to the King and his Heirs and Successors doth clearly arise from those Oaths without any Condition on his or their part to be performed and particularly without any respect had to what Religion they shall profess We know that Iuramentum limitatè praestitum limitatum producit consensum effectum but 't is likewise as notorious that there is nothing of limitation no IFS or AND 's in these Oaths and therefore that known Rule of Non est distinguendum ubi lex non distinguit must here take place in the Court of Conscience Sanderson in his 4th Lecture saith If two oblige themselves mutually in promises of different kinds or not at the same time or otherwise without mutual respect Faith violated by the one absolveth not the others Obligation but each is bound to stand to his Oath tho the other hath not performed his part For example A King simply and without respect to the Allegiance of his Subjects sweareth to administer his Government Righteously and according to Law. The Subjects at another time simply and without respect to the Duty of the Prince swear Allegiance and due Obedience to him They are both bound faithfully to perform their several Duties nor would the King be absolved from his Oath if Subjects should not perform their due Obedience nor Subjects from theirs tho the King should turn from the Path of Iustice. Mr. Ny doth therefore in a printed Treatise of his very well for this purpose cite Bishop Bilson and saith That Bishop Bilson a great Searcher into the Doctrine of the Supremacy of Kings giveth this as the sense of the Oath viz. the Oath as saith the Bishop expresseth not Kings duty to God but ours to them as they must be obeyed when they joyn with truth so must they be endured when they fall into Error Which side soever they take either Obedience to their Wills or Submission to their Swords is their due by God's Law. And tho some ill Anti-Papists have ridiculed Passive Obedience after they had given the Cautio juratoria against their owning the Doctrine of Resistance Mr. Ny doth very particularly in p. 138 of that Book inveigh against that Doctrine and saith Nor if they were able i. e. to resist is it lawful for a Church to compel by the Sword more than the Magistrate may by the Keys or what is peculiar to the Sacred Function Uzza erred in the latter and Peter in the former The Primitive Rule and Practice was this Being persecuted in one City to fly into another and pray that their flight may not be in the Winter I have read a Manuscript Book of Mr. Ny called A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Laws and Supremacy of the Kings of England in dispensing with the Penalties thereof where he asserts throughout the Legality of his Majestie 's Declaration of Indulgence and the Book was writ professedly for that purpose and he there doth very rationally inculcate the unlawfulness of Exclusion as in his other Book he did the unlawfulness of Resistance and saith That Civil Rights and Claims and Temporal Things are the immediate and intrinsic Concern and Interest of all States Dominium non fundatur in gratiâ The just Claim of a Prince may not be interrupted upon account he is of this or that Religion or Perswasion Nor may a Subject be justly banished imprisoned confiscated or ruined on the mere account of Religion or because his Conscience is not cast into the same Mould with the Prince or present Establishment It is POPERY to deny Allegiance to a Prince or Protection to a Subject upon the account of any such difference It is therefore no wonder that our Ancestors framing the Oath of Allegiance would have no Principle of Popery therein favoured by a side Wind which according to Mr. Ny's Sense must have happen'd had there been any distinguishing reserves or limitations or restrictions in the Oath respecting the Religion of our Princes And because many men have been in this Conjuncture of time tempted to strain their Oaths and their Consciences by excessive Fears and Jealousies relating to Religion and as if God could not Govern the World but by Princes and their Subjects being of the same Religion and because Mr. Ny's judgment is of great Authority among many of our Religionary Dissenters I shall here insert somewhat more out of that Manuscript of his that falls under this Consideration and which is indeed writ with great Weight and Authority of reason and worthy the Writers great Abilities He having there put a Question relating to Religion and the Worship of God being the great Concern of a Nation and to the trust of dispensing with the Penalties of Ecclesiastical Laws saith In answer to it I endeavour to unfold 1. In what sense Religion is the Concern of the State. 2. The nature of this Trust and as to the first he saith The moment and weight of a matter in our deliberation hath its proportion as either under an absolute or respâ—ctive Consideration Wisdom is better than Riches in it self absolutely but not in respect to the support of this present life The knowledge of God and Divine Things is better than to know the Virtue of Drugs and Plants but not in respect to the Study of Physick so Religion and the Worship of God is the chiefest and better part in it self considered but in its respective Considerations as to the Family of a particular Person or Community of men for the advancement of Civil Affairs there are OTHER qualifications and inducements of greater Consequence and more directly and immediately tending to the being or well-being thereof That there be no mistake in this great Concernment I further distinguish There comes under the Notion of Religion the Holyness and Righteousness that is
