to His Majesty as far as Honest and Dutiful Words can express assuring him of their Loyalty and Prayers for his long and prosperous Reign They humbly tell Him also that to his Three Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland he hath now established to himself a fourth Kingdom in the Hearts of those his formerly oppressed Subjects which as I believe to be true so was it modestly spoken inasmuch as the Dissenters are known to be far exceeding the quantity of a fourth part of the People of the three Kingdoms Several others testify their joy in that so good an opportunity is given them to express the truth of their Loyalty which the Church of England had hitherto presumed to have been entailed wholly on themselves A great many engage to Live and Die with him to the utmost of their lives and fortunes But passing by all others I would especially mark those who in the Capacity of a Grand Jury thank the King for his Declaration as it has prevented honest Neighbours from indicting one another in the things of Religion which to many Consciencious Men was a very great burthen and to the whole Kingdom a greater vexation then I can now stand to speak of begiting ill will and irreconsitable differences between one and the other of his Majesties Subjects which being by this means now taken away it is hoped their old Correspondency will be henceforth renewed in a true love of each Man to his Neighbour In the midst of this happy Union between His Majesty and his Dissenting Protestant Subjects the Church of England like the Churlish Elder Brother mentioned by our Saviour in the Parable of the Prodigal stand at a distance and Grumble They will neither thank their Princely Parent for the Favour He vouchsafeth to themselves nor will they come in to rejoyce with their Younger Brethren upon their Dutiful return and the Kings kind reception of them a thing so much the more culpable since none of the fatted Calfs I mean the Church Revenues are in the least killed for them but are as they were before wholly in the Church of Englands own Possession 'T is almost beyond rehearsals the dislike they shew of this Vnion as if they delighted to keep up the same or raise other and worse Confusions during his present Majesties Reign as they begot in the time of his four last Predecessors The bond of this Vnion which I may say is His Majesties Gracious Declaration many of them can scarce hear named but they are ready to fly back like Men that had trod on a Serpent One shakes the Head another bites the Lip a third Scouls and Frowns with as many other Evidences of their dislike as Bodily Gestures can shew And it would have been well could they have contented themselves within the Bounds of those tacite Intimations of their displeasure but this they could not do they must also break into Words and open Censures such as I have named before I do not charge all with this but I must say I daily find and meet with an abundance too many that are so doing insomuch as I think it highly necessary for every Man in his place to put a Stop as far as he can to the further progress of it For my self I know no better way that I can take then to mind them of the Inconsistency of such deportment with their boasted of Loyalty a thing of which they have seemed to be as tender as of the Aple of their Eye And if they are still so serious therein as they would be esteemed they should as I conceive judge themselves not a little concerned in a Question I have here to propose to them and the rather because I undertake to maintain the Negative The question is plainly this viz. Whether it be Consistent with that high degree of Loyalty so much boasted of by the Church of England for their Preachers in the manner they have done to Preach against their Kings Religion and both them and their Church Members to speak as they too frequently do against His Proceeding by his late Declaration This question is the bottom of all my following Expostulations wherein that I may proceed with the more perspecuity I shall do no more then make inquiry into two things First I shall examine wherein the highest degree of Loyalty according to the sence of the Scriptures may be said to consist Secondly I shall inquire how the present Behaviour of many of the Church of England both Clergy and Layety agrees with that Loyalty which I shall discribe In the first I am guided by two Texts of Scripture from whence I may argue as much as I shall need to my purpose the one is that of Rom. 13 1 2. Let every Soul be Subject to the higher Power where Subjection is required to be given for Conscience sake which makes it become a Religious Act. To give Subjection only because we cannot avoid it or because we are compelled is the Subjection of an Infidel or a Turk rather than a Christian The opposite to this is Resistance which is twofold First That which is by open Violence to the Person of him that is our Soveraign or to his Subordinate Ministers The second is when we Disobey or Speak against His Precepts Edicts or the Declaration of His Will which be sends forth in the Execution of His Government for not to Submit or to Speak against what he Directs is to resist So Luke 21.15 To gain-say and resist are made the same thing a Man may make resistance as well by his Tongue as his Sword from whence I infer that one part of the highest degree of Loyalty is a cheerful and willing compliance with the declared will of the King in all things without gain-saying not contrary to the Law of God The other Passage is that of St. Peter where we are bid to Honour the King This is a degree much higher than a bare forbaring of Resistance or disputing his Commands for a Man may give Obedience and be