I. IF the just Apprehensions of the Danger of Popery gave the Birth to the two Laws for the two Tests, the one with relation to all Publick Employments in 73. and the other with relation to the Constitution of our Parliaments for the future, in 78. the present Time and Conjuncture does not seem so proper for repealing them; unless it can be imagined, that the danger of Popery is now so much less than it was formerly, that we need be no more on our guard against it. We had a King, when these Laws were enacted, who as he declared himself to be of the Church of England, by receiving the Sacrament four times a Year in it, so in all his Speeches to his Parliaments, and in all his Declarations to his Subjects, he repeated the Assurances of his Firmness to the Protestant Religion, so solemnly and fre­quently, that if the saying a thing often gives just reason to believe it, we had as much reason as ever People had to de­pend upon him: and yet for all that, it was thought necessa­ry to fortifie those Assurances with Laws: and it is not easie [Page 2] to imagine, why we should throw away those, when we have a Prince that is not only of another Religion himself, but that has expressed so much steadiness in it, and so much zeal for it, that one would think we should rather now seek a further Security, than throw away that which we already have.

II. Our King has given such Testimonies of his Zeal for his Religion, that we see among all his other Royal Qualities, there is none for which he desires and deserves to be so much admired. Since even the Passion of Glory, of making him­self the Terrour of all Europe, and the Arbiter of Christendom, (which, as it is natural to all Princes, so must it be most par­ticularly so to one of his Martial and Noble Temper) yields to his Zeal for his Church; and that he, in whom we might have hoped to see our Edward the Third, or our Henry the Fifth revived, chuses rather to merit the heightning his de­gree of Glory in another World, than to acquire all the Law­rels and Conquests that this low and vile World can give him: and that, in stead of making himself a Terrour to all his Neighbours, he is contented with the humble Glory of be­ing a Terrour to his own People; so that in stead of the great Figure which this Reign might make in the World, all the News of England is now only concerning the Practices on some fearful Mercenaries. These things shew, that his Majesty is so possessed with his Religion, that this cannot suffer us to think, that there is at present no danger from Popery.

III. It does not appear, by what we see, either abroad or at home, that Popery has so changed its nature, that we have less reason to be afraid of it at present, than we had in for­mer times. It might be thought ill nature to go so far back, as to the Councils of the Lateran, that decreed the Extirpation of Hereticks, with severe Sanctions on those Princes that failed in their Duty, of being the Hangmen of the Inquisitors; or to the Council of Constance, that decreed, That Princes were not bound to keep their Faith to Hereticks; tho' it must be acknowledged, that we have extraordinary Memories if we can forget such things, and more extraordinary Understandings if we do not make some Inferences from them. I will not stand upon such inconsiderable Trifles as the Gunpowder-Plot, or the Massacre of Ireland; but I will take the liberty to reflect a little on what that Church has done since those Laws were made, to give us [Page 3] kinder and softer thoughts of them, and to make us the less apprehensive of them. We see before our eyes what they have done, and are still doing in France; and what feeble things Edicts, Coronation Oaths, Laws, and Promises, repeated over and over again, prove to be, where that Religion prevails; and Louis le Grand makes not so contemptible a Figure in that Church, or in our Court, as to make us think, that his Example may not be proposed as a Pattern, as well as his Aid may be offered for an Encouragement, to act the same things in Eng­land, that he is now doing with so much applause in France: and it may be perhaps the rather desired from hence to put him a little in countenance, when so great a King as ours is willing to forget himself so far as to copy after him, and to depend upon him: so that as the Doctrine and Principles of that Church must be still the same in all Ages and Places, since its chief pretention is, that it is infallible, it is no unrea­sonable thing for us to be afraid of those, who will be easily induced to burn us a little here, when they are told, that such fervent Zeal will save them a more lasting burning hereafter, and will perhaps quit all scores so entirely, that they may hope scarce to endure a Singing in Purgatory for all their other Sins.

IV. If the severest Order of the Church of Rome, that has breathed out nothing but Fire and Blood since its first forma­tion, and that is even decried at Rome it self for its Violence, is in such credit here; I do not see any inducement from thence to persuade us to look on the Councils that are directed by that Society, as such harmless and inoffensive things, that we need be no more on our guard against them. I know not why we may not apprehend as much from Father Petre, as the French have felt from Pere de la Chaise, since all the dif­ference that is observed to be between them, is, that the Eng­lish Jesuit has much more Fire and Passion, and much less Con­duct and Judgment than the French has. And when Rome has expressed so great a Jealousie of the Interest that that Order had in our Councils, that F. Morgan, who was thought to in­fluence our Ambassadour, was ordered to leave Rome; I do not see why England should look so tamely on them. No reason can be given why Card. Howard should be shut out of all their Councils, unless it be, that the Nobleness of his Birth, [Page 4] and the Gentleness of his Temper, are too hard even for his Religion and his Purple, to be mastered by them. And it is a Contradiction, that nothing but a Belief capable of receiving Transubstantiation can reconcile, to see Men pretend to ob­serve Law, and yet to find at the same time an Ambassadour from England at Rome, when there are so many Laws in our Book of Statutes, never yet repealed, that have declared over and over again all Commerce with the Court and See of Rome to be High Treason.

V. The late famous Judgment of our Judges, who know­ing no other way to make their Names immortal, have found an effectual one to preserve them from being ever forgot, seems to call for another Method of Proceeding. The Pre­sident they have set must be fatal either to them or us. For if twelve Men, that get into Scarlet and Furs, have an Authority to dissolve all our Laws, the English Government is to be here­after lookt at with as much scorn, as it has hitherto drawn admiration. That doubtful Words of Laws, made so long ago, that the Intention of the Lawgivers is not certainly known, must be expounded by the Judges, is not to be que­stioned: but to infer from thence, that the plain Words of a Law, so lately made, and that was so vigorously asserted by the present Parliament, may be made void by a Decision of theirs, after so much Practice upon them, is just as reasonable a way of arguing, as theirs is, who because the Church of England acknowledges, that the Chuurch has a Power in Mat­ters of Rites and Ceremonies, will from thence conclude, that this Power must go so far, that tho' Christ has said of the Cup, Drink ye all of it, we must obey the Church when she decrees, that we shall not drink of it. Our Judges, for the greater part, were Men that had past their Lives in so much Retirement, that from thence one might have hoped, that they had studied our Law well, since the Bar had called them so seldom from their Studies: and if Practice is thought often hurtful to Speculation, as that which disorders and hurries the Judgment, they who had practised so little in our Law, had no byass on their Understandings: and if the habit of taking Money as a Lawyer, is a dangerous Preparation for one that is to be an incorrupt Judge, they should have been incor­ruptible, since it is not thought, that the greater part of them [Page 5] got ever so much Money by their Profession, as paid for their Furs. In short, we now see how they have merited their Preferment, and they may yet expect a further Exaltation, when the Justice and the Laws of England come to be in Hands, that will be as careful to preserve them, as they have been to destroy them. But what an Infamy will it lay upon the Name of an English Parliament, if instead of calling those Betrayers of their Country to an account, they should go by an after-game to confirm what these Fellows have done?

VI. The late Conferences with so many Members of both Houses, will give such an ill-natured piece of Jealousie against them, that of all Persons living, that are the most concern'd to take care how they give their Votes, the World will be­lieve, that Threatnings and Promises had as large a share in those secret Conversations, as Reasoning or Persuasion: and it must be a more than ordinary degree of Zeal and Cou­rage in them, that must take off the Blot, of being sent for, and spoke to, on such a Subject, and in such a manner. The worthy Behaviour of the Members in the last Session, had made the Nation unwilling to remember the Errors committed in the first Election: and it is to be hoped, that they will not give any cause for the future to call that to mind. For if a Parliament, that had so many Flaws in its first Conception, goes to repeal Laws, that we are sure were made by Legal Parliaments, it will put the Nation on an Enquiry that no­thing but necessity will drive them to. For a Nation may be laid asleep, and be a little cheated; but when it is awakened, and sees its danger, it will not look on and see a Rape made on its Religion and Liberties, without examining, From whence have these Men this Authority? They will hardly find that it is of Men; and they will not believe that it is of God. But it is to be hoped, that there will be no occasion given for this angry Question, which is much easier made than an­swered.

VII. If all that were now asked in favour of Popery, were only some Gentleness towards the Papists, there were some reason to entertain the Debate, when the Demand were a little more modest: If Men were to be attainted of Treason, for being reconciled to the Church of Rome, or for reconciling others to it; If Priests were demanded to be hanged, for ta­king [Page 6] Orders in the Church of Rome; and if the two thirds of the Papists Estates were offered to be levied, it were a very natural thing to see them uneasie and restless: but now the matter is more barefaced; they are not contented to live at ease, and enjoy their Estates; but they must carry all before them: and F. Petre cannot be at quiet, unless he makes as great a Figure in our Court, as Pere de la Chaise does at Ver­sailles.

A Cessation of all Severities against them, is that to which the Nation would more easily submit; but it is their Behavi­our that must create them the continuance of the like Com­passion in another Reign. If a restless and a persecuting Spirit were not inherent in that Order, that has now the As­cendant, they would have behaved themselves so decently under their present Advantages, as to have made our Di­vines, that have charged them so heavily, look a little out of countenance: and this would have wrought more on the good Nature of the Nation, and the Princely Nobleness of the Successors whom we have in view, than those Arts of Craft and Violence, to which we see their Tempers carry them even so early, before it is yet time to shew themselves. The Tem­per of the English Nation, the Heroical Vertues of those whom we have in our Eyes, but above all, our most holy Religion, which instead of Revenge and Cruelty, inspires us with Cha­rity and Mercy, even for Enemies, are all such things, as may take from the Gentlemen of that Religion all sad Ap­prehensions, unless they raise a Storm against themselves, and provoke the Justice of the Nation to such a degree, that the Successors may find it necessary to be just, even when their own Inclinations would rather carry them to shew Mercy. In short, they need fear nothing but what they create to themselves: so that all this stir that they keep for their own Safety, looks too like the securing to themselves Pardons for the Crimes that they intend to commit.

VIII. I know it is objected as no small Prejudice against these Laws, That the very making of them discovered a par­ticular Malignity against His Majesty, and therefore it is ill Manners to speak for them. The first had perhaps an Eye at his being then Admiral: and the last was possibly levelled at him: tho' when that was discovered, he was excepted [Page 7] out of it by a special Proviso. And as for that which past in 73, I hope it is not forgot, that it was enacted by that Loyal Parliament, that had setled both the Prerogative of the Crown and the Rites of the Church, and that had given the King more Money than all the Parliaments of England had ever done in all former Times. A Parliament that had indeed some Disputes with the King, but upon the first Step that he made with relation to Religion or Safety, they shewed how ready they were to forget all that was past: as appeared by their Behaviour after the Triple Alliance. And in 73, tho' they had great cause given them to dislike the Dutch War, especially the strange beginning of it upon the Smyrna Fleet; and the stopping the Exchequer, the Declaration for Toleration, and the Writs for the Members of the House, were Matters of hard Digestion; yet no sooner did the King give them this new Assurance for their Religion then, tho' they had very great Reasons given them to be jealous of the War, yet since the King was engaged, they gave him 1200000 Pounds for carrying it on; and they thought they had no ill Peni­worths for their Money, when they carried home with them to their Countries this new Security for their Religion, which we are desired now to throw up, and which the Reverend Judges have already thrown out, as a Law out of date. If this had carried in it any new piece of Severity, their Com­plaints might be just; but they are extream tender, if they are so uneasie under a Law that only gives them Leisure and Opportunities to live at home. And the last Test, which was intended only for shutting them out from a share in the Legislative Body, appears to be so just, that one is rather ama­sed to find that it was so long a doing, than that it was done at last: and since it is done, it is a great presumption on our Understandings to think, that we should be willing to part with it. If it was not sooner done, it was because there was not such cause given for Jealousie to work upon: but what has appeared since that time, and what has been printed in his late Majesty's Name, shews the World now, that the Jea­lousies which occasioned those Laws, were not so ill ground­ed, as some well-meaning Men perhaps then believed them to be. But there are some Times in which all Mens Eyes come to be opened.

IX. I am told, some think it is very indecent to have a Test for our Parliaments, in which the King's Religion is accu­sed of Idolatry; but if this Reason is good in this Particular, it will be full as good against several of the Articles of our Church, and many of the Homilies. If the Church and Reli­gion of this Nation is so formed by Law, that the King's Re­ligion is declared over and over again to be Idolatrous, what help is there for it? It is no other, than it was when His Majesty was Crowned, and Swore to maintain our Laws.

I hope none will be wanting in all possible Respect to His Sacred Person; and as we ought to be infinitely sorry to find him engaged in a Religion which we must believe Ido­latrous, so we are far from the ill Manners of reflecting on his Person, or calling him an Idolater: for as every Man that reports a Lie, is not for that to be called a Liar; so tho' the ordering the Intention, and the prejudice of a Mispersuasi­on, are such Abatements, that we will not rashly take on us to call every Man of the Church of Rome an Idolater; yet on the other hand, we can never lay down our Charge against the Church of Rome as guilty of Idolatry, unless at the same time we part with our Religion.

X. Others give us a strange sort of Argument, to persuade us to part with the Test; they say, The King must imploy his Po­pish Subjects, for he can trust no other; and he is so assured of their Fidelity to him, that we need apprehend no Danger from them. This is an odd Method to work on us, to let in a sort of People to the Parliament and Government, since the King cannot trust us, but will depend on them: so that as soon as this Law is repealed, they must have all the Imployments, and have the whole Power of the Nation lodged in their hands; this seems a little too gross to impose, even on Irish­men. The King saw for many Years together, with how much Zeal both the Clergy, and many of the Gentry appear­ed for his Interests; and if there is now a Melancholy Damp on their Spirits, the King can dissipate it when he will; and as the Church of England is a Body that will never rebel against him, so any Sullenness, under which the late Administrati­on of Affairs has brought them, would soon vanish, if the King would be pleased to remember a little what he has so often promised, not only in Publick, but in Private; and [Page 9] would be contented with the Exercise of his own Religion, without embroiling his whole Affairs, because F. Petre will have it so: and it tempts Englishmen to more than ordinary degrees of Rage, against a sort of Men, who it seems, can infuse in a Prince, born with the highest sense of Honour possible, Projects, to which, without doing some Violence to his own Royal Nature, he could not so much as hearken to, if his Religion did not so fatally muffle him up in a blind Obedience. But if we are so unhappy, that Priests can so disguise Matters, as to mislead a Prince, who without their ill Influences would be the most Glorious Monarch of all Eu­rope, and would soon reduce the Grand Louis to a much hum­bler Figure; yet it is not to be so much as imagined, that ever their Arts can be so unhappily successful, as to impose on an English Parliament, composed of Protestant Members.