quemjure naturali dominiove rerum aut provinciarum And as I have already referred to the Instance of Abraham in obliging himself at once to Abimelech and his Son and his Sons Son I shall here cast my Eye on Abimelech as an Idolater and take notice that the aforesaâ—â— Father of the Faithful and by whose Bosom Heaven is represented and who had the honour done him by Holy Writ to be called the friend of God and by the Chronological Writers of Memorable Things to be called Inventor foederum and most worthy of him as being the friend of God it was to be the Inventor of Alliances and federal friendship with men did make that first Alliance with an idolatrous Prince and with his whole Race of Idolaters in Prospect If then it is an allowed judged point by the consent of Parties That Religion is out of the Case when one Prince doth freely protect another and his Subjects of different Religions it may be thence very well inferr'd That it is most reasonable and just and ought not to any to seem strange that Subjects who owe a natural Allegiance to their Princes are indispensably bound to pay the same to them and to defend all their Regal Rights without any regard to the Religion their Princes may profess and on the other hand that Princes may oft protect their Subjects who differ in Religion from them in the enjoyment of their Rights I grant that some Popish Princes abroad having rivetted the Inquisition into their Politicks and being perhaps of harsh or bigotted dispositions have out of a regret against Hereticks expelled Infidels from their Territories and by which expulsion such Princes have been sufficient losers in this World and a Case of which nature is particularly referred to by the Bishop of Rhodes in his History of Harry the 4th of France who accounting the Moors in Spain to be about a Million mentions the hard usage they there found and that before they were thence expulsed they applied to Harry the 4th for Protection once when but King of Navarre and afterward when King of France and a Roman Catholick and who then did no more doubt of the lawfulness of protecting them than while he was a Protestant however he forbore on Political grounds only to protect and defend them Nor when he forsook the Communion of the Protestant Church were any of his Heretical Subjects used by him with any hardship on the account of the hard word of Heresy and I believe his Notion of the practicableness of an orderly Political Government without reference to Religionary differences was the same with his great Minister Villeroy's I have mentioned how Cardinal D' Ossat told the Pope that if his Holyness were King of France at that time that Harry the 4th was he would shew the Huguenots the same favour that Harry the 4th did and shall observe it that in the famous printed Oration of Cardinal Perron made to the 3d Estate or Commonalty of France tho he speaks of the LATERAN Council and owns and asserts it to be a general one as strenuously as the Learned Bishop of Lincoln hath since done and faith When that Council intended to provide for the extirpation and rooting out of the Reliques of the Albigenses it ordained that the Princes who should become Contemners of the Council that Condemned the Albigenses should be deprived of the Obligation of their Subjects fidelity to them yet he then adds And this I remember not for an Example to disturb or trouble the publick Peace or Tranquillity seeing the Hereticks are here in so great a number as that they make a notable part of the Body of the Estate c. Here then I have named two Cardinals of as great real Eminence as any the Church of Rome could ever shew who held it lawful for a Catholick Prince to protect his Protestant Subjects notwithstanding the Lateran Council But what Tacitus speaks of the Duty of common Men namely that they should not penetrate Abditos Principis sensus nay be particularly applied to their Religion And the Apostles Caution of Who art thou that judgest another mans servant may here be improved by saying Who art thou that judgest thy Natural Liege Lord and particularly as to matters of Religion wherein the most Antimonarchical Writers will allow them accountable only to God. And to any Protestant who having followed his judgment of Discretion hath separated from the Communion of another Church and yet shall Censure his Prince for so doing those other words of the Apostle are justly applicable Therefore thou art inexcusable O man whosoever thou art that judgest for wherein thou judgest another thou condemnest thy self for thou that judgest doest the same things The Christian Religion that hath enjoyned us not only to defraud and injure and offend none and to love our Neighbour as our self and extended that Neighbourhood to all Humane kind hath likewise commanded us to HONOVR all men and especially to render honour to whom honour is particularly due and not rashly to judge another and if men would imprint on their minds a serious Sense of the Moral Offices to which they are obliged by Virtue of those Expressions they would soon be better guided in the Measures of their Obligations relating to the King and his Heirs and Successors without being tempted as formerly to exclude any of them from their Civil Rights on the account of Religion Ames in his Cases of Conscience doth well descant on those Moral Offices and in his Chapter of Charity to our Neighbour he assigns some particular Cases in which as to the actual exercise and effect of Charity one is to love his Neighbour more than himself and instanceth in our being in Temporal Matters obliged to prefer publick Persons to our selves and saith That all are to be reckoned among publick Persons concerning whom it is manifest that they are useful to the Realm and in the Case of whom he determines it That on their occasionally being in danger of their lives we are to venture ours Are we not then when we may without the peril of our lives defend the Civil Rights of an Heir of the Crown who by the venturing his life hath supported the honour of the Realm obliged to forbear excluding him from the benefit of his Birth-right The Privilege of his owning the belief of Religionary Propositions tho differing from any other mens was purchased for him by the Blood of Christ and in using it he doth but use his own Right and consequently injures no man and if we slight the offering his own blood to us shall we too vilify or as I may say endeavour to nullify in his Case the effect of the Blood of his Saviour Ames in his Chapter De honore proximi tells us That Honour according to the common Notion of it doth denote the Testification of the excellence and worth of any one and that such Testification thereof cannot appear before men but by Words and Actions and