outwardly Silent towards Him who in his Heart he Slighteth To Honour the King contains in it many Acts both Internal and External our Internal Honouring Him lyeth chiefly in that reverential Esteem we have of His Person as he hath the stamp of Gods Authority on him the valuation we give to His Vertues The Faith we have in his Words and Promises the Acquiessence of out Minds in the Administrations of His Government and judging the Best of His Actions the contrary to these are Jealousies Prejudices all bad wishes and evil surmisings and judging of His Actions in the worst sence The External way of Honouring Him consists likewise of several parts as when we are in his Presence to use those bodily Gestures as may best and most decently express our inward reverence and sence of his Dignity the giving him his Honourable Titles To speak Reverently of him in the hearing and presence of others and prevent what we can all others
Some Necessary DISQUISITIONS AND CLOSE EXPOSTULATIONS WITH THE Clergy and People OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND Touching their present LOYALTY Written by a Protestant Dedicated to the Citizens of LONDON With Allowance LONDON Printed for F. Smith and are to be Sold by R. Jenaway in Queens-Head-Alley in Pater-Noster-Row 1688. To the Honoured and Worthy Gentlemen the Citizens and Inhabitants of the most Eminent and Famous City of London Gentlemen THese Papers are directed to you in regard your City hath been the chiefest Scene of many of those things which their design is for the future to prevent I do not direct them to you as considered in your Body Politick but to each man by himself that may happen to look on them in his individual Capacity And having said this I think it proper in the next place to give you some account of the Reasons that chiefly induced me to this undertaking which you may briefly take in what follows I was for several Years a very unpleasant Spectator of the proceedings of the Church of England towards those her Dissenters that could not Worship God with their Liturgy and Ceremonies Which as I did deeply dislike so I would fain have excused her and laid the blame if I could somewhere else as themselves it seems now would do But I found it impossible to satisfie my reason in that Attempt while I daily met with and heard of such inveterate Sermons against that Rank of Persons aswere then Preached by the most Capital Men of the Function and as the Old Cocks crew so did the young Ones learn who are not to be exempted from acting their part in the Clamour divers of them being no sooner allow'd to tread the Stairs of the Pulpit but with their little Declamations that way were quickly as loud as the best of their Doctors Had the Supreme Civil Magistrate or his Subordinates driven on those Prosecutions while the Clergy had interposed with their Christian perswasions to the contrary it would have gone very far towards the lessening the Complaint but when the Civil Magistrates shall draw back and the Divine shall Spur forward I know not who in this case can be the Clergies Advocate But I shall say no more of this only entreat you to look back and consider how exceeding uneasie all things that related to your Station as Citizens were made to you Do you not remember what commotions inquietudes strange and unfriendly Divisions were all that time among you and how one Neighbour was put upon destroying another and every Man in fear of himself and jealous of whomsoever he spoke to Do you not likewise remember what huge Interruptions many of you met with in your dealings with your Country Shop-keepers Traders and Manufacturers even to a great stop of your wonted Traffick And as other bad effects these proceedings had upon your City what a Stand most Men were at who had let out their Moneys at Interest or Lodged them with the Gold-Smith-Lankers or the Chamber of London While divers of them thereupon conceived those Dissatisfactions as caused the calling in so much of those Monies in so suddain a manner as to beget that Insolvency which disappointed the future settlement of many of the Sons and Daughters of your sellow Citizens A thing perhaps would make your Hearts Bleed should you see the like Mis-fortunes happen to your own Widows and Children But Blessed be God the State of Affairs are now much altered by his Majesties late Declaration taking away the occasion of these Distractions insomuch as there seems to me to be the beginning of a General happy Settlement while I see Men of different perswasions in Religion that before stood at a distance each from the other now amicably to intermix and unite in their Trade Correspondencies and Business yea and in the publick Government both of the City and the Kingdom from whence it is already perceived that the difference of opinion in Religion hinders nothing from an unanimous agreement of all Persons managing those Trusts in a due Loyalty to the King and for the general good and peace of the Kingdom while one party is not set to oppress the other in his Religion Nor need any Man to doubt but such a good beginning would soon grow up to an absolute Perfection did not some Men who have little reason more than the Gratifying their own Jealousies make the opposition For what Foundation can be better laid for the Flourishing State of any Kingdom then that assurance His Majesty hath given in the two particulars of his Declaration which he would have to be Established in a more perpetual Law viz. That the Administration of his Government shall fully be with such Justice as every Man shall be preserved in his Temporal property And in Spiritual concernments as to Worshipping of God shall have his free Liberty