I. THe Preamble of a Proclamation is oft writ in haste, and is the Flourish of some wan­ton Pen: but one of such an Extraordi­nary nature as this is, was probably more severely examined; there is a new Desig­nation of his Majesty's Authority here set forth of his Abso­lute Power, which is so often repeated, that it deserves to be a little searched into. Prerogative Royal and Sovereign Authority, are Terms already received and known; but for this Absolute Power, as it is a new Term, so those who have coined it, may make it signifie what they will. The Roman Law speaks of Princeps Legibus solutus, and Absolute in its natural signification, importing the being without all Ties and Restraints; then the true meaning of this seems to be, that there is an Inherent Power in the King, which can neither be restrained by Laws, Promises, nor Oaths; for nothing less than the being free from all these renders a Power Absolute.

II. If the former Term seemed to stretch our Allegiance, that which comes after it, is yet a step of another nature, tho' one can hardly imagine what can go beyond Absolute Power; and it is in these Words, Which all our Subjects [Page 11] are to obey without reserve. And this is the carrying Obe­dience many sizes beyond what the Grand Seigneur has ever yet claimed: For all Princes, even the most violent Preten­ders to Absolute Power, till Lewis the Great's Time, have thought it enough to oblige their Subjects to submit to their Power, and to bear whatsoever they thought good to impose upon them; but till the Days of the late Conversions by Dra­goons, it was never so much as pretended, that Subjects were bound to obey their Prince without Reserve, and to be of his Religion because he would have it so. Which was the only Argument that those late Apostles made use of; so it is proba­ble this Qualification of the Duty of Subjects was put in here, to prepare us for a terrible le Roy le veut; and in that case we are told here, that we must obey without reserve; and when those severe Orders come, the Privy-Council, and all such as execute this Proclamation, will be bound by this Declaration to shew themselves more forward than any others, to obey without reserve: and those poor Pretensions of Conscience, Religion, Honour, and Reason, will be then reckoned as Re­serves upon their Obedience, which are all now shut out.

III. These being the Grounds upon which this Proclama­mation is founded, we ought not only to consider what Con­sequences are now drawn from them, but what may be drawn from them at any time hereafter: for if they are of force to justifie that which is now inferred from them, it will be full as just to draw from the same Premises an Aboli­tion of the Protestant Religion, of the Rights of the Subjects, not only to Church-lands, but to all Property whatsoever. In a word, it asserts a Power to be in the King, to command what he will; and an Obligation in the Subjects, to obey whatsoever he shall command.

IV. There is also mention made in the Preamble, of the Christian Love and Charity which his Majesty would have established among Neighbours; but another dash of a Pen, founded on this Absolute Power, may declare us all Hereticks; and then in wonderful Charity to us, we must be told, that we are either to obey without Reserve, or to be burnt without Re­serve. We know the Charity of that Church pretty well: It is indeed Fervent and Burning; and if we have forgot what has been done in former Ages, France, Savoy, and Hungary, [Page 12] have set before our Eyes very fresh Instances of the Charity of that Religion: While those Examples are so green, it is a little too imposing on us, to talk to us of Christian Love and Charity. No doubt his Majesty means sincerely, and his Ex­actness to all his Promises, chiefly to those made since he came to the Crown, will not suffer us to think an unbecoming Thought of his Royal Intentions; but yet after all, tho' it seems by this Proclamation, that we are bound to obey without Reserve, it is Hardship upon Hardship to be bound to Be­lieve without Reserve.

V. There are a sort of People here tolerated, that will be very hardly found out: and these are the Moderate Presbyte­rians. Now, as some say, that there are very few of those People in Scotland, that deserve this Character, so it is hard to tell what it amounts to; and the calling any of them Im­moderate, cuts off all their share in this Grace. Moderation is a Quality that lies in the Mind; and how this will be found out, I cannot so readily guess. If a Standard had been given of Opinions or Practices, then one could have known how this might have been distinguished; but as it lies, it will not be easie to make the Discrimination; and the decla­ring them all Immoderate, shuts them out quite.

VI. Another Foundation laid down for Repealing all Laws made against the Papists, is, That they were enacted in King James the Sixth's Minority; with some harsh Expressi­ons, that are not to be insisted on, since they shew more the Heat of the Penner, than the Dignity of the Prince, in whose Name they are given out; but all these Laws were ra­tified over and over again by King James, when he came to be of full Age: and they have received many Confirmations by King Charles the First, and King Charles the Second, as well as by his present Majesty, both when he represented his Bro­ther in the Year 1681. and since He himself came to the Crown, so that whatsoever may be said concerning the first Formation of those Laws, they have received now for the course of a whole hundred Years, that are lapsed since King James was of full Age, so many Confirmations, that if there is any thing certain in Humane Government, we might de­pend upon them; but this new coined Absolute Power must carry all before it.

VII. It is also well known, that the whole Settlement of the Church-Lands and Tythes, with many other things, and more particularly the Establishment of the Protestant Reli­gion, was likewise enacted in King James's Minority, as well as those Penal Laws: so that the Reason now made use of to annul the Penal Laws, will serve full as well for another Act of this Absolute Power, that shall abolish all those; and if Maxims that unhinge all the Securities of Humane Society, and all that is sacred in Government, ought to be look'd on with the justest and deepest Prejudices possible, one is tempt­ed to lose the Respect that is due to every thing that carries a Royal Stamp upon it, when he sees such Grounds made use of, as must shake all Settlements whatsoever: For if a Prescription of 120 Years, and Confirmations reiterated over and over again these 100 Years past, do not purge some De­fects in the first Formation of those Laws, what can make us secure? But this looks so like a Fetch of the French Prero­gative Law, both in their Processes with relation to the Edict of Nantes, and those concerning Dependences at Mets, that this seems to be a Copy from that famous Original.

VIII. It were too much ill Nature to look into the History of the last Age, to examine on what Grounds those Chara­cters of Pious and Blessed, given to the Memory of Q. Mary, are built; but since King James's Memory has the Character of Glorious given to it, if the Civility due to the Fair Sex makes one unwilling to look into the one, yet the other may be a little dwelt on. The peculiar Glory that belongs to King James's Memory, is, that he was a Prince of great Learn­ing, and that he employed it chiefly in writing for Religion: Of the Volume in Folio, in which we have his Works, two thirds are against the Church of Rome; one part of them is a Commentary on the Revelation, proving that the Pope is Antichrist; another part of them belonged more naturally to his Post and Dignity; which is the Warning that he gave to all the Princes and States of Europe, against the Treason­able and Bloody Doctrines of the Papacy. The first Act he did when he came of Age, was to swear in Person with all his Family, and afterwards with all his People of Scotland, a Covenant, containing an Enumeration of all the Points of Popery, and a most solemn Renunciation of them, somewhat [Page 14] like our Parliament Test. His first Speech to the Parliament of England, was Copious on the same Subject; and he left a Legacy of a Wish on such of his Posterity as should go over to that Religion, which in good manners is suppressed. It is known, King James was no Conqueror, and that he made more use of his Pen than his Sword: so the Glory that is pe­culiar to his Memory must fall chiefly on his Learned and Immortal Writings: and since there is such a Veneration ex­pressed for him, it agrees not ill with this to wish, that his Works were more studied by those who offer such Incense to his Glorious Memory.

IX. His Majesty assures his People of Scotland, upon his certain Knowledge, and long Experience, that the Catholicks, as they are good Christians, so they are likewise dutiful Subjects: But if we must believe both these equally, then we must con­clude severely against their being good Christians; for we are sure they can never be good Subjects, not only to a Heretical Prince, but even to a Catholick Prince, if he does not extirpate Hereticks; for their beloved Council of the Lateran, that de­creed Transubstantiation, has likewise decreed, That if a Prince does not extirpate Hereticks out of his Dominions, the Pope must depose him, and declare his Subjects absolved from their Allegiance, and give his Dominions to another. So that even his Majesty, how much soever he may be a Zealous Catholick, yet cannot be assured of their Fidelity to him, unless he has given them secret Assurances, that he is resolved to extirpate Hereticks out of his Dominions; and that all the Promises which he now makes to these poor Wretches, are no other way to be kept, than the Assurances which the Great Lewis gave to his Prote­stant Subjects, of his observing still the Edict of Nantes, even after he had resolved to break it; and also his last Promise made in the Edict that repealed the Edict of Nantes, by which he gave Assurances, that no Violence should be used to any for their Religion, in the very time that he was ordering all possible Violences to be put in execution against them.

X. His Majesty assures us, that on all occasions the Papists have shewed themselves good and faithful Subjects to him and his Royal Predecessors; but how Absolute soever the King's Power may be, it seems his Knowledge of History is not so Absolute, but it may be capable of some Improvement. It [Page 15] will be hard to find out what Loyalty they shewed on the oc­casion of the Gunpowder Plot, or during the whole Progress of the Rebellion of Ireland; if the King will either take the Words of King James of Glorious Memory, or King Charles the First, that was indeed of Pious and Blessed Memory, ra­ther than the Word of the Penners of this Proclamation, it will not be hard to find occasions where they were a little wanting in this their so much boasted Loyalty: and we are sure, that by the Principles of that Religion, the King can ne­ver be assured of the Fidelity of those he calls his Catholick Subjects, but by engaging to them to make his Heretical Sub­jects Sacrifices to their Rage.

XI. The King declares them capable of all the Offices and Benefices which he shall think fit to bestow on them, and only restrains them from invading the Protestant Churches by force: so that here a Door is plainly opened for admitting them to the Exercise of their Religion in Protestant Churches, so they do not break into them by force; and whatsoever may be the sense of the Term Benefice in its ancient and first signification, now it stands only for Church Preferments; so that when any Churches, that are at the King's Gift, fall va­cant, here is a plain intimation, that they are to be provided to them: and then it is very probable, that all the Laws made against such as go not to their Parish-Churches, will be se­verely turned upon those that will not come to Mass.

XII. His Majesty does in the next place, in the vertue of his Absolute Power, annul a great many Laws, as well those that established the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, as the late Test, enacted by himself in Person, while he represent­ed his Brother: upon which he gave as strange an Essay to the World of his Absolute Justice in the Attainder of the late Earl of Argile, as he does now of his Absolute Power in condemning the Test it self; he also repeals his own Con­firmation of the Test, since he came to the Crown, which he offered as the clearest Evidence that he could give of his Re­solution to maintain the Protestant Religion, and by which he gained so much upon that Parliament, that he obtained every thing from them that he desired of them, till he came to try them in the Matters of Religion. This is no extraordinary Evidence to assure his People, that his Promises will be like [Page 16] the Laws of the Medes and Persians, which alter not; nor will the disgrace of the Commissioner that enacted that Law, lay this Matter wholly on him; for the Letter that he brought, the Speech that he made, and the Instructions which he got, are all too well known, to be so soon forgotten; and if Princes will give their Subjects reason to think, that they forget their Promises, as soon as the Turn is served for which they were made, this will be too prevailing a Tem­ptation to the Subjects to mind the Princes Promise as little as it seems he himself does; and will force them to conclude, that the Truth of the Prince is not so Absolute as it seems he fancies his Power to be.

XIII. Here is not only a Repealing of a great many Laws, and established Oaths and Tests; but by the exercise of the Absolute Power, a new Oath is imposed, which was never pretended to by the Crown in any former time; and as the Oath is created by this Absolute Power, so it seems the Absolute Power must be supported by this Oath: since one Branch of it is an Obligation to maintain his Majesty and his lawful Successors in the exercise of this their Absolute Power and Authority, against all Deadly, which I suppose is Scotch for Mortals. Now to impose so hard a Yoke as this Absolute Power on the Subjects, seems no small stretch; but it is a wonderful Exercise of it, to oblige the Subjects to defend this: it had been more modest, if they had been only bound to bear it, and submit to it: but it is a terrible thing so far to extinguish all the Remnants of Natural Liberty, or of a Le­gal Government, as to oblige the Subjects by Oath to main­tain the Exercise of this, which plainly must destroy them­selves: For the short Execution by the Bow-strings of Tur­key, or by sending Orders to Men to return in their Heads, being an Exercise of this Absolute Power, it is a little hard to make Men swear to maintain the King in it: and if that King­dom has suffered so much by the many Oaths that have been in use among them, as is marked in this Proclamation, I am afraid this new Oath will not much mend the matter.

XIV. Yet after all, there is some Comfort; his Majesty as­sures them, he will use no Violence nor Force, nor any Invin­cible Necessity to any Man upon the account of his Persuasion. It were too great a want of Respect to fancy, that a time may [Page 17] come in which even this may be remembred, full as well, as the Promises that were made to the Parliament after His Ma­jesty came to the Crown. I do not, I confess, apprehend that; for I see here to great a Caution used in the choice of these Words, that it is plain, very great Severities may very well consist with them. It is clear, that the general Words of Violence and Force, are to be determined by these last of Invincible Necessity; so that the King does only promise to lay no Invincible Necessity on his Subjects; but for all Ne­cessities that are not Invincible, it seems they must expect to bear a large share of them; Disgraces, want of Employ­ments, Fines, and Imprisonments, and even Death it self, are all Vincible things to a Man of firmness of Mind; so that the Violences of Torture, the Furies of Dragoons, and some of the Methods now practised in France, perhaps may be inclu­ded within this Promise; since these seem almost Invincible to Humane Nature, if it is not fortified with an extraordi­nary measure of Grace: but as to all other things, His Ma­jesty binds himself up from no part of the Exercise of his Absolute Power by this Promise.