words in the Oaths altho it is a common sure Rule That Verba ubi sunt expressa voluntatis supervacanea est quaestio yet I shall ex superabundanti choose to corroborate such my Assertion by laying down this as my 9th and last Conclusion that it is manifest that it was the Law-givers intention to bind the Takers of these Oaths not only to bear true Faith and Allegiance to his Majesty but to his Heirs and Successors in the Due and Legal Course of Descent as I have before expressed It need not be much dilated on that Relations are Minimae entitatis but Maximae efficaciae and that Liberi sunt quasi partes appendices parentum not only Fictione Iuris but Naturâ â—ei veritate and that in the framing of the Oath of Allegiance and the designing the Obligations to arise thence the King had a necessary regard to natural affection and to the preservation of the Hereditary Monarchy in the Line of his Heirs and Successors and suitably to what is expressed in the Preamble of the Statute of 25 H. 8. c. 22. viz. That since it is the natural inclination of every man gladly and willingly to provide for the surety of both his Title and Succession altho it touch his only private Cause we therefore reckon our selves much more bound to beseech and instant your Highness to foresee and provide for the PRESENT surety of both you and of your most lawful Succession and Heirs Nor need it be much insisted on that 't is natural for every Government to defend and preserve it self and to this purpose the Author of the Exercitation cites Alsted a Lutheran Divine and likewise Grotius and Dudley Fenner for maintaining the lawfulness of what the old Athenian famous Oath enjoyned for the preservation of its Polity namely of any private Person killing any Usurper or one who without a lawful Title forcibly invaded the Government The Athenians had several Oaths of a high nature by the Religion of which they tyed themselves to defend their Government and one was the Iusjurandum epheborum which they took when 20 years old and which is set down in Petitus his Noble Commentary on the Athenian Laws and part of which as rendered by him into Latin is Patriam liberis non relinquam in deteriore sed potius in meliore statu Navigabo ad terram eamque colam quantulacunque illa sit quae habenda mihi tradetur Parebo legibus quae obtinent c. quod si quis leges abrogare velit populo non sciscente minime feram Vindicabo autem sive solus sive cum aliis omnibus Patria sacra colam c. ad mortem usque pro nutriciâ terrâ dimicabo But this Oath tho famous enough was not THE famous one I referred to but 't is the other of which the formula is set down in Petitus there p. 232 233. and which beginneth with Occidam meâ ipsius manu si possim eum qui everterit Rempublicam Atheniensium aut eâ— eversâ Magistratum gesserit in posterum c. That Oath of so high and strange a nature was made shortly after the driving out the thirty Tyrants and the Law made that Si quis Atheniensium Rempublicam evertat aut eâ eversê Magistratum gerat Atheniensium hostis esto impunèque occiditor c. To secure their Government forever from future Usurpation was the intent of that terrible Oath and to secure the Government of the Hereditary Monarchy here was the intent of our gentle ones and sufficiently favouring of the Mansuetudo Evangelii and which Oaths however binding the Loyal to defend the Government with their lives do yet strictly bind to the defence of the Rights and Privileges of the Crown one of which is both by the 13th of the Romans and the Lex terrae to be a terror to the Evil and to bear the Sword. But Sir E. Coke having told us in his Commentaries That the true Scope and design of our Statute Laws are oftentimes not to be understood without the knowledge of the Histâ—ry of the Age when the particular Statute was made I shall looking back on the Conjuncture when the Act for the Oath of Allegiance was made take notice that by many particular matters then obvious to all mens thoughts it appeared worthy of the wisdom of the Government then to provide for the security both of his Majesty and of the Succession Any who shall read D' Ossat's Letters will find the various deep designs there opened that related to several Foreign Princes and Potentates Jealousies of the Power that England would have in the balance of the World by the uniting of the strength of Scotland to it upon the rightful Succession of King Iames to the Monarchy and perhaps rather out of a design to amuse them than out of an humour to put by the thoughts of Mortality Queen Elizabeth did shew so much unwillingness sometimes to hear and speak of her Successor And during the constrained Altum silentium of the Succession then here a Book of the Succession was writ by Father Parsons and which made noise enough in the World as those Letters mention and by which Book the Author intended that our Hereditary Monarchy should be Thunder struck especially with the help of the Papal Breves that came here to obstruct the Succession King Iames at the end of his Premonition to all Christian Monarchs printing a Catalogue of the Lyes of Tortus i. e. Bellarmin with a brief Confutation of them refers to one Lye of Tortus p. 47 viz. In which words of the Breves of Clement the 8th not only King James of Scotland was not EXCLVDED but included rather and the Confutation is thus viz. If the Breves of Clement did not exclude me from the Kingdom but rather did include me why did Garnet burn them Why would he not reserve them that I might have seen them that so he might have obtained more favour at my hands for him and his Catholicks And that King in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance p. 29. refers to the two Breves which Clemens Octavus sent to England immediately before Queen Elizabeth's Death debarring him from the Crown or any other that either would profess or any ways tolerate the Professors of his Religion contrary to the Pope's Manifold Vows and Protestations Simul eodem tempore and as it were delivered uno eodem spiritu to divers of his Majesty's Ministers abroad professing such kindness and shewing such forwardness to advance his Majesty to the English Crown Any one who reads in D' Ossat the inclination of that Pope to Principles and Practices of this kind will not wonder at his Majesty 's thus exposing his Vn-holyness and the nature of the Breves is sufficiently there explained and proved to be according to his Majesty's measures published of them That Great King was sufficiently acquainted with the Principles and Practices of the Papacy that had been so injurious to