Which two things being firmly setled from whence can it be imagined any pretence should be found for the worst of Spirits to set on Foot any Disturbances Plots or Insurrections He that now should but so much as offer at any such thing will presently fall under that general Disgust with all English Men as they will think him to deserve no less punishment than to be presently Hung up by the Heels until he Spew out his Gall and Die Who they are that make the opposition I speak of and by what means they manage it you will find in the Book it self I shall only say here that it is by some of those that heretofore have carried all the Crack for Loyalty and this is the true cause that hath drawn these Disquisitions and Expostulations from me that so I may know how they can make what they do of this kind consistent with their present Loyalty In order to which you will meet with a necessary question put to them for that purpose The Matters of Fact on which I often touch and upon which a great part of my Discourse doth proceed having been many of them done within the Lines and Limits of your Liberties I have thought no other Persons sitter to be made Arbitrators in them as they are here Controverted than your Selves And that there may be no mistakes or needless Disputations in the present case I have plainly laid down my own Notions of Loyalty wherein I have thought the Nature of it more especially to consist That so if any Person hath a mind to appear against what I have Written I do first pray him to contradict me in those Notions and then he will recover me from my first Error or if he finds he cannot do that I shall then pray him to shew me my bad Arguings from such good Principles and that will recover me from my second Error if of any such Error I should be guilty and this is the Method I intreat any such Person to take that may so concern himself I have been a Man who have always thought that there was much more in the Duty of
a second Reformation proclaimed to correct the first are all things fresh in Memory to those who are still living and saw them and all the world has wondered how the Church of England did so soon forget them as it appears She did for She was no sooner out of the Fiery Furnance of her Afflictions by the Restoration of King Charles the 2d but down right she falls upon her old pollicies of effecting an uniformity by vertue of Penal Laws when they had seen before the event of them in their Predecstors to have given them so much discredit and when they might have sufficiently learned how impossible it is upon Protestants Principles to erect and enforce a National uniformity in Religion to any one way of Worship but that there would still be Dissenters who upon their own Principles may plead an Exemption from it However they resolved to make a second Experiment and once more to try if they could make the whole People in England to be in their Religion all of one Complexion to which purpose a new Act of Uniformity is made more strict than that which went before with a new Test of Assent and Consent annexed thereto for bare Conformity in the use of the Liturgy will not now do there must be Swearing also All other waies of Religious publick Worship are made Conventicles and the Act of 20 l. a Month for not coming to Church revived and tho' it was alwaies thought to have been made directly against R. Catholicks it must now be made a sharp Scourge equally to all Dissenters What Confusions and Troubles these things brought upon His Majesties Subjects may be understood something from those who have given a publick Account of them a Printed Catalogue has informed us of neer 2000 Ministers turned out of their Livings by the Uniformity Act which was soon followed by another made at Oxford that turned them also out of their Houses to seek their Bread where they were no wise like to find it Another who was well able to make the Estimation informs us of fifteen thousand Families ruined by the Conventicle Act by proceedings against their Estates and Imprisonment of their Persons among whom he saies five thousand dyed under their bonds And if we suppose but three Children a peice to belong to those Families one with another we must compute no less than forty five thousand sufferers in their Estates by these Penal Laws for if the Parents be ruined their Children cannot but be deep Sufferers with them Do we talk of Queen Maries daies as times of sharp Persecutions Alas they were little to this Doctor Burnet gives an account but of 284. that suffered death in Her time and what is this to 5000. that have dyed under this Church of Englands Persecution nor doth he say any thing of loosing their Estates or the Childrens being deprived of what their Parents had I know a great matter is made by punishing Persons with Death but for my part I see little difference between suffering by the present Execution of Death and being stifled or starved to Death by the necessities and hardships of a Prison and supposing it lawful to make such a choice in case I must necessarily suffer by one of the two I should choose to suffer by the former rather then by the latter and I know many more to be of my mind How those of the Church of England can defend Her from being the only procuring cause of all these Miseries to those Multitude of afflicted Persons and Families I can no waies apprehend let them that can do it begin their Work as soon as they please in the mean time I hope they will not be angry if I endeavour to shew them how much all their proceedings this way was against the mind of King Charles the second who all along endeavoured to put a stop to their Severities from the desires he had that his Subjects might