XV. His Majesty orders this to go immediately to the Great Seal, without passing thro' the other Seals: Now since this is counter-signed by the Secretary, in whose Hands the Signet is, there was no other step to be made but thro' the Privy Seal; so I must own, I have a great curiosity of know­ing his Character in whose Hands the Privy Seal is at pre­sent; for it seems his Conscience is not so very supple, as the Chancellor's and the Secretaries are; but it is very likely, if he does not quickly change his Mind, the Privy Seal at least will very quickly change its Keeper; and I am sorry to hear, that the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary have not another Brother to fill this Post, that so the Guilt of the Ruine of that Nation may lie on one single Family, and that there may be no others involved in it.

XVI. Upon the whole matter, many smaller things being waved, it being extream unpleasant to find fault, where one has all possible dispositions to pay all Respect; we here in England see what we must look for. A Parliament in Scot­land was tried, but it proved a little stubborn; and now Absolute Power comes to set all right; so when the Closetting [Page 18] has gone round, so that Noses are counted, we may perhaps see a Parliament here; but if it chances to be untoward, and not to obey without Reserve, then our Reverend Judges will copy from Scotland, and will not only tell us of the King's Imperial Power, but will discover to us this new Mystery of Absolute Power, to which we are all bound to obey without Reserve.

These Reflections refer in so many Places to some Words in the Proclamation, that it was thought necessary to set them near one another, that the Reader may be able to judge, whether he is deceived by any false Quotations, or not.

I. THE Accusing the Church of England of Want of Loyalty, or the putting it to a new Test, af­ter so fresh a one, with relation to His Ma­jesty, argues a high degree of Confidence in him who undertakes it. She knew well what were the Doctrines and Practices of those of the Roman Church, with relation to Hereticks; and yet She was so true to her Loyalty, that She shut her Eyes on all the Temptations that so just a fear could raise in her: And She set her self to sup­port His Majesties Right of Succession, with so much Zeal, that She thereby not only put her self in the power of her Enemies, but She has also exposed her self to the Scorn of those who insult over her in her Misfortune. She lost the Affecti­ons even of many of her own Children, who thought that her Zeal for an Interest, which was then so much decry'd, was a little too servent: And all those who judged severely of the Proceedings, thought that the Opposition which She made to the side that then went so high, had, more Heat than Decency in it. And indeed all this was so very extra­ordinary, that if She was not acted by a Principle of Con­science, [Page 46] She could make no Excuse for her Conduct. There appeared such peculiar Marks of Affection and Heartiness at every time that the Duke was named, whether in drink­ing his Health, or upon graver Occasions, that it seemed af­fected: And when the late King himself (whose Word they took, that he was a Protestant) was spoke of but coldly, the very Name of the Duke set her Children all on fire; this made many conclude, that they were ready to sacrifice all to him: for indeed their Behaviour was inflamed with so much Heat, that the greater part of the Nation believed they waited for a fit opportunity to declare themselves. Faith in Jesus Christ was not a more frequent Subject of the Sermons of many, than Loyalty; and the Right of the Succession to the Crown, the Heat that appeared in the Pulpit, and the Learn­ing that was in their Books on these Subjects, and the Elo­quent Strains that were in their Addresses, were all Originals; and made the World conclude, That whatever might be laid to their charge, they should never be accused of any want of Loyalty, at least in this King's time, while the remem­brance of so signal a Service was so fresh. When His Maje­sty came to the Crown, these men did so entirely depend on the Promise that he made to maintain the Church of England, that the doubting of the performance appeared to them the worst sort of Infidelity. They believed, that in His Majesty, the Hero, and the King, would be too strong for the Papist; and when any one told them, How weak a tie the Faith of a Catholick to Hereticks must needs be, they could not hearken to this with any patience; but looked on his Majesties Pro­mise as a thing so Sacred, that they imploy'd their Interest to carry all Elections of Parliament-men, for those that were recommended by the Court, with so much Vigour, that it laid them open to much Censure. In Parliament they mo­ved for no Laws to secure their Religion, but assuring them­selves, that Honour was the King's Idol, they laid hold on it, and fancied, that a publick reliance on his Word, would give them an Interest in His Majesty, that was Generous, and more sutable to the Nobleness of a Princely Nature, than any new Laws could be; so that they acquiesced in it, and gave the King a vast Revenue for life. In the Rebellion that followed, they shewed with what Zeal they adhered to His [Page 47] Majesty, even against a Pretender that declared for them. And in the Session of Parliament, which came after that, they shewed their disposition to assist the King with new Sup­plies, and were willing to excuse and indemnifie all that was past, only they desired with all possible Modesty, that the Laws which His Majesty had both Promised, and at his Co­ronation had Sworn to maintain, might be executed. Here is their Crime, which has raised all this Out cry; they did not move for the Execution of Severe or Penal Laws, but were willing to let those sleep, till it might appear by the behaviour of the Papists, whether they might deserve that there should be any Mitigation made of them in their Favour. Since that time, our Church men have been con­stant in mixing their Zeal for their Religion against Popery, with a Zeal for Loyalty against Rebellion, because they think these two are very well consistent one with another. It is true, they have generally expressed an unwillingness to part with the two Tests, because they have no mind to trust the keeping of their Throats to those who they believe will cut them: And they have seen nothing in the Conduct of the Papists, either within or without the Kingdom, to make them grow weary of the Laws for their sakes; and the same Principle of common Sense, which makes it so hard for them to believe Transubstantiation, makes them conclude, That the Author of this Paper, and his Friends, are no other, than what they hear and see, and know them to be.

II. One Instance in which the Church of England shewed her Submission to the Court, was, that as soon as the Noncon­formists had drawn a new Storm upon themselves, by their medling in the matter of the Exclusion, many of her zealous Members went into that Prosecution of them, which the Court set on foot, with more Heat than was perhaps either justi­fiable in it self, or reasonable in those Circumstances; but how censurable soever some angry men may be, it is some­what strange to see those of the Church of Rome blame us for it, which has decreed such unrelenting Severities against all that differ from her, and has enacted that not only in Par­liaments, but even in General Councils. It must needs sound odly to hear the Sons of a Church that must destroy all others as soon as it can compass it, yet complain of the [Page 48] Excesses of Fines and Imprisonments, that have been of late among us. But if this Reproach seems a little strange when it is in the Mouth of a Papist, it is yet much more provok­ing when it comes from any of the Court. Were not all the Orders for the late Severity sent from thence? Did not the Judges in every Circuit, and the Favourite Justices of Peace in every Sessions, imploy all their Eloquence on this Subject? The Directions that were given to the Justices and the Grand Juries, were all repeated Aggravations of this Mat­ter; and a little Ordinary Lawyer, without any other visible Merit, but an outragious Fury in those Matters, on which he has chiefly valued himself, was of a sudden taken into His Majesties special Favour, and raised up to the Highest Posts of the Law. All these things led some of our Obedi­ent Clergy to look on it as a piece of their Duty to the King to encourage that Severity, of which the Court seemed so fond, that almost all People thought they had set it up for a Maxim, from which they would never depart. I will not pretend to excuse all that has been done of late years, but it is certain, that the most crying Severities have been acted by Persons that were raised up to be Judges and Magistrates for that very end; they were Instructed, Trusted, and Reward­ed for it, both in the last, and under the present Reign. Church Preferments were distributed rather as Recompences of this devouring Zeal, than of a real Merit; and men of more moderate Tempers were not only ill lookt at, but ill used. So that it is in it self very unreasonable to throw the load of the late Rigour on the Church of England, with­out distinction; but it is worse than in good manners it is fit to call it, if this Reproach comes from the Court. And it is somewhat unbecoming to see that which was set on at one time, disowned at another, while yet he that was the Chief Instrument in it, is still in so high a Post, and begins now to treat the Men of the Church of England with the same Brutal Excesses that he bestowed so lately, and so li­berally on the Dissenters, as if his Design were to render him­self equally odious to all Mankind.

III. The Church of England may justly expostulate when she is treated as Seditious, after she has rendred the highest Services to the Civil Authority, that any Church now on Earth [Page 49] has done: She has beaten down all the Principles of Re­bellion, with more Force and Learning, than any Body of men has ever yet done; and has run the hazard of enra­ging her Enemies, and losing her Friends, even for those, from whom the more Learned of her Members knew well what they might expect. And since our Author likes the figure of a Snake in ones Bosome so well, I could tell him, that according to the Apologue, we took up, and sheltered an Interest that was almost dead, and by that warmth gave it life; which yet now with the Snake in the Bosome, is like to bite us to death. We do not say, we are the only Church that has Principles of Loyalty; but this we may say, That we are the Church in the World that carries them the highest; as we know a Church that of all others sinks them them the lowest. We do not pretend, that we are Inerrable in this Point, but acknowledge that some of our Clergy mis­carried in it upon King Edward's Death: Yet at the same time others of our Communion adhered more steadily to their Loyalty in favour of Queen Mary, than She did to the Promises that she made to them. Upon this Subject our Author, by his false Quotation of History, forces me to set the Reader right, which if it proves to the disadvantage of his Cause, his Friends may thank him for it. I will not en­ter into so tedious a Digression, as the justifying Queen Eli­zabeth's being Legitimate, and the throwing the Bastardy on Queen Mary, must carry me to; this I will only say, That it was made out, that according to the best sort of Argu­ments used by the Church of Rome, I mean the constant Tra­dition of all Ages, King Henry the VIII. marrying with Queen Katherine, was Incestuous, and by Consequence Queen Mary was the Bastard, and Queen Elizabeth was the Legitimate Issue. But our Author, not satisfied with defaming Queen Elizabeth, tells us, that the Church of England was no sooner set up by her, than She Enacted those Bloody Cannibal Laws to Hang, Draw, and Quarter the Priests of the living God. But since these Laws disturb him so much, What does he think of the Laws of Burning the poor Servants of the living God, be­cause they cannot give Divine Worship to that which they believe to be only a Piece of Bread? The Representation he gives of this part of our History, is so false, that tho' upon [Page 50] Queen Elizabeth's coming to the Crown, there were many Complaints exhibited of the illegal Violences that Bonner and other Butchers had committed; yet all these were stifled, and no Penal Laws were enacted against those of that Reli­gion. The Popish Clergy were indeed turned out, but they were well used, and had Pensions assigned them; so ready was the Queen and our Church to forgive what was past, and to shew all Gentleness for the future. During the first thir­teen years of her Reign, matters went on calmly, without any sort of Severity on the account of Religion. But then the restless Spirit of that Party began to throw the Nation into violent Convulsions. The Pope deposed the Queen, and and one of the Party had the Impudence to post up the Bull in London; upon this followed several Rebellions; both in England and Ireland, and the Papists of both Kingdoms entred into Confederacies with the King of Spain and the Court of Rome: The Priests disposed all the People that de­pended on them, to submit to the Pope's Authority in that Deposition, and to reject the Queen's. These Endeavours, be­sides open Rebellions, produced many secret Practices a­gainst her Life. All these things gave the rise to the se­vere Laws, which began not to be enacted before the twen­tieth year of her Reign. A War was formed by the Bull of Deposition, between the Queen and the Court of Rome, so it was a necessary piece of Precaution to declare all those to be Traitors, who were the Missionaries of that Authority which had stript the Queen of hers: Yet those Laws were not executed upon some Secular Priests who had the Hone­sty to condemn the Deposing Doctrine. As for the Unhappy Death of the Queen of Scotland, it was brought on by the wicked Practices of her own Party, who fatally involved her in some of them: She was but a Subject here in England, and if the Queen took a more violent way than was de­cent for her own Security; here was no Disloyalty nor Re­bellion in the Church of England, which owed her no sort of Allegiance.

IV. I do not pretend that the Church of England has any great cause to value her self upon her Fidelity to King Charles the First, tho' our Author would have it pass for the only thing of which She can boast; for I confess, the cause [Page 51] of the Church was so twisted with the King's, that Interest and Duty went together; tho' I will not go so far as our Author, who says, that the Law of Nature dictates to every Individual to fight in his own Defence: This is too bold a thing to be delivered so crudely at this time. The Laws of Nature are perpetual, and can never be cancelled by any special Law: So if these Gentlemen own so freely, that this is a Law of Nature, they had best take care not to provoke Nature too much, lest She fly to the Relief that this Law may give her, unless she is restrained by the Loyalty of our Church. Our Author values his Party much upon their Loy­alty to King Charles the First: But I must take the liberty to ask him, of what Religion were the Irish Rebels? and what sort of Loyalty was it, that they shewed, either in the first Massacre, or in the Progress of that Rebellion? Their Messages to the Pope, to the Court of France, and to the Duke of Lor­rain, offering themselves to any of these that would have undertaken to protect them, are Acts of Loyalty, which the Church of England is no way inclined to follow, and the au­thentical Proofs of these things are ready to be produced. Nor need I add to this, the hard terms they offered to the King, and their ill usage of those whom he imployed. I could likewise repress the Insolence of this Writer, by telling him of the slavish Submissions that their Party made to Cromwel, both Father and Son. As for their adhering to King Charles the First, there is a peculiar boldness in our Author's Assertion, who says, That they had no Hope nor Interest in that cause: The State of that Court is not so quite forgot, but that we do well remember what Credit the Queen had with the King, and what Hopes She gave the Party; yet they did not so entirely espouse the King's cause, but that they had likewise a flying Squadron in the Parliaments Ar­my, how boldly soever this may be denied by our Author; for this I will give him a Proof that is beyond exception, in a Declaration of that Kings, sent to the Kingdom of Scotland, bearing date the 21 of April 1643. which is printed over and over again; and as an Author that writes the History of the late Wars, has assured us, the clean draught of it, corrected in some places with the King's own Hand, is yet extant; so that it cannot be pretended, that this was only a bold As­sertion [Page 52] of some of the Kings Ministers that might be ill af­fected to their Party. In that Declaration the King studied to possess his Subjects of Scotland with the Justice of his Cause, and among other things, to clear himself of that Imputa­tion that he had an Army of Papists about him; after many things said on that head, these words are added; Great numbers of that Religion have been with great Alacrity enter­tained in that Rebellious Army against us; and others have been seduced, to whom we had formerly denied Imployments, as ap­pears by the Examination of many Prisoners, of whom we have taken twenty, and thirty at a time of one Troop or Company, of that Religion. I hope our Author will not have the Impudence to dispute the Credit that is due to this Testimony; but no Discoveries, how evident so ever they may be, can affect some sort of Men that have a Secret against blushing.