41 I shall answer him that its weight hath in this present Conjuncture of 81 afforded Loyalty so great a Compensation by that late Act of Parliament there acknowledging and asserting the Right of the Succession c. and which begins thus viz. The Estates of Parliament considering that the Kings of this Realm deriving their Royal Power from God Almighty alone do succeed lineally thereunto according to the known Degrees of Proximity in Blood c. that as Historians tell us how in the dark barbarous times many hundreds of years since men repaired from all Countries to Ireland to learn the Liberal Arts and Sciences I shall say that they may now profitably go to Scotland to learn Loyalty and I doubt not but that Kingdom which is so notorious for its mortal or immortal hatred of Popery call it which you will and even of that very part of it which I call the Religionary one of it having thus by the Exterminium of that irreligionary part of it viz. That Dominion is founded in Grace taught us Loyalty in the establishing the Hereditary Lineal Succession may be as instrumental in giving Loyalty in the Body of the People here its temperamentum ad pondus as it was formerly in oppressing us with its weight as a gravamen and be an occasion of blessing our Land with such a joyful Conjuncture of time as ensued after King Iames's Succession as I have before mentioned and to the Consideration of which I shall return England that had formerly by reason of the uncertainty of the Succession being like the Erratica Delos a floating Island and that too in Seas of Blood and did then appear like it afterward fixed and blessed with a Pacifick and Oracular King and as strong a Foundation for the Hereditary Monarchy as could be wished was shortly after in danger of being again unfixed by the Outrage of the Gun-Powder Treason and the Principles that legitimated that practice being really believed and practised and an account of the practice of which Treason we have in the Statute of 3 o Iacobi c. 2. as likewise of the fiery Principles that animated the Actors to it in Thuanus and in King Iames his Premonition to all Christian Monarchs p. 10. a general reference is made to the violent bloody Maxims that the Powder-Traytors maintained and by occasion whereof after the designed outrage against the Lineal Succession of the Prince and the Hereditary Monarchy being in danger while such bloody Principles and Maxims were not exterminated it was in ordinary prudence requisite to apply the extraordinary Remedy of the Oath of Allegiance to rivet that Fundamental Maxim of the Crown the stronger in Nature viz. That the King never dies And the Addition of those words in the Promissory Clause of the Oath of Allegiance viz. HIS or THEIR Persons THEIR Crown and Dignity and which words were not in the Oath of Supremacy was a plain indication of the intention of the Law-givers to tye Mens Souls to the Hereditary Monarchy in the Due and Legal Course of Descent And moreover with a prospect to mens having a conscientious regard to the King's Heirs and Successors the Fathers of our Church then probably in the Preface of the Collect in the Common-prayer for the Prince and the King's Children as overjoyed with the sight of King James 's being enriched with a most Royal Progeny as the words in the Act of the Recognition are did cause these words to be inserted Who art the Father of thine Elect and of their SEED The Preface to the Act requiring the Oath of Allegiance hath in it the expression of Loyalty and Allegiance unto the King's Majesty and the CROWN of England and mentions the design of the Gun-powder Treason as tending to the subversion of the whole State and therefore if in the ancient times of Popery and when the Pope was generally revered here as a 13th Apostle upon any emergent Papal Usurpations which gave just cause of apprehending future ones intended and particularly in the Case of the Pope's Mandates or Bulls which were called Gratiae expectativae or provisiones and pretendedly issued out of the Pope's pious care to see a Church provided of a Successor before it needed our Kings did think themselves obliged to provide Statutes against Provisors whereby the Ius patronatus was secured to them and their Subjects and by Statutes of Praemunire did as it were build Forts before the Enemies coming the Premuniment of the Hereditary Monarchy by the Oath of Allegiance was most necessary to prevent any Papal Gratiae expectativae of the Crown and the Popes impious care to provide a Successor to its Hereditary Rights The Premuniment of some Laws by others is no new thing nor yet a new word however some idle Criticks have accounted the word praemunire in our Statutes to be barbarous for Grotius in his De jure belli c. l. 2. c. 5. § 14. speaking of some Laws of the Iews saith In quarum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ut Hebraei loqâ—untur praemunimentum additae sunt leges caeterae and according to the sense of some taking praemunire for praemonere the constant premonition of Heavens great Monitor called Conscience and which is the pulse of the Soul and like the Pulse is Fidelis nuncius vitae aut mortis to warn men by this Oath to defend the Lineal Succession of the Crown was no less necessary and King Iames's setling the Premonition in the minds of his own Subjects was but naturally previous to his Premonition sent abroad to Foreign Princes and States And how far Harry the 7th's Statute by which no Person who should serve the King for the time being c. should therefore be attainted or impeached might induce the Government to secure the undoubted Rights of Succession by the Oath of Allegiance being framed as it was and rooting our Loyalty thereby the deeper into our Consciences and by the fear of our being justly impeached in the Court of Conscience in omnem eventum if we defended not those Rights of Succession is obvious to Consideration As I have thus in this Conclusion shewed that it was the Law-givers intention particularly in the Oath of Allegiance to oblige us to pay our Allegiance not only to the King but to his Heirs and Successors in the Legal Course of Descent so I might here further Ex superabundanti dilate on such intention being to secure the same without any respect to the Religion of such Heirs and Successors A Prince of such profound Learning and Observation as King Iames could not be ignorant of what hath been since by the Loyal Writers of the Succession so clearly and strongly asserted viz. That the Succession to the Crown is inseparably annext to the Proximity of Blood by the Laws of GOD and NATVRE and That Statute-Laws contrariant to those are null and void and That the Hereditary Monarchy was indisputably founded on inherent Birth-right according to the Style of the Act of Recognition