have injoyed the Liberties in Religion which they now do and this before he came into England as well as afterwards so soon as he saw what work was like to be made by the Execution of those Laws they had got him to sign chosing other more pious and peaceable Methods for his Subjects Ease Let us hear some of his own Words viz. His Declaration from Breda April 4th 1660. gives the first assurance of this We declare a Liberty to tender Consciences and that no Man shall be disquieted or called in question for differences in Opinion which do not disturb the Peace of the Kingdom Then again Feb. 10th 1667. Speaking to the Parliament one thing saies he I hold my self obliged to recommend to you at this present which is that you would seriously think of some course to beget a better Vnion and Composure in the Minds of my Protestant Subjects in matters of Religion c. Which undoubtedly must be intended towards the mitigation of the Penal Laws for in his Declaration March 5th 1671. He complains again of the severities then in use saying That it was evident by the sad experience of 12 years that there was little fruit of all those forcible courses and many frequent waies of Co-ertion that we have used for the reducing of all erring and dissenting Persons Again in his Speech to both Houses of Parliament 1678. I meet you here with the most earnest desire that a Man can have to Vnite the Minds of my Subjects both to me and one another and resolve it should be your fault if the success be not sutable to my desires Thus for neer twenty years together was this King labouring against the Violences of the Church of England towards those his Subjects whose Worshipping of God differed from theirs and who were the Men but themselves that then opposed Him in it And at whose door but theirs must all these deplorable Calamities be laid that have happened by the want of that Indulgence that King would have given and is now granted by his Royal Brother and Successor they may if they please consider it more fully at their Leisure His Majesty that now is by a Gracious and most Wise Retrospection upon all that had been Transacted in these Affairs during the four last Kings Reigns and from a God-like compassion towards his Oppressed Subjects in the midst of their Calamities sends out his most refreshing Declaration suspending the Execution of all those Penal Statutes that had been but very little before so fiercely Executed Upon this many thousands of the Protestant Dissenters of all perswasions through out the Kingdom who had been formerly by the Church of England represented to the late King as a sort of Humoursome Fanatical Disobedient Persons and Enemies to Monarchy and every thing else that looked that way come in with their Humble Acknowledgments First of Gods goodness to them as believing such a publick Mercy could not be but by immediate his guidance of the Kings Heart in the thing after this they declare their Joy and Thanks
of England doth of Hers which he ought to have told People if he had designed in a Christian way to have to reprehended them but his not doing this and jumbling and jingling all of them together as he doth is equally Unrighteous as it is Scurrulous but let 's go to the next The other is a Sermon Preacht upon that Text Mat. 16.6 When ye fast not as the Hypocrites from whence the Preacher would needs have a fling against Catholicks keeping Lent for it was in that time that the Sermon was Preacht whereby a subtile way he had found out he would have them guilty of the Hypocrifie here intended because while they abstain all that time from Flesh yet said he they make full Meals of other food I never yet heard any Man twitted or told of his full Meals or great Eating but it was either to deride him or break a jest upon him and so I look upon this to be and by the smiling of some of the People I was told of that heard the Expressâ—â—â— I suppose they thought so too Now I shall neither take upon me to justifie the Observation of Lent nor the manner of Fasting used in the Church of Rome yet this I cannot but say if what the Gentleman speaks of be Hypocrisie in them what is it in the Church of England who keep it as a Religious Fast but yet teach their People no abstinence at all but leave them to seed on all sorts of Flesh and well pallated Sauces as often and to as full meals as they please That the Church of England keep Lent as a Religious Fast their Commissioners at the Savoy Meeting with the Non-conforming Ministers shall speak for them for when the Non-conformists opposed the keeping it a Religious Fast they answered them That their Fasting of 40 daies may be in imitation of our Saviour for all that had been said to the Contrary for tho' we cannot arrive to his perfection abstaining wholly from Meat so long yet we may fast forty Daies together either as Cornelius his Fast till three of the Clock in the Afternoon or St. Peters Fast till Noon or Daniels Fast abstaining from Meats and Drinks of Delights and thus far we imitate our Lord. Thus they setled their Lent as a Religious Fast but by what has followed it seems they never intended to injoyn their People any of those abstinencies in which that Fast ought be kept if it be kept at all so that I may ask where is the Hipocrisie now But while I am thus Writing I call to mind two great Reasons as they are esteem'd which I hear alledged in justification of their present Preachings First they say all Ministers are to declare to the People the whole Council of God and by vertue of their Ministerial Office they have a power of Preaching what they think most fit Secondly they tell us that there are a great number of R. Catholick Priests up and down the City