V. Our Author exhorts us to change our Principles of Loyal­ty, and to take example of our Catholick Neighbours, how to behave our selves towards a Prince that is not of our Perswasion. But would he have us learn of our Irish Neighbours to cut our Fellow-subjects Throats, and rebel against our King, be­cause he is of another Religion? For that is the freshest Ex­ample that any of our Catholick Neighbours have set us; and therefore I do not look so far back as to the Gunpowder-Plot, or the League of France in the last Age. He reproaches us for failing in our Fidelity to our King. But in this matter we appeal to God, Angels, and Men, and in particular to His Majesty: Let our Enemies shew any one point of our Duty, in which we have failed; for as we cannot be charged for having preach'd any seditious Doctrine, so we are not want­ing in the preaching of the Duties of Loyalty, even when we see what they are like to cost us. The Point which he singles out, is, That we have failed in that grateful Return that we owed His Majesty for his Promise of maintaining our Church as it is established by Law; since upon that we ought to have re­pealed the Sanguinary Laws, and the late impious Tests; the for­mer being enacted to maintain the Usurpation of Queen Eliza­beth, and the other being contrived to exclude the present King. We have not failed to pay all the Gratitude and Duty that was possible, in return to His Majesties Promise, which we have carried so far, that we are become the Object even of [Page 53] our Enemies Scorn by it. With all Humility be it said, that if His Majesty had promised us a farther Degree of his Fa­vour, than that of which the Law had assured us, it might have been expected, that our return should have been a de­gree of Obedience beyond that which was required by Law; so that the return of the Obedience injoined by Law, an­swers a Promise of a Protection according to Law: Yet we carried this matter further; for, as was set forth in the begin­ning of this Paper, we went on in so high a pace of Com­pliance and Confidence, that we drew the Censures of the whole Nation on us: Nor could any Jealousies or Fears give us the least Apprehensions, till we were so hard pressed in matters of Religion, that we could be no longer silent. The same Apostle that taught us to honour the King, said like­wise, that we must obey God rather than man. Our Author knows the History of our Laws ill; for besides what has been already said, touching the Laws made by Queen Elizabeth, the severest of all our Penal Laws, and that which troubles him and his Friends most, was past by K. James after the Gunpowder-Plot; a Provocation that might have well justified even greater Severities. But tho' our Author may hope to impose on an ignorant Reader, who may be apt to believe implicitly what he says concerning the Laws of the last Age, yet it was too bold for him to assert, that the Tests which are so lately made, were contrived to exclude the present King, when there was not a Thought of Exclusion many years after the first was made, and the Duke was excepted out of the Second by a special Proviso. But these Gentlemen will do well never to mention the Exclusion; for every time that it is named, it will make People call to mind the Service that the Church of England did in that matter, and that will car­ry with it a Reproach of Ingratitude that needs not be ag­gravated. He also confounds the two Tests, as if that for Publick Imployments contained in it a Declaration of the King's being an Idolater, or as he makes it, a Pagan, which is not at all in it; but in the other for the Members of Parlia­ment, in which there is indeed a Declaration, that the Church of Rome is guilty of Idolatry; which is done in general terms, without applying it to His Majesty, as our Author does: Upon this he would infer, That his Majesty is not safe till [Page 54] the Tests are taken away; but we have given such Evidences of our Loyalty, that we have plainly shewed this to be false; since we do openly declare, that our Duty to the King is not founded on his being of this or that Religion; so that His Majesty has a full Security from our Principles, tho' the Tests continue, since there is no reason that we who did run the hazard of being ruined by the Excluders, when the Tide was so strong against us, would fail his Majesty now, when our Interest and Duty are joyned together: But if the Tests are taken away, it is certain that we can have no Security any longer; for we shall be then laid open to the Violence of such restless and ill-natured men, as the Author of this Paper and his Brethren are.

VI. The same reason that made our Saviour refuse to throw himself down from the Roof of the Temple, when the Devil tempted him to it, in the vain Confidence, that An­gels must be assistant to him to preserve him, holds good in our Case. Our Saviour said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And we dare not trust our selves to the Faith, and to the Mercies of a Society, that is but too well known to the World, to pretend, that we should pull down our Pales to let in such Wolves among us. God and the Laws have given us legal Security, and His Majesty has promised to maintain us in it; and we think it argues no Distrust either of God, or the Truth of our Religion, to say, that we cannot by any Act of our own, lay our selves open, and throw away that defence. Nor would we willingly expose His Majesty to the unwearied Sollicitations of a sort of men, who, if we may judge of that which is to come, by that which is past, would give him no rest, if once the restraints of Law were taken off, but would drive matters to those Extremities to which we see their Natures carry them head long.

VII. The last Paragraph is a strain worthy of that School that bred our Author; he says, His Majesty may withdraw his Royal Protection from the Church of England, which was pro­mised her upon the account of her constant Fidelity; and he brings no other Proof to confirm so bold an Assertion, but a false Axiome of that despised Philosophy in which he was bred; Cessante causa tollitur effectus. This is indeed such an Indig­nity to His Majesty, that I presume to say it with all humble [Page 55] reverence, these are the last persons whom he ought to par­don, that have the boldness to touch so sacred a point as the Faith of a Prince, which is the chief Security of Government, and the Foundation of all the Confidence that a Prince can promise himself from his People; and which, once blasted, can never be recovered. Equivocations may be both taught and practised with less danger, by an Order that has little Credit to lose; but nothing can shake Thrones so much as such treache­rous Maxims. I must also ask our Author, in what point of Fidelity has our Church failed so far as to make her forfeit her Title to His Majesties Promises? For as he himself has stated this matter, it comes all to this: The King promised that he would maintain the Church of England as established by Law. Upon which in Gratitude he says, That the Church of England was bound to throw up the Chief Security that she had in her Establishment by Law; which is, that all who are intrusted either with the Legislative or the Executive parts of our Government must be of her Communion; and if the Church of England is not so tame, and so submissive, as to part with this, then the King is free from his Promise, and may withdraw his Royal Protection, tho' I must crave leave to tell him, that the Laws gave the Church of England a Right to that Protection, whether His Majesty had promised it, or not.

Of all the Maxims in the World, there is none more hurtful to the Government, in our present Circumstances, than the saying, that the King's Promises and the Peoples Fidelity ought to be reciprocal; and that a Failure in the one, cuts off the other; for by a very natural Consequence the Subject may likewise say, That their Oaths of Allegeance being founded on the Assurance of His Majesties Protection, the One binds no longer than the Other is observed: and the Inferences that may be drawn from hence, will be very terrible, if the Loy­alty of the so much decryed Church of England does not put a stop to them.

I. PEace is a very desirable thing, yet every State that is peaceable is not blindly to be courted. An Apoplexy is the most peaceable State in which a Man's Body can be laid: yet few would desire to pacifie the Humours of their Body at that rate. An Implicite Faith and Absolute Slavery are the two peaceablest things that can be; yet we confess, we have no mind to try so dangerous an Experiment: and while the Remedies are too strong, we will chuse rather to [Page 66] bear our Disease, than to venture on them. The Instance that is proposed to the Imitation of the Nation, is, that Par­liament which called in the late King; and yet that cannot so much as be called a Parliament, unless it be upon a Commonwealth Principle, That the Sovereign Power is ra­dically in the People: For its being chosen without the King's Writ, was such an Essential Nullity, that no subsequent Ra­tification could take it away: For all People saw, that they could not depend upon any Acts past by it; and therefore it was quickly dissolved: and ever since it has been called by all the Monarchical Party, a Convention, and not a Parlia­ment. But now, in order to the courting the Common­wealth Party, this is not only called a Parliament, but is pro­posed as a Pattern to all others, from the beginning to Page 19.

II. But since this Author will send us back to that Time, and since he takes it so ill that the Memory of the late King should be forgotten; let us examine that Transaction a little, and then we shall see whether it had not been more for His Honour to let it be forgotten. The King did indeed in his Declaration from Breda promise Liberty of Conscience, on which he insisted in a large and wise Declaration, set out after he was setled on the Throne: but after that he had got a Par­liament, chosen all of Creatures depending on himself, who for many years granted him every thing that he desired, a severe Act of Uniformity was passed; and the King's Pro­mise was carried off by this, That the King could not refuse to comply with so Loyal a Parliament. It is well enough known, that those who were then secretly Papists, and who disgui­sed their Religion for many Years after this, as the King himself did to the last, animated the Chief Men of our Church to carry the Points of Uniformity as high as was possible; and that both then, and ever since, all that proposed any Expedients for uniting us (or, as it was afterwards termed, for Comprehending the Dissenters) were represented as the Be­trayers of the Church. The Design was then clear to some; that so by carrying the Terms of Conformity to a great rigi­dity, there might be many Nonconformists, and great occa­sion [Page 67] given for a Toleration, under which Popery might insen­sibly creep in: For if the Expedients that the King himself proposed in his Declaration, had been stood to, it is well known, that of the Two thousand Consciencious Ministers, as he calls them, pag. 14. by an Affectation too gross to pass on them that were turned out, above Seventeen hundred had staid in. Their Practices had but too good Success on those who were then at the Head of our Church; whose Spirits were too much soured by their ill usage during the War, and whose Principles led them to so good an Opinion of all that the Court did, that for a great while they would suspect nothing. But at the same time that the Church-Party, that carried all before them in that Parliament, were anima­ted to press things so hard, the Dissenters were secretly en­couraged to stand out, and were told, that the King's Tem­per and Principle, and the Consideration of Trade, would certainly procure them a Toleration; and ever since, that Par­ty that thus had set us together by the ears, has shifted Sides dexterously enough; but still they have carried on the main Design, which was to keep up the Quarrel in the Intervals of Parliament. Liberty of Conscience was in vogue; but when a Session of Parliament came, and the King wanted Money, then a new severe Law against the Dissenters was offered to the angry Men of the Church-Party, as the Price of it; and this seldom failed to have its effect: so that they were like the Jewels of the Crown, pawned when the King needed Mo­ney, but redeemed at the next Prorogation. A Reflection then that arises naturally out of the Proceedings in the Year 1660. is, That if a Parliament should come, that would copy after that Pattern, and repeal Laws and Tests, the King's Of­fers of Liberty of Conscience, as may indeed be supposed, will bind him, till after a short Session or two such a meritorious Parliament should be dissolved, according to the Precedent in the Year 1660. and that a new one were brought together by the same Methods of changing Charters, and making Returns; and then the old Laws de Heretico comburendo might be again revived, and it would be said, that the King's In­clinations are for keeping his Promise, and granting still a Liberty of Conscience; yet he can deny nothing to a Loyal and Catholick Parliament.

III. We pay all possible respect to the King, and have wit­nessed how much we depended on his Promises, in so signal a manner, that after such real Evidence, all Words are su­perfluous. But since the King has shewed so much Zeal, not only for his Religion in general, but in particular for that Society, which of all the other Bodies in it, we know is ani­mated the most against us, we must crave leave to speak a little freely, and not suffer our selves to be destroyed by a Complement. The Extirpation of Hereticks, and the Breach of Faith to them, have been decreed by two of their Gene­ral Councils and by a Tradition of several Ages; the Pope is possessed of a Power of dissolving all Promises, Contracts, and Oaths; not to mention the private Doctrines of that Society, that is so much in favour, of doing Ill that Good may come of it, of using Equivocations and Reservations, and of ordering the In­tention. Now these Opinions, as they have never been re­nounced by the Body of that Church, so indeed they cannot be, unless they renounce their Infallibility, which is their Basis, at the same time. Therefore tho a Prince of that Communion may very sincerely resolve to maintain Liberty of Conscience, and to keep his Word, yet the blind Subjection into which he is brought by his Religion, to his Church, must force him to break thro' all that, as soon as the Do­ctrine of his Church is opened to him, and that Absolution is denied him, or higher Threatnings are made him, if he continues firm to his merciful Inclinations. So that suppo­sing His Majesty's Piety to be as great as the Jesuit's Sermon on the Thirtieth of January, lately printed, carries it, to the uttermost possibility of Flesh and Blood, then our Fears must still grow upon us, who know what are the Decrees of that Church; and by consequence we may infer, to what his Piety must needs carry him, as soon as those things are fully opened to him, which in respect to him, we are bound to believe are now hid from him.