to belong to the Pope's Authority and their own School Doctors are at irreconcileable odds and jarrs about them He had then his Eye on the Lateran Council as appears by the other words there in the Margent viz. Touching the PRETENDED Council of LATERAN See Plat. in vitâ Innocen 3. and by which Council the King knew that all except two or three of those Conclusions were concluded and defined If therefore many of the poor petty School-Doctors were so searless of the Papal Thunder as in Cases when they were perhaps unconcerned to impeach the Papal Usurpation there was no cause of apprehension in that our wise Monarch that any of his High-born Heirs and Successors would ever favour the Usurpations of that Authority When Queen Elizabeth was so firmly satisfied concerning the Loyalty of the Roman Catholick Lords Temporal and of their great Quota in the balance of the Kingdom securing their abhorrence of all Papal Usurpations as not to impose the Oath of Supremacy on them tho yet She took care to have it imposed on the Popish Bishops can we imagine that the great Interest of an Heir of the Crown in the Hereditary Monarchy did not give a Plerophoâ—y of satisfaction to that Great Monarch that such an Heir would never permit any Usurpation to prejudice his Crown Imperial Moreover if in the Case of the device of an Inheritance by Will on the Condition of the Legatees not holding this or that Philosophical or Religionary Tenet the absurdity of such Condition would not frustrate the device but would be taken as Pro non adjectâ and that thus in that known Case in the Digest viz. Of an Heir made on an absurd Condition namely On Condition he should throw the Testators ashes into the Sea the Heir was rather to be commended than any way questioned who forbore to do so how can we think in the Inheritance of the Crown which is from God and by inherent Birth-right any such supposed absurd Condition of a Prince's not believing this or that Speculative Religionary Tenet and for his professing of which he hath a dear bought Liberty by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the New Testament of Iesus Christ should be intended to operate to his prejudice But that I may in a word perimere litem about that Kings never intending the least prejudice to the Succession by any of his Successors being Roman Catholicks I shall observe that that Kâ—ng who was so great and skillful an Agonist for the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England did yet in the Articles of the proposed Match with Spain and afterwards with that of France agree that the Children of such Marriage should no way be compelled or constrained in point of Conscience or Religion and that their Title to the Crown should not be prejudiced in Case it should please God they should prove Roman Catholicks and that the Laws against Catholicks should not in the least touch them And that the sense of the Government then was likewise to that effect avowedly declared is manifest from the Passages of those times and the needless quarrel therefore that our late Excluders would have exposed us to with France was a thing worthy their considering But enough of this Conclusion if not too much for where the Tide of the Words of any Oath runs strong and clear we need not to regard the Wind of any Law-givers intention however yet I have made it appear for the redundant satisfaction of the scrupulous that while they have embarqued their Consciences in thâ—se Oaths they have had such Wind and Tide both together on their side and that therefore any Storms which the Takers of these Oaths relating to the Lineal Succession of the Crown may have raised either in their Consciences or the State must be supposed to be very unnatural Having thus in the foregoing Conclusions asserted and proved the Obligation relating to the Kings Heirs and Successors as resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy I shall briefly answer such objections thereunto or rather Scruples for they deserve not the name of Objections as some noisy Nominal Protestants have troubled themselves and others with and so end this Casuistical Discussion The first Objection or Scruple then I shall take notice of that some have raised against the Obligation of these Oaths as above asserted is that they were made in relation to Papists only and were enjoyned to be taken for the discovery of those that were suspected to be so As to which it will be sufficient to say that it is most plain that all Persons who have taken these or any other lawful Oaths are bound by Deeds to fullfil what they have sworn in Words and it is an absurd thing to doubt whether the Law intended that those Persons should observe the Oaths whom it hath enjoyned to take them And to this purpose we are well taught by Bishop Sanderson in his 6th Lecture of Oaths That tho Papal Vsurpation was the cause of the Oath of Supremacy the arrogating to himself the exercise of Supreme Iurisdiction in spiritualibus throughout this Kingdom yet the Oath is Obligatory according to the express words in the utmost Latitude the reà son is that the intention of a Law is general to provide against all Future inconveniences of the like kind or nature c. I refer the Reader to him there at large By the Measures of that Bishop as to the Oath of Supremacy we likewise may direct our selves in the Oath of Allegiance being Obligatory according to the express words in the utmost Latitude tho that Oath was made by occasion of the Gun-powder Treason And as to the intent of the Oath of Supremacy King Iames tells us in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance p. 108. That it was to prop up the Power of Christian Kings as Custodes utrâ—usque tabâ—ae by commanding Obedience to be given to the word of God and by reforming Religion according to his prescribed Will by assisting the spiritual Power with the Temporal Sword c. by procuring due Obedience to the Church by judging and cutting off all frivolous Questions and Schisms as Constantine did and finally by making Decorum to be observed in every thing and Estaâ—lishing Orders to be observed in all indifferent things c. whereby his Majesty doth clearly denote the intention of that Oath to have been to extend against any Non-Conformists continuing their Schism in the Church And as to the Oath of Allegiance being intended against Protestants as well as Papists making a Faction in the State the Book called God and the King compiled and printed by King Iames's Authority sufficiently shews throughout by the Notification of the particular Moral Offices required by the Oath of Allegiance and likewise by his Subjects natural Allegiance and which Moral Offices are there strengthened with passages out of the Scriptures and Fathers and the Doctrine of absolute Loyalty is there well Established and likewise the Doctrine of Resistance