privately Alluring and Perswading the People to embrace that Religion which tenders their Preaching against it at this time absolutely Necessary Unto both these I shall give a distinct answer First I shall not dispute their Power in Preaching upon what Subjects they please nor do I know so much as one Man that would deprive them of that Liberty so that it be alwaies exercised and kept within the bounds of those things which the People may assuredly know are indeed the absolute Counsel of God but in controversial matters I know not how this can be for the People must needs know that one part in all such Sermons must not be the Counsel of God but against it for though both parties Preach upon that pretence yet there is but one Truth which hath alwaies made me think that Controversies were not fit for Sermons but rather Books or private Conferences for while a controversial point is handled in a Sermon the hearer may start some Objection in his thoughts which it may be the Preacher never so much as toucheth at whereby the whole matter is left in doubt which as often as it happens such hearers cannot receive those things as the Counsel of God though they should really be so and there all the labour that way is lost Again it may be questioned that supposing those Doctrines against which our Clergy Men are so frequently Preaching should not be the Councel of God it may yet be considered whether or no it be according to the Councel of his will they should just at this time above all others shew their opposition to them when they can hardly manage it without endangering the People from falling off from a very great Duty towards their King in which we are sure it is the counsel of God they should in no wise be defective It was the Councel of God that Circumcision an Ordinance which himself had made for the Jewish Church should not be continued in the Christian Church and St. Paul so Vehemently Preached against it to some Churches as that he told them if they were circumcised Christ should profit them nothing yet upon another Consideration he Circumcised Timotheus at Lestria It is a weighty point I leave it to our Doctors to consider how far the Councel of God is to be Preached with respect to the different Circumstances both of Time and of different Cases Again do not all Men know what great prophanness there is among Multitudes of those who profess themselves Members only of their Sanctuary some are great Drunkards others as great Oppressors some common Swearers and that also of those horrible Oaths or Expressions which ought not to be Named and not a few most desperate Whorers too many also Sabbath Breakers whereof divers to my knowledg come frequently to Church and very often receive the Sacrament Now I should think there are no Councels of God more necessary to be Preach'd to such Sinners than those that should convince them of the Evil of these desperate Courses and set them right in their Morals before their Heads are filled with Disputations in the Controversal parts of Religion and yet who but such Men as these after a Sermon Preach'd against the Catholick Religion talk more of it than they I hope the Church of England Doctors do not think that the only Capital Sins in England are the Worshipping of God without their Liturgy and Ceremonies as the Dissenters do or to be of the R. Catholick Religion and yet many wise Men of my acquaintance have been tempted to believe so by the Cursory Sermons we have had this Twenty Years wherein we have had Preaching against these two Ranks of the Christian profession than can be heard aaginst all those gross Impieties I have named To the Second Objection that supposes a Multitude of Persons in holy orders of the Catholick Religion to be privately inticing the Protestant People to leave their Religion I thus Answer That whether this be true or no I cannot tell but if it be
then I say our Church of England Priests and Doctors may be as busie and careful if they please to Counter-work them by the like private Conferences with their Parishoners and by inquiring who have been with them upon any such occasion which no Body that I know of will be against but greatly commend it as a most excellent way to secure their People from the Dangers they fear them to be in as to their being drawn to the R. Catholicks and prevent much of that Preaching which is now so much doubted to be consistent with their Loyalty I would suppose that every Pastor should know all of his own Flock or if he doth not or hath taken a bigger charge upon him than himself can overlook he ought in such cases to take in those that may assist him to hold up so good a Work so much to the advantage of their Ministry as such a Knowledge of the particulars of their Flock would do for every Soul is to be looked after by those that take the Charge thereof and are well paid for it too By this means they may come to know all that the Catholick Priests do and apply proper and pertinent Discourses to the particular Cases of their People as they find most needful and thereby Stablish them in those points wherein they find them most Wavering which indeed cannot be well known but by such private Conferences and therefore much more profitable than Preaching at Randum sometimes against this point and sometimes against that when they know not at what joint particularly any of the People Stumble and in so doing they would not only Letter secure their People but better testifie also their Honor of the King To watch is their Work as well as to Preach and they are denominated as much by the one as by the other Watching of the Flock includes the Knowledge of all Individuals I sear it is not so with us because many of our