IV. It will further appear, that these are not unjust In­ferences, if we consider a little what has been the Obser­vation of all the Promises made for Liberty of Conscience to [Page 69] Hereticks by Roman Catholick Princes, ever since the Reforma­tion. The first was, the Edict of Passaw in Germany, procu­red chiefly by Ferdinand's means, and maintained indeed religiously by his Son Maximilian the Second, whose Incli­nations to the Protestant Religion made him be suspected for one himself: But the Jesuits insinuated themselves so far into his younger Brother's Court, that was Archduke of Grats, that this was not only broken by that Family, in their Share, but tho' Rodolph and Mathias were Princes of great Gentleness, and the latter of these was the Protector of the States in the beginning of their War with King Philip the Second, yet the Violence with which the House of Grats was possessed, overturned all that: so that the breaking of the Pacificatory Edicts was begun in Rodolph's time, and was so far carried on in Mathias's time, that they set both Bo­hemia and Hungary in a Flame, and so begun that long War of Germany. 2. The next Promise for Liberty of Conscience was made by Queen Mary of England; but we know well enough how it was observed: the Promises made by the Queen Regent of Scotland, were observed with the same Fi­delity. After these came the Pacificatory Edicts in France, which were scarce made when the Triumvirate was formed to break them. The famous Massacre of Paris was an In­stance never to be forgot, of the Religious Observance of a Treaty, made on purpose to lay the Party asleep, and to bring the whole Heads of it into the Net; this was a much more dreadful St. Bartholomew, than that on which our Au­thor bestows that Epithete, pag. 15. and when all seemed setled by the famous Edict of Nantes, we have seen how rest­less that Party, and in particular the Society, were, till it was broken by a Prince, that for thirty years together had shewed as great an aversion to the Shedding of Blood in his Government at home, as any of his Neighbours can pretend to; and who has done nothing in the whole Tragedy that he has acted, but what is exactly conform to the Doctrine and Decrees of his Church: so that is not himself, but his Religion, that we must blame for all that has fallen out in that Kingdom. I cannot leave this, without taking notice [Page 70] of our Author's Sincerity, who pag. 18. tells us of the Protestants entring into their League in France, when it is well known that it was a League of Papists against a Pro­testant Successor, which was afterwards applied to a Popish King, only because he was not zealous enough against Hereticks. But to end this List of Instances at a Country to which our Author bears so particular a kindness; when the Dutchess of Parma granted the Edict of Pacifi­cation, by which all that was past was buried, and the Exercise of the Protestant Religion was to be connived at for the future; King Philip the Second did not only ra­tifie this, but expressed himself so fully upon it to the Count of Egmont, who had been sent over to him, that the easie Count returned to Flanders so assured of the King's Sincerity, that he endeavoured to perswade all others to rely as much on his Word, as he himself did. It is well known how fatal this Confidence was to him, and (see Meteren. lib. 3.) that two years after this that King sent over the Duke of Alva, with that severe Commission which has been often printed, in which, without any regard had to the former Pacification or Promises, the King declared, that the Provinces had forfeited all their Li­berties, and that every man in it had forfeited his life; and therefore he authorised that unmerciful Man to proceed with all possible Rigour against them. It is also remark­able, that that bloody Commission is founded on the King's Absolute Power, and his Zeal for Religion. This is the only Edict that I know, in which a King has pre­tended to Absolute Power, before the two Declarations for Scotland in the year 1687. so whether they who penned them took their Pattern from this, I cannot determine it. I could carry this view of History much further, to shew in many more Instances, how little Protestants can depend on the Faith of Roman Catholicks, and that their Condition is so much the worse, the more pious that their Princes are. As for what may be objected to all this, from the present State of some Principalities or Towns in Germany, or of the Switzers and Grisons; it is to be considered, that in some of these, want of Power in the [Page 71] Roman Catholicks to do mischief, and the other Circum­stances of their Affairs, are visibly the only Securities of the Protestants; and whensoever this Nation departs from that, and gives up the Laws, it is no hard thing to guess how short-lived the Liberty of Conscience, even tho' setled into a Magna Charta, would be.

V. All that our Author says upon the General Subject of Liberty of Conscience, is only a severe Libel upon that Church, whose Principles and Practices are so contrary to it. But the Proposition lately made, has put an end to all this Dispute; since by an Offer of Repealing the Penal Laws, reserving only those of the Test, and such others as secure the Protestant Religion, the question is now no more, which Religion must be tolerated, but which Reli­gion must reign and prevail. All that is here offered in Opposition to that, is, that by this means such a number of Persons must be ruined, Pag. 64. which is as severe a way of forcing People to change their Religion, as the way of Dragoons. I will not examine the particulars of this matter, but must express my joy to find, that all the Difficulty which is in our way to a happy quiet, is the supplying such a num­ber of men with the means of their subsistance, which by the Execution of the Law for the Test, must be taken from them. This by all that I can learn, will not come to near an Hundred Thousand Pound a year; and indeed the supplying of those of the King's Religion, that want it, is a piece of Charity and Bounty so worthy of him, that I do not know a man that would envy them the double of this in Pensions: and if such a Sum would a little charge the King's Revenue, I dare say, when the Settlement of the Nation is brought to that single point, there would not be one Negative found in either House of Parliament, for the reimbursing the King: So far are we from desiring either the Destruction, or even the Poverty of those that perhaps wait only for an occasion to burn us. I will add one bold thing further, that tho' I will be no undertaker for what a Parliament may do, yet I am confident that all men are so far from any desire of Revenge, but most [Page 72] of all, that the Heroical Minds of the next Successors are above it; that if an Indemnity for that bold violation of the Law that has been of late both practised and autho­rised among us, would procure a full Settlement, even this could be obtained, tho' an Impunity after such Transgres­sions, is perhaps too great an Encouragement to offend for the future. But since it is the Preservation of the Na­tion, and not the ruine of any party in it, that is aimed at, the Hardiness of this Proposition will, I hope, be forgiven me. It is urged, pag. 63. that according to the Dutch Pattern at least the Roman Catholicks may have a share in Military Employments; but the difference between our Case and theirs, is clear; since some Roman Catholick Offi­cers, where the Government is wholly in the Hands of of Protestants, cannot be of such dangerous Consequence as it must needs be under a King that is not only of that Perswasion, but is become nearly allied to the Society, as the Liege Letter tells us.

VI. It is true, our Author would perswade us, that the King's dispensing Power has already put an end to the Dispute, and that therefore it is a seeming sort of Per­jury, see pag. 48. to keep the Justices of Peace still under an Oath of executing those Laws, which they must con­sider no more. Some Presidents are brought from for­mer times, pag. 22, 23, 24. of our Kings using the dis­pensing Power in Edward the Third, Richard the Second, Henry the Seventh, Henry the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, and Queen Elizabeth's time. It is very true, that the Laws have been of late broke through among us with a very high hand, but it is a little too dangerous to up­braid the Justices of Peace with their Oaths, lest this oblige them to reflect on so sacred an Engagement; for the worthy Members of Magdalen Colledge are not the only Persons in England, who will make Conscience of observing their Oaths; so that if others are brought to reflect too much on what they do, our Author's Of­ficiousness in suggesting this to them, may prove to be no acceptable piece of servce. I will not examine all his Pre­sidents; [Page 73] we are to be governed by Law, and not by some of the excesses of Government; nor is the latter end of Ed­ward the Third a time to be much imitated: and of all the parts of the English History, Richard the Second's Reign should be the least mentioned, since those excesses of his produced so Tragical a Conclusion as the loss of his Crown and Life. Henry the Sixth's feeble and imbroiled Reign will scarce support an Argument; and if there were some excesses in Hen­ry the Eighth's time, which is ordinary in all great Revolu­tions, he got all these to be either warranted, or afterwards confirmed in Parliament. And Q. Elizabeth's Power in Ec­clesiastical matters was founded on a special Act of Parliament, which was in a great measure repealed in the year 1641. and that Repeal was again ratified by another Act in the late King's time. We are often told of the late King's repealing the Act concerning the Sise of Carts and Waggons; but all Lawyers know that some Laws are understood to be abro­gated without a special Repeal, when some visible Inconve­nience enforces it; such as appeared in that mistaken Act concerning Waggons; so the King in that case only declared the Inconvenience which made that Law to be of it self null because it was impracticable. It is true, the Parliament ne­ver questioned this; a man would not be offended if another pulled a Flower in his Garden, that yet would take it ill if he broke his Hedge: and in Holland, to which our Author's Pen leads him often, when a River changes its course, any man may break the Dike that was made to resist it, yet that will be no warrant to go and break the Dike that re­sists the Current of the same River: So if a dispensing Power, when applied to smaller Offences, has been pas­sed over, as an excess of Government, that might be ex­cusable, tho' not justifiable, this will by no means prove, that Laws made to secure us against that which we esteem the greatest of Evils may be superseded, because twelve Men in Scarlet have been hired or practised on to say so; the Power of pardoning is also unreasonably ur­ged for justifying the Dispensing Power; the one is a Grace to a particular Person for a Crime committed, whereas the other is a warrant to commit Crimes. In [Page 74] short, the one is a Power to save Men, and the other is a Power to destroy the Government. But tho' they swagger it out now with the Dispensing Power, yet rode caper vitem may come to be again in season; and a time may come, in which the whole Party will have reason to wish that some hair-brained Jesuits had never been born, who will rather expose them not only to the Re­sentments, but even to the Justice of another season, in which as little regard will be had to the Dispensing Power, as they have to the Laws at present, then accept of reasonable Propositions.

VII. Our Author's Kindness to the States of Hol­land, is very particular, and returns often upon him, and it is no wonder that a State setled upon two such Hinges, as the Protestant Religion, and publick Liberty, should be no small Eye sore to those who intend to destroy both So that the slackning the Laws concerning Religion, and the invading that State, seem to be Terms that must al­ways go together. In the first War began the first slack­ning of them; and after the Triple Alliance had laid the Dutch asleep, when the second War was resolved on, which began with that Heroical Attempt on the Smyrna Fleet, (for our Author will not have the late King's Actions to be forgotten) at the same time the famous Declaration suspending the Laws in 1672. came out; and now again with another Declaration to the same purpose, we see a return of the same good Inclinations for the Dutch, tho' none before our Author has ever ventured in a Book licensed by my Lord President of the Council, to call that Constitution, pag. 68. A Revolt that they made from their lawful Prince; and to raise his stile to a more sublime Strain, he says, pag. 66. That their Commonwealth is only the Result of an absolute Rebellion, Revolt, and Defection from their Prince; and that the Laws that they have made, were to prevent any casual return to their natural Allegiance. And speaking of their Obligation to protect a Natura­lized Subject, he bestows this Honour on them, as to say, pag. 57, 58. Those that never yet dealt so fairly with [Page 75] Princes, may be suspected for such a superfluous Faith to one that puts himself upon them for a Vassal. Time will shew how far the States will resent these Injuries; only it seems our Author thinks, that a Soveraign's Faith to protect the Subject, is a superfluous thing; a Faith to Hereticks is another superfluous thing; so that two Su­perfluities, one upon another, must be all that we are to trust to. But I must take notice of the variety of Methods that these Gentlemen use in their Writings. Here in England we are always upbraided with the Revolt of the Dutch, as a scandalous Imputation on the Protestant Religion; and yet in a late Paper, entituled, An Answer to Pensioner Fagel's Letter, the Services that the Roman Catholicks did in the beginning of that Com­monwealth, are highly extolled as signal and merito­rious; upon which the Writer makes great Complaints, That the Pacification of Gaunt, and the Union at Utrecht, by which the free Exercise of their Religion was to be continued to them, was not observed in most of the Provinces: But if he had taken pains to examine the History of the States, he would have found, that soon after the Union made at Utrecht, the Treaty at Col­len was set on foot, between the King of Spain and the States, by the Emperor's Mediation, in which the Spaniars studied to divide the Roman Catholicks of these Provinces from the Protestants, by offering a Confirma­tion of all the other Priviledges of these Provinces, ex­cepting only the Point of Religion, which had so great an Effect, that the Party of the Malcontents was form­ed upon it; and these did quickly capitulate in the Walloon Provinces; and after that not only Barbant and Flanders capitulated, but Reenenburgh that was Governour of Groening, declared for the King of Spain, and by some Places that he took both in Friseland and Over-Issel, he put these Provinces under Contribution. Not long after that, both Daventer and Zutphen were betray­ed by Popish Governours; and the War was thus brought within the Seven Provinces, that had been be­fore [Page 76] kept at a greater distance from them. Thus it did appear almost every where, that the hatred with which the Priests were inspiring the Roman Catholicks against the Protestants, disposed them to betray all again to the Spanish Tyranny. The new War that Reenenburgh's Treachery had brought into these Provinces, changed so the State of Affairs, that no wonder if this produced a change likewise with relation to that Religion, since it appeared, that these Revolts were carried on, and justi­fied upon the Principles of that Church; and the general Hatred under which these Revolts brought the Roman Catholicks in those Out Provinces, made the greater part of them to withdraw; so that there were not left such numbers of them as to pretend to the free Exercise of their Religion. But the War not having got into Hol­land and Utrecht, and none of that Religion having re­volted in those Provinces, the Roman Catholicks conti­nued still in the Country; and tho' the ill Inclinations that they shewed, made it necessary for the publick Safe­ty, to put them out of the Government, yet they have still enjoyed the common Rights of the Country, with the free Exercise of their Religion. But it is plain, that some men are only waiting an opportunity to re­new the old Delenda est Carthago, and that they think it is no small step to it, to possess all the World with o­dious Impressions of the Dutch, as a rebellious and perfi­dious State; and if it were possible, they would even make their own Roman Catholick Subjects fancy that they are persecuted by them: But tho' men may be brought to believe Transubstantiation, in spite of the Evidence of Sense to the contrary, yet those that feel themselves at ease, will hardly be brought to think that they are persecuted, because they are told so in an ill-writ Pamphlet. And for their Rebellion, the Prince that is only concerned in that, finds them now to be his best Allies, and chief Supports, as his Predecessors acknowledged them a Free State, almost an Age ago. And it being confessed by the Historians of all sides, That there was an express Pro­viso [Page 77] in the Constitution of their Government, That if their Prince broke such and such Limits, they were no more bound to obey him, but might resist him; and it being no less certain, that King Philip the Second authorised the the Duke of Alva to seise upon all their Priviledges, their resisting him, and maintaining their Priviledges, was without all Dispute, a justifiabble Action, and was so esteemed by all the States of Europe, and in particular here in England, as appears by the Preambles of several Acts of Subsidy that were given the Queen in order to the assisting the States; and as for their not dealing fairly with Princes, when our Author can find such an Instance in their History, as our Attempt upon their Smyrna Fleet was, he may employ his Eloquence in set­ting it out; and if notwithstanding all the Failures that they have felt from others, they have still main­tained the Publick Faith, our Author's Rhetorick will hardly blemish them. The Peace of Nimmegen, and the abandoning of Luxemburgh, are perhaps the single Instances in their History that need to be a little ex­cused. But as the vast Expence of the late War brought them into a Necessity that either knows no Law, or at least will hearken to none; so we, who forced them to both, and first sold the Triple Alliance, and then let go Luxemburgh, do with a very ill grace reproach the Dutch for these unhappy steps to which our Conduct drove them.