him our Sovâ—reign Lord the King IS lawful and rightful King c. and so the word IS must necessarily hinder any Heirs or Successors forestalling the Market if they should presume before their time to come for our actual Allegiance however sworn to them to be paid in future time Our Law-Book of Oaths mentions a long Promissory Oath made voluntarily to Harry the 6th by 2 Arch-Bishops 16 Bishops 3 Dukes 5 Earls 2 Viscounts 14 Abbots 2 Priors and 7 Barons and but part of which I shall here set down viz. I A. B. knowledge you most High and Mighty and most Christian Prince King Henry 6. to be my most redoubted and rightwise by Succession born to Reign upon me and all your Liege People whereupon I voluntarily without Coercion promise and oblige me by the faith and truth that I owe to God and by the faith truth and ligeance that I owe to you my most redoubted Sovereign Lord that I shall be without any variance true faithful humble and obeysant Subject and Liege man to you my most redoubted Sovereign Lord c. and swear to endeavour to do all that may be to the weal and surety of your most Royal Person c. to the weal surety and preserving of the Person and benign Princess Margaret Queen my Sovereign Lady and of her High most Noble Estate She being your Wife and also the weal surety and honour of the Person of the right High and Mighty Prince Edward my right redoubted Lord the Prince your first begotten Son and of the Right High and Noble Estate and faithfully truly and obeysantly c. First my Allegiance to you my most redoubted Sovereign Lord during your life c. and if God of his infinite Power take you from this Transitory Life me bearing life in this World that I shall then take and accept my said redoubted Lord the Prince Edward your said first born Son for my Sovereign Lord and bear my true Faith and Ligeance to him as by nature born for my Sovereign Lord and after him to his Succession of his Body lawfully begotten c. and in default of his Succession c. unto any other Succession of your Body lawfully coming But the wisdom of any Nation making Laws and especially about Oaths as short as may be I account that those of Supremacy and Allegiance have much better that Multi-loquious one as I may call it provided for the security of our Allegiance to the King Regnant and afterward to his Heirs and Successors by plain and liquid words as far as Humane Prudence could provide for the same And because what is made by Humane Art is in danger of being by Humane Art eluded and for that we see that Nature it self hath been made a Term of Art a word that St. Paul thought plain enough when he said doth not Nature teach us that c. yet of which word a late Lawyer and Kinsman of the Great Grotius hath in his Book De Principiis juris Naturalis told us of seven significations and for that it is as easie for a captious versatil Wit to turn the word Heir or most words into as many or more the Oath of Allegiance was further with deep precaution made to exterminate all cavilling senses and calumnious interpretations and such as that of the haeres viventis by that Final Clause which Crowns that Oath and that which alone as I partly hinted before amounts to an Oath viz. And I do make this Recognition and Acknowledgment heartily willingly and truly upon THE TRVE FAITH OF A CHRISTIAN and after which it follows So help me God. That the Faith of a Christian alone amounts to an Oath I shall cite the opinion of Tuldenus the Regius Professor of Law at Lovain when writing De interpretatione Iuramenti he saith Affirmatio perfidem tunc demum jusjurandum est cum additum fuit Christianam Alciat in l. 41. c. De transact I conclude therefore that what Christian soever hath taken this Oath hath by Virtue of the words of The faith of a Christian obliged himself thereby as much as if he had said That Great Privilege of Birth-right belonging to the King's Heirs a Privilege so great that the despising of it as in the Case of Esau is applied in Scripture to mens prophaneness in despising their Inheritance of Bliss by Christianity I do as sincerely promise to defend according to my Oath and without any Fraud or Mental Reservation or the least cavilling capricious or calumnious interpretation as I value the great Privilege that Christianity hath ennobled Humane Nature with in being Heirs of God and joynt Heirs with Christ as St. Pauls words are and of being Heirs according to the Promise and may all the Divine Promises be so Yea and Amen to me and interpreted with not only a plain but a full and fair interpretation and so likewise the very Oath of God mentioned in the Epistle to the Hebrews As I do plainly and fully and fairly and with the exuberant honesty and simplicity enjoyn'd by the Christian Religion and so much transcending the Bona fides of the Heathen Morality perform my Promissory Oath of Allegiance to the King and his Heirs and Successors I shall in the last place take notice of what I have not without horror observed namely that some disloyal Authors have presumed in Print to pretend the lawfulness of Exclusion of Heirs and Successors on the account of their Religion by colour of the punishment of Idolaters according to the Iudicial Law and as to which it will be sufficient here to say that that Law was given only to the Iewish Nation and that it did never bind any else or doth and that the Divine Law natural and positive bind us to the Observation of our Oaths and that Christianity doth not found Dominion in Grace and that the Patriarchs and Ioshua and the Princes of the People of Israel made Leagues with Idolaters and on both sides there was mutual Faith confirmed with solemn Oaths and that an Oath Promissory to pay Allegiance to the Heirs of the Crown at the time of its Descent is much more lawful And I might urge that the Iewish Kings tho often idolatrous yet as the Lord 's Annointed had De jure de facto Obedience payed them without respect to their Religion or Irreligion And by Virtue of the Moral Offices of honouring all men and of the Internal Communion due from all Christians to all Christians I shall without offending the Church I hold External Communion with venture to go as far in my Measures of Charity as some of its great Ornaments Dr. Hammond and Bishop Taylor and likewise Bishop Gunning have done in freeing many Roman Catholicks from the guilt of Formal Idolatry Innumerable Acts of Idolatry may be charged on many Persons of that Communion and particularly on all such as do worship the Cross or Saints and Angels Culâ—â— latriae and on such as in the Eucharist determine the