Parochialists have gotten their Parishes so large as to render this Knowledge and the Execution of this part of their office impracticable and perhaps some will plead their Inability from thence of doing that I recommend to them but I must answer that that they go ill to work that will justifie one Irregularly with another and to make the King suffer for their disorder How they will approve of this Expedient I now propose I do not well know but since the Catholick Religion is the Kings Religion I am certain something ought to be done by them in a Prudential way how to behave themselves under the present Circumstances as they are in a different way of Religion from him otherwise than I yet hear many of them have done let the Religion be what it will doth not the King's profession of it alter the Cale in no manner as to our behaviour When. John according to Gods command had Executed Judgment upon Jezebel by ordering her to be thrown out of a Window he would not have her Body left to be exposed to all Spectators but orders her to be Buried upon this very reason because she was a Kings Daughter When the Apostles planted the Christian Religion first in the World they setled most of their Churches under Princes who were wholly Strangers to the Christian Faith and as things were represented to those Princes by what the Jews had done in putting our Saviour to Death as one that had made Mutinies by stirring up the People Luke 23.3 those Princes according to humane Pollicies had little reason to receive any of those who were his Followers which I believe was one great Reason of their Persecutions and yet we find the Ap stles fearing it may be that the Christians because of that and their gross Idolatries might dispise those Princes do as carefully injoyn them to keep their Loyalty as to abstain from their Idol Worship St. Paul most earnestly presseth them to give all due subjection and St. Peter commands to Honor them and this while they were not so much as Believers of the Christian Faith sutable to what our Soviour had done before by his own Example to the Jewish Magistracy when he was condemned to Death by them He opened not his Mouth He answered them nothing as three of the Evangelists observe he could not approve of what they did yet would he not reproach them in the thing they were about and by this passive obedience gave Honor to those that wickedly put him to Death I do very much question whether the Preachers in the first Age of Christianity under the Pagan Roman Emperors did Preach against the Religion and Worship of those Princes as our Divines now do against the Religion of Rome by what I find upon Scripture record it appears to me that they did not but had other ways such as Conferences Epistolary Writings to secure the People in the Christian Faith When St. Paul Preach'd in the midst of Mars-Hill at ATHENS among a Company of Heathen Philosophers and common People it is observable how gently he touch'd upon their Idolatrous Religion He told them indeed that they were too Superstitious but he made not any Goodly Inventory of the particulars as Doctor Tenison did for the Catholicks but falls presently upon declaring to them the Doctrine of the only true God and his Creating the World His sending of Christ The Eternal Judgment and the Resurrection choosing rather to fix them in the Great Articles of the Christian Faith and the Sutable Practices of a Holy Life to which such Doctrines would lead them than to be Crying out against their Idolatries as knowing if once they come to embrace the Christian Doctrines their Heathenish Worship would fall of its own accord If after all this nothing will prevail but our Church-men will be still Preaching in this way I have one thing to say more which is to wish them to follow the Example of those Apostles who when they wrote to the Churches against a Religion so gross as that of the Pagan Idolatry did withal give the Christians positive Commands to keep up their Subjection and Honour to their Kings The like would I have our Preachers do at all such times as they Preach against any part of the Kings Religion viz. to teach the People at the very same time in some special manner how they should preserve in themselves the Honour and Loyalty they owe to his Person nevertheless their differing from him in their Religion If they do not put in some special Caveats of this kind as often as they Preach upon such Subjects which hitherto I cannot hear they have done I must for my self say they will hardly ever be able to vindicate the Loyalty they have so much boasted of in the World I have done with the Preaching I would proceed now to say something tho but a little about theirs and the Peoples Speaking more especially their Speaking against his Majesties Proceedings by his Declaration and the odd Carriages of them both
in that concern What the discourses of the Church of England People have been and still are upon this Subject I have mentioned already I am not so in love with repeating ill Languages as to name it over again It is no wonder the People should talk at the rate they have done while they hear and see what has been said and done by their Leaders in the Clergy The Declaration was no sooner dispersed about the Kingdom but Doctor Stillingfleet Re-prints his Sermon called the Mischief of Separation Preacht before the Lord Mayor of London against the Dissenters Worship in as sharp a manner as his wonted Oratory useth to do towards those he hath a mind to lash of which he may hear more at another time What he intended by the new setting it out himself best knows I inquire not after it I shall only inform him that this Act of his is looked upon by many as a direct