VIII. If a strain of pert bolness runs thro this whole Pamphlet, it appears no where more eminently, than in the Reflections the Author makes on Mr. Fagel's Let­ter: He calls it, pag. 62. a pretended Piece, and a Pre­sumption not to be soon pardoned, in prefixing to a surrepti­tious and unauthorised Pamphlet the Reverend Name of the Princess of Orange; which in another place (Page 72.) he had reason to imagine; was but a Counterfeit Coin, and that those Venerable Characters were but politically feigned, and a Sacred Title given to it without their Au­thority. [Page 78] All this coming out with so solemn a License, has made me take some pains to be rightly informed in this matter; those whom I consulted, tell me, they have discoursed the Pensioner himself on this Subject, who will very shortly take a sure Method to clear himself of those Imputations; and to do that right to the Prince and Prin­cess, as to shew the World, that in this matter he acted only by their Order. For as Mr. Stew­art's Letter drew the Pensioner's Answer from him, so this Paper, licensed as it is, will now draw from him a particular Recital of the whole Progress of this Matter. Mr. Albeville knows, that the Princess explained her self so fully to him in the Month of May and June, 1687. upon the Repeal of the Test, that he himself has acknowledged to several Persons, that though both the Prince and Princess were very stiff in that matter, yet of the two, he found the Princess more inflexible. Afterwards when Mr. Stewart, by many repeated Letters, pressed his Friend to renew his Importunities to the Pensioner for an Answer; he having also said in his Letters, That he writ by the King's Order and Direction: Upon this, the Pensioner having consulted the Prince and Princess, drew his Letter first in Dutch, and communicated it to them; and it being approved by them, he turned it into Latine: but because it was to be shewed to the King, he thought it was fit to get it to be put in English, that so their Highnesses might see that Translation of his Letter, which was to be offered to His Majesty; [Page 79] and they having approved of it, he sent it with his own in Latine, and it was delivered to the King. This Account was given me by my Friend, who added, that it would appear e're long in a more Authentical manner. And by this I suppose the Impudence of those men does sufficiently appear, who have the Brow to pub­tish such Stuff, of the Falshood of which they themselves are well assured: And therefore I may well conclude, that my Lord President's License was granted by him, with that Care­lessness with which most Books are read and li­censed. Our Author pretends, that he can­not believe that this Letter could flow from a Princess of so sweet a Temper, pag. 62. and yet others find so much of the Sweetness of her Temper in it, that for that very reason they believe it the more easily to have come from her. No Passion or indiscreet Zeal appears in it; and it expresses such an extended Charity and Nobleness of Temper, that these Characters shew it comes from one that has neither a nar­rowness of Soul, nor a sourness of Spirit. In short, She proposes nothing in it, but to pre­serve that Religion which she believes the true one; and that being secured, she is willing that all others enjoy all the Liberties of Subjects, and the Freedoms of Christians. Here is Sweetness of Temper and Christian Charity in their fullest extent. The other Reason is so mysteriously ex­pressed, that I will not wrong our Author by putting it in any other words than his own, [Page 80] pag. 62. She is certainly as little pleased to pro­mote any thing to the Disturbance of a State, to which she still seems so nearly related. She seems still, are two significant Words, and not set here for nothing. She seems (in his Opinion) only related to the Crown; that is, She is not really so: but there is something that these Gentlemen have in reserve to blow up this seeming Relation. And She seems still, imports, that though this apparent Relation is suffered to pass at present, yet it must have its Pe­riod; for this seems still, can have no other meaning. But in what does She promote the Disturbance of the State, or Patronise the Op­posers of her Parents? as he says afterwards (ibid.) Did She officiously interpose in this matter, or was not her Sense asked? And when it was asked, must She not give it ac­cording to her Conscience? She is too per­fect a Pattern in all other things, not to know well how great a Respect and Submission She owes her Father: but She is too good a Chri­stian, not to know that her Duty to God must go first: And therefore in matters of Reli­gion, when Her Mind was asked, She could not avoid the giving it according to her Conscience; and all the invidious Expressions which he fastens on this Letter, and which he makes so many Arguments to shew that it could not flow from Her, are all the malicious and soon-discovered Artifices of one that knew that She had ordered the Letter, and that thought him­self safe in this Disguise, in the discharging of [Page 81] his Malice against her. So ingratefully is she required by a Party for whom she had expressed so much Compassion and Charity. This Author, Pag. 53. thinks it is an inde­cent forecast to be always erecting such Schemes for the next Heir, both in Discourse and Writing, as seem almost to calcu­late the Nativity of the present: and he would almost make this High-Treason. But if it is so, there were many Trai­tors in England a few Years ago; in which the next Heir, though but a Brother, was so much considered, that the King himself look'd as one out of Countenance and aban­doned, and could scarce find Company enough about him for his Entertainment, either in his Bed-Chamber or in his Walks; when the whole Dependance was on the Successor: so if we by turns look a little at the Successor, those who did this in so scandalous a manner, ought not to take it so very ill from us. In a melancholy State of things, it is hard to deny us the Consolation of hoping that we may see better Days. But since our Author is so much concerned, that this Letter should not be in any manner imputed to the Princess, it seems a little strange, that the Prince is so given up by him, that he is at no pains to clear him of the Imputation. For the happy Union that is between them, will readily make us conclude, that if the Prince ordered it, the Princess had likewise her share in it. I find but one glance at the Prince in the whole Book, Pag. 52. when the Author is pleasing himself with the hopes of Protection from the Royal Heir out of a sense of Filial Duty: He concludes, Especially when so nearly allied to the very Bosom of a Prince whose way of Worship neither is the same with the National here, and in whose Countries all Religions have been ever alike tolerated. The Phrase of so near an Alliance to the very Bosom of a Prince, is somewhat extraordinary: An Author that will be florid, scorns so simple an Expression as married; he thought the other was more lofty. But the matter of this Period is more remarkable: it intimates as if the Prince's way of Worship was so different from ours; tho we hear that he goes frequently with the Princess to her Chappel: and expresses no aversion to any of our Forms, tho he thinks it decent to be more constantly in the Exercises of Devotion that are authorised in Holland. And as for that, that all Religions have been ever alike tolerated there, it is another of our [Page 82] Author's flights. I do not hear that there are either Bonzis or Bramans in Holland, or that the Mahometans have their Mosques there: And sure his Friends the Roman Catholicks will tell him, that all Religions are not alike tolerated there. Thus I have followed him more largely in this Article, than in any other, it being that of the greatest Importance, by which he had endeavoured to blast all the good effects which the Pensioners Letter has had among us.

IX. I have now gone over that, which I thought most important in this Paper: and in which it seemed necessary to inform the Publick aright, without insisting on the particular Slips of the Author of it, or of the Advantages that he gives to any that would answer him more particularly. I cannot think that any Man in the Nation can be now so weak, as not to see what must needs be the effect of the Abolition of the Test: after all that we see and hear, it is too great an Affront to Mankind to offer to make it out. A Man's Understanding may really mislead him so far as to make him change his Religion, he remaining still an honest Man; but no Man can pretend to be thought an ho­nest Man, that betrays the legal, and now the only visible Defences of that Religion which he professes. The taking away the Test for publick Employments, is to set up an Office at Fa­ther Peter's for all Pretenders; and perhaps a Pretender will not be so much as received, till he has first abjured; so that every Vacancy will probably make five or six Profelites; and those Protestants who are already in Employments, will feel their ground quickly fail under them, and upon the first Complaint, they will see what must be done to restore them to favour. And as for the two Houses of Parliament, as a great Creation will presently give them the Majority in the House of Lords: so a new set of Charters, and bold Returns, will in a little time give them likewise the Majority in the House of Commons: and if it is to be supposed that Protestants, who have all the Security of the Law for their Religion, can throw that up; who can so much as doubt that when they have brought themselves into so naked a condition, it will be no hard thing to overturn their whole Establishment? and then perhaps we shall be told more plainly, what is now but darkly insinuated to us by this Author; that the next Heir seems still to be so nearly related to this State.

I. ONE should think that the Behaviour of the English Clergy for some Years past, and the present Cir­cumstances in which they are, should set them be­yond Slander, and by consequence above Apologies; yet since the Malice of her Enemies works against her with so much Spight, and since there is no Insinuation that carries so much Malice in it, and that seems to have such colours of Truth on it, as this of their having set on a severe Persecution against the Dissenters, of being still sour'd with that Leaven, and of carry­ing the same implacable Hatred to them, which the present Reputation that they have gained may put them in a further capacity of executing, if another Revolution of Affairs should again give them Authority set about it; it seems necessary to examine it, and that the rather, because some aggravate this so far, as if nothing were now to be so much dreaded as the Church of England's getting out of her present Distress.

II. If these Imputations were charged on us only by those of the Church of Rome, we should not much wonder at it; for though it argues a good degree of Confidence for any of [Page 84] that Communion to declaim against the Severities that have been put in Practice among us, since their little Finger must be heavier than ever our Loins were, and to whose Scorpions our Rods ought not to be compared; yet after all, we are so much accustomed to their Methods, that nothing from them can sur­prise us. To hear Papists declare against Persecution, and Jesuits cry up Liberty of Conscience, are, we confess, unusual things: yet there are some degrees of Shame, over which when People are once passed, all things become so familiar to them, that they can no more be put out of countenance. But it seems very strange to us, that some, who if they are to be believed, are strict to the severest Forms and Sub-divisions of the Reformed Religion, and who some Years ago were jea­lous of the smallest steps that the Court made, when the dan­ger was more remote, and who cried out Popery and Persecu­tion, when the design was so mask'd, that some well-meaning Men could not miss being deceived by the Promises that were made, and the Disguises that were put on; that, I say, these very Persons who were formerly so distrustful, should now, when the Mask is laid off, and the Design is avowed, of a sudden grow to be so believing, as to throw off all Distrust, and be so gulled as to betray all; and to expose us to the Rage of those, who must needs give some good words, till they have gone the round, and tried how effectually they can divide and deceive us, that so they may destroy us the more easily; this is indeed somewhat extraordinary. They are not so ignorant as not to know, that Popery cannot change its Nature, and that Cruelty and Breach of Faith to Hereticks, are as necessary parts of that Religion, as Transubstantiation and the Pope's Su­premacy are. If Papists were not Fools, they must give good Words and fair Promises, till by these they have so far de­luded the poor credulous Hereticks, that they may put them­selves in a posture to execute the Decrees of their Church a­gainst them; and though we accuse that Religion as guilty both of Cruelty and Treachery, yet we do not think them Fools: so till their Party is stronger than God be thanked it is at present, they can take no other method than that they take. The Church of England was the Word among them somst Years ago, Liberty of Conscieece is the Word at present; [Page 85] and we have all possible reason to assure us, that the Promises for maintaining the one, will be as religiously kept as we see those are which were lately made with so great a profusion of Protestations, and shews of Friendship for the supporting of the other.

III. It were great Injustice to charge all the Dissenters with the Impertinencies that have appeared in many Addresses of late, or to take our measures of them, from the impudent strains of an Alsop or a Care, or from the more important and now more visible steps that some among them of a higher form are every day making; and yet after all this, it cannot be denied but the several Bodies of the Dissenters have behaved themselves of late like Men, that understand too well the true Interest of the Protestant Religion, and of the English Govern­ment, to sacrifice the whole and themselves in Conclusion to their private Resentments: I hope the same Justice will be allowed me in stating the matter relating to the so much de­cried Persecution set on by the Church of England; and that I may be suffered to distinguish the Heats of some angry and deluded Men, from the Doctrine of the Church, and the Practices that have been authorized in it; that so I may shew, that there is no reason to infer from past Errors, that we are incurable; or that new Opportunities inviting us again into the same Severities, are like to prevail over us to commit the same Follies over again. I will first state what is past, with the Sincerity that becomes one that would not lie for God; that is not afraid nor ashamed to confess Faults that will nei­ther aggravate nor extenuate them beyond what is just, and that yet will avoid the saying of any thing that may give any cause of Offence to any Party in the Nation.

IV. I am very sorry that I must confess, that all the Parties among us, have shewed, that as their turn came to be upper­most, they have forgot the same Principles of Moderation and Liberty which they all claimed when they were oppressed. If it should shew too much ill nature to examine what the Presbytery did in Scotland when the Covenant was in Dominion, or what the Independents have done in New-England; why may [Page 86] not I claim the same priviledg with relation to the Church of England, if Severities have been committed by her while she bore Rule? yet it were as easy as it would be invidious to shew, that both Presbyterians and Independents have carried the Principle of Rigor in the point of Conscience much higher, and have acted more implacably upon it than ever the Church of England has done, even in its angriest fits; so that none of them can much reproach another for their Excesses in those matters. And as of all the Religions in the World the Church of Rome is the most persecuting, and the most bound by her Principles to be unalterably cruel; so the Church of England is the least persecuting in her Principles, and the least obliged to repeat any Errors to which the Intrigues of Courts, or the Passions incident to all Parties may have engaged her, of any National Church in Europe. It cannot be said to be any part of our Doctrine, when we came out of one of the blackest Per­secutions that is in History, I mean Queen Mary's, we shewed how little we retained of the Cruelty of that Church, which had provoked us so severely; when not only no Inquiries were made into the illegal Acts of Fury, that were committed in that persecuting Reign, but even the Persecutors themselves lived among us at Ease and in Peace; and no Penal Law was made except against the publick Exercise of that Religion, till a great many Rebellions and Treasons extorted them from us for our own Preservation. This is an Instance of the Cle­mency of our Church, that perhaps cannot be matched in History: and why should it not be supposed, that if God should again put us in the state in which we were of late, that we should rather imitate so noble a Patern, than return to those Mistakes of which we are now ashamed?

V. It is to be considered, that upon the late King's Restau­ration, the remembrance of the former War, the ill usage that our Clergy had met with in their Sequestrations, the angry Re­sentments of the Cavalier Party, who were ruined by the War; the Interest of the Court to have all those Principles condemned that had occasioned it; the heat that all Parties that have been ill-used are apt to fall into upon a Revolution; but above all, the Practices of those who have still blown the [Page 87] Coals, and set us one against another, that so they might not only have a divided Force to deal with, but might, by turns, make the Divisions among us serve their Ends: All these, I say, concurred to make us lose the happy Opportunity that was offered in the Year 1660, to have healed all our Divisions, and to have triumphed over all the Dissenters; not by ruining them, but by overcoming them with a Spirit of Love and Gentleness; which is the only Victory that a Generous and Christian Temper can desire. In short, unhappy Counsels were followed, and severe Laws were made: But after all, it was the Court Party that carried it for rougher Methods. Some con­siderable Accidents, not necessary to be here mentioned, as they stopped the Mouths of some that had formed a wiser Project, so they gave a fatal Advantage to angry and crafty Men, that to our misfortune, had too great a stroak in the conduct of our Affairs at that Time. This Spirit of Severity was height­ned by the Practices of the Papists, who engaged the late King in December 1662, to give a Declaration for Liberty of Con­science. Those who knew the Secret of his Religion, as they saw that it aimed at the Introduction of Popery, so they thought there was no way so effectual for the keeping out of Popery, as the maintaining the Uniformity, and the suppressing of all Designs for a Toleration. But while those who managed this, used a due reserve, in not discovering the secret Motive that led them to it; others flew into Severity, as the Principle in vogue: And thus all the slacknings of the rigour of the Laws, during the first Dutch War, that were set on upon the pretence of quieting the Nation, and of encouraging Trade, were re­sisted by the Instruments of an honest Minister of State, who knew as well then, as we do now, what lay still at bottom, when Liberty of Conscience was pretended.