a few or many indigent or dissolute Persons ought to be turned on the whole Body of Papists or especially on their Religion it self and their Religionary Tenets But many of the Non-Conformists then being abandoned to sham the very Church of England and its Discipline with Idolatry and with a participating in the PLOT to bring in POPERY according to what Arch-Bishop Land's Star-Chamber Speech mentions as the Style of the Libels in those days That there were then great Plots in hand and dangerous Plots to change the Religion established and to bring in Romish Superstition the sagacious Loyal began to see that they made but a Stalking-horse of the Plot of the Church of Rome to shoot at the Hereditary Monarchy and by outcries against the Church of Rome to bring in a Roman Republick and to make themselves the Idols of the People in a popular State while they complained of the Idolatries of Churches But there remains somewhat else to be said as to this point of calling or thinking every particular Papist an Idolater and that is what I shall further urge out of the great Speech aforesaid of the Arch-Bishop of Bourges who knew well enough that Papists had in their Writings frequently called Hereticks Idolaters and as accordingly the Author of a Popish Pamphlet printed in London in the Year 1663 Entituled Miracles not ceased hath done and where his words are The Protestant Religion is a Cheat and Heathenism the Protestant Bishops are Cheaters and Priests of Baal the Protestant Religion is ridiculous and idolatrous yet this Arch-Bishop in that Speech having as I said cleared his Prince tho a Protestant from the guilt of Heresy and Pertinacy doth likewise there particularly say he is no Idolater and where he likewise hath with great judgment and loyalty taught us that as to those Constitutions in the Civil Law whereby Manichees and Arrians are excluded from Magistracy and publick Office It was to be understood to be only in the Case of Inferiour Magistrates and not of Sovereign Princes who cannot be disinherited of their Rights without the destruction of the whole Government and People and to decree any thing of whom did only belong to the Iurisdiction of God Almighty There is another thing that inclines me to think my self Morally bound not to call all Papists Idolaters and to wipe off the stain of Idolatry from the Church of Rome as much as any of the Fathers of our Church have done and that is the Conversion of England from Heathenish Idolatry that Gregory the Great was God's Great Instrument in many hundred of years ago HAving thus Finished my Casuistical Discussion I shall be glad if the Result thereof may by the Blessing of God whose both the Deceived and the Deceiver are according to the words of Iob 12. 16. be in all such Protestants who have been deceived into a belief and practice of the Irreligionary Tenet of Popery viz. Of Dominion being founded in Grace a more exuberant Compassion to all Loyal Papists who have not believed and practised that Tenet and may have erred in Popish Tenets Religionary 'T is both visible and palpable that such Excluders and Nominal Protestants while they accused Papists of being deluded into a Plot to destroy the King were themselves deluded into a Practice that would ipso facto have destroyed the Hereditary Monarchy 'T is most plain that by being so deceived they have given occasion to Papists to reproach Protestants by saying to this effect You see how vain your attempts are to leave Popery and its Tenets and as he who would by running or riding or sailing to any remote places imagine to be able to get from being under the Covering of the Heavens would give any one occasion to upbraid his vanity by telling him he could not do it for that the further he went from being under one part of the Heavens he would but Compass the being nearer to another part thereof so while you would get from being under the Predominance of one part of Popery you obtain but to be the nearer to another part of it You have run from the belief of Purgatory to the Tenet of founding dominion in Grace and there being no steady hand among you to hold the balance that Tenet practised by you would instead of a Purgatory hereafter make a present Hell upon Earth You are got from the Council of Trent and yet the odiosa materia in the very Council of Lateran which you charge upon us as a general one is approved believed and practised by you And you would Exterminate the King's Heirs and Successors as Heterodox in Religion and have in effect obsolved your selves from your Oaths Promissory in their behalfs Thus therefore doâ—h the Vniversality of our Catholick and Heavenly Religion seem to be naturally made like that of the Heavens from which there is no escaping Thou who abhorrest Idols dost thou commit Sacrilege and abhor the Sacredness of the Regal Power and of thy own Oaths And thou who abhorrest Superstition in things wilt thou idolize words and imagine there can be Sacredness in letters Doth not every one know that even literae significantes Sacras sententias non significant eas in quantum sacrae sunt sed in quantum sunt res ergò literae non sunt Sacrae Doth not the very word Sacred likewise signifie accursed Can therefore the name of true Protestant Legitimate a Calumnious interpretation of Oaths more than the name of the Society of Jesus Legitimate the Doctrine of Calumny or more than the world Catholick Monopolized formerly by the Donatists and Arrians could justifie or Sanctifie their Tenets Will your name of Reformation weigh any thing if while you are come out from among the Religionary Tenets of our Church you remain in the Babel of the Irreligionary ones approvâ—d by some of our Popes and Doctors and Schoolmen and which we grant that if believed and practised would bring every Kingdom to confusion and not only into a diversity of Languages but into an alteration of the Hereditary Government and Transubstantiate even that If you are angry with us for mistaking Saint Peter ' s Successors as you think will you not be angry with your selves for mistaking the Successors of your Kings so easily to be known Since you may think him a wise Child who knoweth his true Spiritual Father as well as his true Natural one will you reproach our understandings for not knowing that true Spiritual one and what is the true Church when you seem thus not to know your true Political Father or who is to be in the course of the descent the true King Will not you pity us for our Implicit Faith in the Guides of the Church in things wherein we cannot hurt you when your selves do by Implicit Faith follow the Demagogues in the State in matters that would destroy us all When Brutus after he had given the blow to Caesar found cause to exclaim of Vertues being an empty Name will