affront to the Declaration as if he would have the People to believe that His Majesty had tollerated a Mischievous thing The Oxford Clergy do as good as call it by the opprobrious Name of a Suspected Artifice for when their Liocesan moved them to make some publick Testimony as a few others of their Church had done of their thankful sense of what the King had declared touching their being protected in their present Station and Worship they excuse themselves by making it one Reason of their refusal that by doing so they should forfeit their Reputation with the Nobility Gentry and Commonalty of their Cummunion and that it may tempt those Persons to disgust them for their rash Compliance with suspected Artifices Language I should have scarce expected from the greatest Clown in the Country however I perceive they resolved to speak their thoughts Freely by which we may a little know their Minds From the Preaching I spoke of before the People were taught how to form their Jealousies against the King as that he would alter their Religion and these Men now tell them the Declaration is the Artifice they suspect for the bringing it about If they say I strain this too far and put upon it a sense they intend not I must then pray them to explain their own sense more fully and tell us what it is that in that Expression they do intend for until they do I cannot understand them otherwise than I now Write there being such a near Relation between the Peoples Addressing to the King and the Declaration it self from whence they take the occasion as none can hardly say the one is a Suspected Artifice but they must say the other is so too But there are other strains not inferiour to this I have last named They will not thank the King by an Address because forsooth it will make the Exercise of their Established Religion to be Precarious As if when a Father shall say to any Son at his coming to Age SON Care was taken upon the Marriage of your Mother to setle an Estate upon you which now you shall injoy so far from any interuption from me as I promise to give you the best protection I can in your possession of it The Son shall say Sir I must not thank you for any thing of this least I make my Title to what I have too Precarious I wish they come not at last to say we must not thank Almighty God for the Spiritual Blessings he bestows upon us by his Covenant of Grace since that Covenant was made and Established with our fore Fathers long before we had a being and that in a firmer manner than all our humane Establishments can pretend to be I cannot believe otherwise but that all subordinate relations stand bound upon every signal Testimony of Special Favour they receive from their Superiors to make their acknowledgements of thanks whatsoever Obligation they may conceive their superiors might have before-hand put themselves under while it was in their Power to have done otherwise with us if they had pleased nor do I see any thing in all these Doctors Arguments that is like to alter my Opinion Had all the People in England told me four or five years ago that I should have seen and heard such things as these and others I have lately met with from divers of our Church Men towards the King I do professedly declare I should never have believed them I hear also they have Question'd or Disobey'd rather his Orders in disposing of some Places which his Majesty would fill up or where he thinks it convenient to make an Alteration Ay! is it come to this alreeady will they thus dispute it with their King if they begin thus I know not where they will make an end as Men when once but of the way of their Duty no body knows where they will Stop There is one thing more in these Oxford Mens Reasons for their Non-Addressing with their thanks to the King which I cannot pass by without some Remark They say they do not offer those Reasons as the sense of their own Minds only but undertake to affirm them to be the Opinion also of the best part of the Clergy of the Kingdom by the best I presume they mean the greatest part but how they came so soon to know each others Minds in so great a Kingdom as this is unto many no small wonder I hope they are not hatching another Association for securing the Protestant Religion as that which they so much exploded in one of the late Parliaments if they are much good may do them I intend not to be of the Fraternity but supposing them to have this intelligence one from another more then I am aware of I may still wonder how they undertake so far for the Nobility and Gentry as to know their thoughts so much in the case while they seem to fear that thanking the King for his promised Favours will forfeit their Reputation with them as Men that had too rashly complyed with suspected Artifices I think by the Carriage of many both of the Nobility and Gentry towards the Kings Person and his afairs in the Court and Country I may reasonably conclude they give them no grounds for such a Conjecture In my apprehension therefore this looks too much like a Substile insinuating their own dislikes into those that are in that honourable Station that thereby they may be pre-ingaged against his Majesties proceedings than any real ground they had to fear their displeasure if they should have returned the Kings thanks for the assurance he hath given of his protecting and Supporting their Church To say no worse of the matter it is no fair dealing towards persons so much their betters nor hath it so much as one spark of Loyalty in it towards the King How the people should avoid the being ensnared in their Loyalty by such bad Examples as these I no waies apprehend my fears I must profess are not a few and I shall crave so much leave as to