VI. Upon that Minister's Disgrace, some that saw but the half of the Secret, perceiving in the Court a great inclination to Toleration, and being willing to take Measures quite different from those of the former Ministry, they entred into a Treaty for a Comprehension of some Dissenters, and the tolerating of others; And some Bishops and Clergy-men, that were inferior to none of the Age in which they lived, for true Worth and a right [Page 88] Judgment of Things, engaged so far, and with so much suc­cess into this Project, that the Matter seemed done, all things being concerted among some of the most considerable Men of the different Parties. But the dislike of that Ministry, and the Jealousy of the ill Designs of the Court, gave so strong a Prejudice against this, that the Proposition could not be so much as hearkned to by the House of Commons: And then it appeared how much the whole Popish Party was allarmed at the Project: It is well known with how much Detestation they speak of it to this day; though we are now so fully satisfied of their Intentions to destroy us, that the Zeal which they pretended for us, in opposing that Design, can no more pass up­on us.

VII. At last, in the Year 1672. the Design for Popery dis­covering it self, the End that the Court had in favouring a Toleration became more visible: And when the Parliament met, that condemned the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, the Members of the House of Commons, that either were Dissen­ters, or that favoured them, behaved themselves so worthily in concurring with those of the Church of England, for stifling that Toleration, chusing rather to lose the benefit of it, than to open a Breach at which Popery should come in, that many of the Members that were of the Church of England pro­mised to procure them a Bill of Ease for Protestant Dissenters. But the Session was not long enough for bringing that to Per­fection; and all the Sessions of that Parliament after that, were spent in such a continual struggle between the Court and Country-Party, that there was never room given for calm and wise Consultations: yet though the Party of the Church of England did not perform what had been promised by some leading Men to the Dissenters, there was little or nothing done against them, after that, till the Year 1681, so that for about nine Years together they had their Meetings almost as publickly and as regularly as the Church of England had their Churches, and in all that time, whatsoover parti­cular Hardships any of them might have met with in some corners of England, it cannot be denied but they had the free Exercise of their Religion, at least in most parts.

VIII. In the Year 1678, things began to change their face: it is known that upon the breaking out of the Popish Plot, the Clergy did universally express a great desire for coming to some temper in the Points of Conformity: all sorts and ranks of the Clergy seemed to be so well dispo­sed towards it, that if it had met with a sutable Entertain­ment, matters might probably have been in a great measure composed. But the Jealousy that those who managed the Civil Concerns of the Nation in the House of Commons, took off all that was done at Court, or proposed by it, occasioned a fatal Breach in our Publick Councils: in which division, the Clergy by their Principles and Interests, and their Disposition to believe well of the Court, were deter­mined to be of the King's side. They thought it was a Sin to mistrust the late King's Word, who assured them of his steadiness to the Protestant Religion so often, that they firmly depended on it: and his present Majesty gave them so many Assurances of his maintaining still the Church of England, that they believed him likewise: and so thought that the Ex­clusion of him from the Crown, was a degree of Rigor to which they in Conscience could not consent: upon which they were generally cried out on, as the Betrayers of the Nation and of the Protestant Religion: Those who demanded the Ex­clusion, and some other Securities, to which the Bishops would not consent in Parliament, looked on them as the chief hin­derance that was in their way: and the License of the Press at that time was such, that many Libels, and some severe Dis­courses were published against them. Nor can it be denied, that many Church-men, who understood not the Principles of Human Society, and the Rules of our Government, so well as other Points of Divinity, writ several Treatises concerning the measures of Submission, that were then as much censured, as their Performances since against Popery have been deservedly admired. All this gave such a Jealousy of them to the Nation, that it must be confessed, that the Spirit which was then in fermentation went very high against the Church of England, as a Confederate at least to Popery and Tyranny. Nor were several of the Nonconformists wanting to inflame this dislike; all secret Propositions for accommodating our Differences were [Page 90] so coldly entertained, that they were scarce hearkned to. The Propositions which an Eminent Divine made even in his Books writ against Separation, shewed, that while we maintained the War in the way of Dispute, yet we were still willing to treat: for that great Man made not those Advances towards them without consulting with his Superiors. Yet we were then fatally given up to a Spirit of Dissention: and tho the Parlia­ment in 1680 entred upon a project for healing our Diffe­rences, in which great steps were made to the removing of all the occasions of our Contest; the Leaders of the Dissenters, to the amazement of all Persons, made no account of this, and even seemed uneasy at it, of which the Earl of Nottingham and Sir Thomas Clarges, that set on that Bill with much Zeal, can give a more particular account. All these things concurred to make those of the Church of England conclude, a little too rashly, that their Ruin was resolved on; and then it was no wonder if the Spirit of a Party, the remembrance of the last Wars, the present prospect of Danger, and above all, the great favour that was shewed them at Court, threw them into some angry and violent Counsels. Self-preservation is ve­ry natural: and it is plain, that many of them took that to be the case; so that truly speaking, it was not so much at first a Spirit of Persecution, as a desire of disabling those who they believed intended to ruin them from effecting their Designs, that set them on to all those unhappy things that followed. They were animated to all they did by the conti­nued Earnestness of the King and Duke, and their Ministers. That Reproach of Justice and of the Profession of the Law, who is now so high, was singled out for no other end, but to be their Common-Hangman over England: of whom the late King gave this true Character, That he had neither Wit, Law, nor Common Sense; but that he had the Impudence of ten carted Whores in him. Another Buffoon was hired to plague the Nation with three or four Papers a Week; which to the Reproach of the Age, in which we live, had but too great and too general an effect, for poisoning the Spirits of the Clergy. But those who knew how all this was managed, saw that it was not only set on, but still kept up by the Court. If any of the Clergy had put preached a word for Moderation, he had a chiding [Page 91] sent him presently from the Court; and he was from that day marked out as a disaffected Person; and when the Clergy of Lon­don did very worthily refuse to give Informations against their Parishioners that had not always conformed, the design having been formed upon that to bring them into the Spiritual Courts, and excommunicate them, and make them lose their Right of Voting, that so the Charter of London might have been delivered up when so many Citizens were by such means shut out of the Common-Council. We remember well how severe­ly they were censured for this, by some that are now dead, and others that are yet alive. I will not go further into this matter: I will not deny but many of the Dissenters were put to great Hardships in many parts of England. I cannot deny it, and I am sure I will never justify it. But this I will po­sitively say, having observed it all narrowly, that he must have the brow of a Jesuit, that can cast this wholly on the Church of England, and free the Court of it. The beginnings and the progress of it came from the Court, and from the Popish Party; and though perhaps every one does not know all the Secrets of this matter, that others may have found out, yet no Man was so ignorant as not to see what was the chief Spring of all those irregular Motions that some of us made at that time: so upon the whole matter, all that can be made out of this, is, that the Passions and Infirmities of some of the Church of England, being unhappily stirred up by the Dissenters, they were fatally conducted by the Popish Party, to be the Instru­ments in doing a great deal of Mischief.

IX. It is not to be doubted, but though some weaker Men of the Clergy may perhaps still retain their little peevish Animo­sities against the Dissenters; yet the wiser and more serious Heads of that great and worthy Body, see now their Error; they see who drove them on in it, till they hoped to have ruined them by it. And as they have appeared against Popery, with as great a strength of Learning and of firm Steadiness as perhaps can be met with in all Church-History, so it cannot be doubted, but their Reflections on the Dangers into which our Divsions have thrown us, have given them truer Notions with relation to a rigorous Conformity; and that the just Dete­station [Page 92] which they have expressed of the Corruptions of the Church of Rome, has led them to consider and abhor one of the worst things in it, I mean their Severity towards Hereticks. And the ill use that they see the Court has made of their Zeal for supporting the Crown, to justify the Subversion of our Government that is now set on, from some of their large and unwary Expressions, will certainly make them hereafter more cautious in meddling with Politicks: the Bishops have under their Hands both disowned that wide extent of the Prerogative, to the overturning of the Law, and declared their Disposition to come to a Temper in the matters of Conformity; and there seems to be no doubt left of the Sincerity of their Intentions in that matter. Their Piety and Vertue, and the prospect that they now have of suffering themselves, put us beyond all doubt as to their Sincerity; and if ever God in his Providence brings us again into a settled State, out of the Storm into which our Passions and Folly, as well as the Treachery of others, has brought us, it cannot be imagined that the Bishops will go off from those moderate Resolutions which they have now de­clared: and they continuing firm to them, the weak and in­discreet Passions of any of the Inferior Clergy must needs vanish, when they are under the Conduct of wise and worthy Leaders. And I will boldly say this, that if the Church of England, after she has got out of this Storm, will return to hearken to the peevishness of some four Men, she will be a­bandoned both of God and Man, and will set both Heaven and Earth against her. The Nation sees too visibly how dear the dispute about Conformity has cost us, to stand any more upon such Punctilios; and Those in whom our Deliverance is wrapt up, understand this matter too well, and judg too right of it, to imagine that ever they will be Priest-ridden in this point. So that all Considerations concur to make us con­clude, that there is no danger of our splitting a second time upon the same Rock: and indeed, if any Argument were wanting to compleat the certainty of this Point, the wise and generous Behaviour of the main Body of the Dissenters, in this present Juncture, has given them so just a Title to our Friend­ship, that we must resolve to set all the World against us if we can ever forget it, and if we do not make them all the returns of Ease and Favour when it is in our Power to do it.

X. It is to be hoped, that when this is laid together, it will have that effect on all sober and true Protestants, as to make them forget the little angry Heats that have been among us, and even to forget the Injuries that have been done us: all that we do now one against another, is to shorten the work of our Enemies, by destroying one another, which must in Conclu­sion turn to all our Ruin. It is a mad Man's Revenge, to de­stroy our Friends that we may do a pleasure to our Enemies, upon their giving us some good words; and if the Dissenters can trust to Papists, after the usage that the Church of Eng­land has met with at their Hands, all the Comfort that they can promise themselves, when Popery begins to act its natu­ral part among us, and to set Smithfield again in a Fire, is that which befell some Quakers at Rome, who were first put in the Inquisition, but were afterwards removed to Bedlam: so tho those false Brethren among the Dissenters, who deceive them at present, are certainly no Changlings, but know well what they are doing; yet those who can be cheated by them, may well claim the priviledg of a Bedlam, when their Folly has left them no other Retreat.

XI. I will not digress too far from my present purpose, nor enter into a discussion of the Dispensing Power, which was so effectually overthrown the other day at the King's Bench Bar, that I am sure all the Authority of the Bench it self is no more able to support it: Yet some late Papers in favour of it, give me occasion to add a little relating to that Point. It is true, the Assertor of the Dispensing Power, who has lately ap­peared with Allowance, pretends that it can only be applied to the Test for Publick Imployments: for he owns that the Test for both Houses of Parliament, is left entire, as not with­in the compass of this extent of the Prerogative: But another Writer, whom by his Sense we must conclude an Irish Man, by his Brow a Jesuit, and by the bare designation in the Title Page, of James Stewart's Letter, a Quaker, goes a strain higher, and thinks the King is so absolutely the Sovereign as to the Legislative part of our Government, that he may dissolve even the Parliament Test: so nimbly has he leap'd from being a Secretary to a Rebellion, to be an Advocate for Tyranny. He [Page 94] fancies, that because no Parliament can bind up another therefore they cannot limit the Preliminaries to a subsequen Parliament. But upon what is it then that Counties have but two Knights, and Burroughs as many; that Men below such a value have no Vote; that Sheriffs only receive Writs and re­turn Elections, besides many more necessary Requisites to the making a legal Parliament? In short, if Laws do not regulate the Election and Constitution of a Parliament, all these things may be overthrown, and the King may cast the whole Govern­ment in a new Mould, as well as dissolve the Obligation that is on the Members of Parliament for taking the Test. It is true, that as soon as a Parliament is legally met and consti­tuted, it is tied by no Laws, so far as not to repeal them: But the Preliminaries to a Parliament are still Sacred, as long as the Law stands that settled them; for the Members are still in the quality of ordinary Subjects, and not entred upon their share in the Legislative Power; till they are constituted in a Parlia­ment legally chosen and lawfully assembled, that is, having ob­served all the Requisites of the Law. But I leave that impudent Letter, to return to the most modest Apology that has been yet writ for the Dispensing Power. It yields that the King cannot abrogate Laws, and pretends only that he can dispense with them: And the distinction it puts between Abrogation and Dispensation, is, that the one is a total Repeal of the Law, and that the other is only a slackning of its obligatory Force, with Relation to a particular Man, or to any Body of Men; so that according to him, a simple Abrogation, or a total Repeal, is be­yond the compass of the Prerogative. I desire then that this Doctrine may be applied to the following words of the Decla­ration; from which the Reader may infer, whether these do import a simple Abrogation, or not; and by Consequence, if the Declaration is not Illegal; ‘We do hereby further declare, that it is our Royal Will and Pleasure, that the Oaths com­monly called the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance; and also the several Tests and Declarations—shall not at any time hereafter, be required to be taken, declared, or sub­scribed by any Person or Persons whatsoever, who is or shall be imployed in any Office or Place of Trust, either Civil or Mi­litary, under us, or in our Government.’ This is plain Eng­lish, [Page 95] and needs no Commentary. That Paper offers likewise an Expedient for securing Liberty of Conscience, by which it will be set beyond even the Dispensing Power; and that is, that by Act of Parliament all Persecution may be declared to be a thing Evil in it self, and then the Prerogative cannot reach it. But unless this Author fancies, that a Parliament is that which those of the Church of Rome believe a General Council to be, I mean, Infallible, I do not see that such an Act would signify any thing at all. An Act of Parliament cannot change the Nature of Things which are sullen, and will not alter, be­cause a hard Word is clap'd on them in an Act of Parliament; nor can that make that which is not Evil of it self become Evil of self: For can any Act of Parliament make the Clipping of Mony, or the not Burying in Wollen, evil of it self? Such an Act were indeed null of it self, and would sink with its own weight, even without the burden of the Prerogative to press it down; and yet upon such a Sandy Foundation would these Men have us build all our Hopes and our Securities. Another Topick like this, is, that we ought to trust to the Truth of our Religion, and the Providence and Protection of God, and not lean so much to Laws and Tests: All this were very perti­nent, if God had not already given us humane Assurances a­gainst the Rage of our Enemies, which we are now desired to abandon, that so we may fall an easy and cheap Sacrifice to those who wait for the favourable Moment to destroy us. By the same Reason they may perswade us to take off all our Doors, or at least all our Locks and Bolts, and to sleep in this exposed Condition, trusting to God's Protection. The Simily may appear a little too high, though it is really short of the Matter; for we had better trust our selves to all the Thieves and Robbers of the Town, who would be perhaps contented with a part of our Goods, than to those whose De­signs are equally against both Soul and Body, and all that is dear to us.