formerly ib. The Author shews that none need be afraid of any Roman Catholick Prince who was formerly a Protestant from p. 174 to 177. Non-Conformist Divines not scrupling the lawfulness of what the Conformists do but were ashamed to confess their error p. 175. 'T is a shame for such Divines to censure the belief of Religionary Notions in a high born Prince p. 176. By the falsity of such Divines Principles as many hundreds of thousands were here stain as were bare hundreds put to death in the inglorious Reign of Queen Mary ib. A Confutation of one Argument brought for London's being desigâ—edly fired by many Popish Persons p. 181. The Author's Iudgment that the fermentation that hath been in the Kingdom will not prove destructive but perfective to it p. 183. The Author's Iudgment that all Policy Civil or Ecclesiastical will be accounted but Pedantry that Postpones the Consideration of the building Capital Ships and their Maintenance and Equipage p. 184. That Religion-Traders are really of the Trade of Beggars p. 184. More concerning the breaking of the Trade of Beggars and of Court-Beggars ib. The reason why our English Mininisters of State have not writ their Memoires as those of France have done p. 185. The Author of the present State of England observed to say in Part 2d that the yearly Charge of his Majesty's Navy in times of Peace is so well regulated that it scarce amounts to 70,000 l. per Annum p. 185. What the Lord Keeper Bridgman in his Speech to the Parliament in the year 1670 saith that from the year 1660 to the late Dutch War the ordinary Charge of the Fleet communibus annis came to 500,000 l. per Annum and that it cannot be supported with less ib. The Author believes that the ordinary Naval Charge hath in no years since amounted to less than 200,000 l. per Annum besides the vast Charge in building new Ships and rebuilding old and the Charge of Summer and Winter Guards and of Convoys and Ships against Argier p. 186. Since the year 1669 the King hath enriched the Kingdom with a more valuable Fleet than it had before ib. The manifold payments to the Vsurpers amounted to one entire Subsidy in each Week of the Year and what the Kingdom paid before exceeded not usually one Subsidy or 15 th in two or three years space ib. The nature of our old gentle way of Assessments called Subsidies ib. Instead of the demanding of 5 Members from the Parliament above 400 were forcibly secluded from it ib. Taxes afterward levied in the name of a House of Commons when there were no Knights of the Shire for 26 English and 11 Welch Counties and but one Knight of the Shire in other 9 Counties and only the full number of Knights of the Shire for 4 Counties and when York Westminister Bristol Canterbury Chester Exeter Oxford Lincoln Worcester Chichester Carlisle Rochester Wells Coventry had no Citizens and London 1 instead of 4 and Glocester and Salisbury alone had there full number and when by a parcel of about 89 permitted to fit the whole Clergy as well as Layety of England was taxed ib. and p. 187. The Vsurper by his own Authority only laid a Tax of 600,000 l. per Month on the Nation p. 187. He afterward had a giving Parliament that Calculating the Charge of the Nation found 400,000 l. per Annum necessary for the Navy and Ports and settled on him in all 1,300,000 l. per Annum ib. Their helping him into the Power to break the Balance of Christendom as he did hath entailed on the Nation for ever a necessity of labouring hard to support the publick Government ib. A Descant on the saying of Dulce bellum inexpertis from p. 187 to p. 189. A Calculation of the number of the People now living who are inexperts i. e. who are now alive that were born since the year in which our Wars ended or were then Children viz. of such years as not to have experienced or been sensible of the miseries and inconvenience of the War and a Calculation of what numbers of those who lived in 1641 are now dead and what proportion of those now living who lived in that time of the War did gain by the War and of the number of such inexperts in Ireland and Scotland p. 188 189 190. The Vsurpers seized into their hands about a Moiety of the Revenue of the Kingdom p. 190. 'T is observed that presently after the discovery of the Gun-Powder Treason the Parliament gave King James 3 Subsidies 7 Fifthteenths and 10 ths of the Layety and 4 Subsidies of the Clergy and what they amounted to The Author shews how just and natural it was for the Parliament believing that Plot so to do p. 191 194. An intimation of the reason of so much hatred in France against the Earl of Danby p. 192. The Authors belief that the future Warlike State of Christendom will necessarily prompt all Patriots instead of studying to make men unwilling to promote publick supplies to bend their Brains in the way of Calculation to shew what the Kingdom is able to contribute to its defence and how to do it with equality ib. The judgment of Sir W. P. that if a Million were to be raised in England what quota of the same should be raised on Land Cattle personal Estate housing ib. The Iudgment of the same Author cited for the second Conclusion in his Political Arithmetick viz. that some kind of Taxes and publick Levies may rather encrease than diminish the Common-wealth p. 193. An account of the exact Roman Prudence in the equality of Taxes under the Ministry of the Censors appearing from the Civil Law ib. The great care and exactness of the leading men in Queen Elizabeth's Parliaments to Calculate the Levies and to render the same equal ib. The disproportionate Taxes laid by the Vsurpers on the Associated Counties and others have caused the weight thereby to aggrieve many of those places ever since ib. Lilly the Astrologer complaining that whereas he was Taxed to pay about 20 s. to the Ship money he was in the year 1651 rated to pay about 20 l. annually to the Souldiery ib. The Author's belief and reason about Republican Models necessarily growing more and more out of fashion p. 194 195. Observations on the great Clause of proponentibus legatis in the Council of Trent p. 195. The preserving of orderly proportion in the Revenue of the Prince and the Priest and with respect to number weight and measure under the times of the Gospel agreed on by Divines to be referred to by Ezekiel in Vision from the 40th Chapter to the end of his Prophecy p. 196. How Augustus his great Tax or Pole helped to confirm the Christian Religion p. 197. The Author's opinion that future legal and equal Taxes will have the effect of strengthening the Protestant Religion ib. Observed that the Parliament may be justly said to be indebted to the Crown for that great