XII. I will only add another Reflection upon the renewing of the Declaration this Year, which has occasioned the present Storm upon the Clergy. It is repeated to us, that so we may see that the King continues firm to the Promises he made last [Page 96] Year. Yet when Men of Honour have once given their Word, they take it ill if any do not trust to that, but must needs have it repeated to them. In the ordinary Commerce of the World, the repeating of Promises over and over again, is rather a ground of Suspicion than of Confidence: and if we judg of the Accomplishment of all the other parts of the Declaration, from that one which relates to the maintaining of the Church of England as by Law established, the Proceedings against the Fel­lows of Magdalen Colledg, gives us no reason to conclude, that this will be like the Laws of the Medes and Persians, which alter not: all the talk of the New Magna Charta cannot lay us asleep, when we see so little regard had to the Old one. As for the se­curity which is offered us in this repeating of the King's Pro­mises, we must crave leave to remember, that the King of France, even after he had resolved to break the Edict of Nantes, yet repeated in above an hundred Edicts, that were real and visible Violations of that Edict, a Clause confirmatory of the Edict of Nantes, declaring that he would never Violate it: and in that we may see what Account is to be had of all Promises made to Hereticks in Matters Religion, by any Prince of the Roman Communion, but more particularly by a Prince who has put the conduct of his Conscience in the Hands of a Jesuite.

MR. Stewart staid about seven Months, after he had received the Pensionary's Letter, before he thought fit to write any Answer to it: and then instead of send­ing one in writing to the Pensioner, or in a Language under­stood by him, he has thought fit, by a Civility peculiar to himself, to print an Answer in English, and to send it abroad into the World, before the Pensioner had so much as seen it. The many and great Affairs that press hard upon that Eminent Minister, together with a sad want of Health, by which he has been long afflicted, have made, that he had not the leisure to procure Mr. Stewart's Letter to be translated to him, and to compare the Matters of Fact related to in it, with the Letters that were writ the last Year by Mr. Stewart, which are in his [Page 98] possession; nor did he think it Necessary to make too much hast: and therefore if he has let as many weeks pass, without ordering an Answer to be prepared, as the other had done Months, he thought that even this slowness, might look like one that despised this indecent Attempt upon his Honour, that Mr. Stewart has made in giving so unjust a representation of the Matter of Fact. He hopes he is too well known to the World, to apprehend that any Persons would entertain the hard thoughts of him, which Mr. Stewart's late Print may have of­fered to them; and therefore he has proceeded in this Matter, with the slowness that he thought became his Integrity, since a greater haste might have look'd like one that was uneasy, be­cause he knew himself to be in Fault. As for the reasoning part of Mr. Stewart's Paper, he has already expressed himself in his Letter to Mr. d' Albeville, that he will not enter into any arguing upon those Points, but will leave the Matter to the Judgment of every Reader; therefore he has given order only to examin those Matters of Fact, that are set forth in the be­ginning of Mr. Stewart's Letter, that so the World may have a true account of the Motives that induced him to write his Let­ter to Mr. Stewart, from the words of Mr. Stewart's own Let­ters: and then he will leave it to the Judgment of every Rea­der, whether Mr. Stewart has given the Matter of Fact fairly or not. It is true, the Pensioner has not thought fit to print all Mr. Stewart's Letters, at their full length; there are many Par­ticulars in them for which he is not willing to expose him: and in this he has shewed a greater regard to Mr. Stewart, than the usage that he has met with from him deserves: If Mr. Stewart has kept Copies of his own Letters, he must see that the Pen­sioner's reservedness is rather grounded on what he thought be­came himself, than on what Mr. Stewart has deserved of him. But if Mr. Stewart, or any in his Name, will take Advanta­ges from this, that the Letters themselves are not published, and that here there are only Extracts of them offered to the World, then the Pensioner will be excused, if he prints them all to a Tittle. The Truth is, it is scarce conceivable how Mr. Stewart could assume the confidence that appears in his printed Letter, if he have kept Copies of the Letters that he writ last Year: and if he engaged himself in Affairs of such Impor­tance, [Page 99] without keeping Copies of what he writ, it was some­what extraordinary; and yet this censure is that which falls the softest on him: but I will avoid every thing that looks like a sharpness of Expression; for the Pensioner expects, that he who is to give this Account to the English Nation, should rather consider the Dignity of the Post in which he is, than the Ad­vantages that Mr. Stewart may have given for replying sharply on him. And in this whole Matter the Pensioner's chief concern is, to offer to the World such a Relation of the Occasions that drew his Letter to Mr. Stewart from him, as may justify him against the false Insinuations that are given: he owed this like­wise, as an expression of his Respect and Duty to their High­nesses, in whose Name he wrote his Letter, and at whom all those false Representations are levelled, tho they fall first and immediately upon himself.

The sum of the Matter of Fact, as it is represented by Mr. Stewart, amounts to this, ‘That he was so surprised to see, in January last, the Pensioner's Letter to him in print, that he was inclined to disbelieve his own Eyes, considering the remoteness of the occasion that was given for that Let­ter: that he had never writ to the Pensioner, but was expresly cautioned against it. But that seeing the sincerity of the King's Intentions, he was desirous to contribute his small endeavours for the advancing so good a Work, and for that end he Obtained Leave to write to a private Friend, who he judged might have opportunity to represent any thing he could say to the best advantage; but that of the Letters which he writ to his Friend, there were only two intended for communicati­on, in which he studied to evince the Equity and Expediency, of repealing the Tests and the Penal Laws: and that with a pe­culiar regard to the Prince and Princess of Orange's Interest; and he desired that this might be Imparted to Friends, but chiefly to those at the Hague. And that this was the sub­stance of all that he writ on that occasion. But finding that the Prince had already declared himself in those Matters, he resolved to insist no further: yet his Friend insinuating, that he had still hopes to get a more distinct and satisfying Answer, from a better hand, though without naming the Person, he attended the Issue; and about the beginning of November, almost three moneths after his first writing, he re­ceived [Page 100] the Pensioner's Letter, though he had not writ to him (which is repeated again and again) and in it an account of the Prince and Princess of Orange's Thoughts about the Repeal of the Tests and Penal Laws (which he had not desired) upon which he took some care to prevent the publishing of it: But when he saw it in print, he clearly perceived that it was printed in Holland; and so wonders how the Pensioner could say, that it was printed in England, which he found in his printed Let­ter to Mr. d' Albeville. He knows not upon what Provocation the Pensioner writ that Letter: but in it he finds that he writ, that he was desired by himself to give him an account of the Prince and Princess of Orange's Thoughts, and that these pres­sing Desires were made to him by His Majestie's Knowledg and Allowance: this being so different from the Letters he had writ, of which he is sure that the account he has given is true in every point, he was forced to vindicate the King's Ho­nour and his own Duty. He writ not out of any curiosity to know their Highnesses Thoughts, which were already known, they having been signified to the Marquis of Albe­ville, and therefore he had no Orders from the King for wri­ting on that Subject, but only a Permission to use his little Endeavors for the advancing of his Service; but it was never moved to him to write, either in the King's Name, or in the Name of any of his Secretaries.’ This is Mr. Stewart's Account in the first nine Pages of his Letter, and is set down in his own words.

Now in opposition to all this, it will appear from the fol­lowing Extracts, that Mr. Stewart writ to his Friend, as the most proper Interpreter for addressing himself to the Pensio­ner: that he repeated his Proposition frequently, finding his Friend unwilling to engage in so Critical a matter. He gives great Assurances of His Majesties Resolutions never to alter the Succession, (which is plainly the Language of a Treaty) he pres­ses over and over again to know the Prince's Mind, whose con­currence in the Matter would be the best Guarentee of the Li­berty. He, by Name, desires his Letters may be shewed to the Prince and Princess of Orange (though he says, he only ordered them to be shewed to Friends at the Hague: so it seems he has the modesty to reckon them among the number of his Friends; but it is a question whether their Highnesses do so or [Page 101] not) he says in one Letter, That what he writ was from his Majesty himself, and enlarges more fully on this in two other Letters; and he desires, that the Princes Answers, with his Reasons, might be understood; which very probably gave the occasion to all the reasoning part of the Pensioner's Letter: and it appears by that Letter, that the Return to all this was expected by the King, and in almost every Letter he presses for a Return.

And in Conclusion, upon his receiving the Pensioner's Letter, he expresses likewise a great sense of the Honour done him in it: that he had so far complied with his Insignificant Endea­vours; he mentions his acquainting both the King and the Earls of Sunderland and Melfort with it; and in another Let­ter, after new Thanks for the Pensioner's Letter, he laments that it was so long delayed. But all these things will appear more evident to the Reader, from the Passages drawn out of Mr. Stewart's own Letters, which follow. Mr. Stewart seems not to know upon what provocation the Pensioner writ to Mr. d' Albeville, and yet the Pensioner had set that forth in the Letter it self; for the Pamphlet entituled Parliamentum Pacificum, that was licensed by the Earl of Sunderland, contained such Reflections on his Letter to Mr. Stewart, either as a Forgery, or as a thing done with­out the Princess of Orange's knowledg, that the Pensioner judged him­self bound in honour to do himself right. As for Mr. Stewart's criticalness, in knowing that the Pensioner's Letter was first print­ed in Holland, and his Reflection on the Pensioner for insinua­ting that the Letter was first printed in England; it is very like that Mr. Stewart, after so long a practice in Libels, knows how to distinguish between the Prints of the several Nations better than the Pensioner, whose course of Life has raised him above all such Practices. But it is certain, that wheresoever it was first printed, the Pensioner writ sincerely, and believed really that it was first printed in England. This is all that seemed necessary to be said for an Introduction to the following Ex­tracts.

The Pretor says thus;

It seems that the Abuse provided against by this Law, was known among the Athenians; for it is set forth among their other Disorders by Aristophanes, in the following words.

THis Enquiry cannot be regularly made, but by taking in the first place, a true and full view of the na­ture of Civil Society, and more particularly of the na­ture of Supream Power, whether it is lodged in one or more Persons?

I. It is certain, That the Law of Nature has put no diffe­rence nor subordination among Men, except it be that of Chil­dren to Parents, or of Wives to their Husbands; so that with Relation to the Law of Nature, all Men are born free; and this Liberty must still be supposed entire, unless so far as it is limited by Contracts, Provisions, or Laws. For a Man can either bind himself to be a Servant, or sell himself to be a Slave, by which he becomes in the power of another, only so far as it was provided by the Contract: since all that Liberty which was not expresly given away, remains still entire: so that the Plea for Liberty always proves it self, unless it appears that it is given up or limited by any special Agreement.

II. It is no less certain, that as the Light of Nature has planted in all Men a Natural Principle of the love of Life, and of a desire to preserve it; so the common Principles of all Religion agree in this, that God having set us in this World, we are bound to preserve that Being, which he has given us, by all just and lawful ways. Now this Duty of Self-preservation is exerted in Instances of two sorts; the one are, in the resisting of violent Aggressors; the other are the taking of just Revenges of those, who have invaded us so se­cretly, that we could not prevent them, and so violently that we could not resist-them: In which cases the Principle of self-Preservation warrants us, both to recover what is our own, with just Damages, and also to put such unjust Persons out of a Capacity of doing the like Injuries any more, either to our selves, or to any others. Now in these two Instances of Self-Preservation, this difference is to be observed; that the first cannot be limited by any slow Forms, since a pressing Danger re­quires a vigorous Repulse, and cannot admit of Delays; whereas the second, of taking Revenges, or Reparations, is not of such haste, but that it may be brought under Rules and Forms.

III. The true and Original Notion of Civil Society and Go­vernment, is, that it is a Compromise made by such a Body of Men, by which they resign up the Right of demanding Repa­rations, either in the way of Justice against one another, or in the way of War, against their Neighbours; to such a single Person, or to such a Body of Men as they think fit to trust with this. And in the management of this Civil Society, great distinction is to be made, between the Power of making Laws for the regulating the Conduct of it, and the Power of executing those Laws: The Supream Authority must still be supposed to be lodged with those who have the Legislative Power reserved to them, but not with those who have only the Executive; which is plainly a Trust, when it is separated from the Legislative Power; and all Trusts, by their nature import, that those to whom they are given, are accountable, even though that it should not be expresly specified in the words of the Trust it self.

IV. It cannot be supposed, by the Principles of Natural Religion, that God has authorised any one Form of Govern­ment, [Page 121] any other way than as the general Rules of Order, and of Justice, oblige all Men not to subvert Constitutions, nor disturb the Peace of Mankind, or invade those Rights with which the Law may have vested some Persons: for it is certain, that as private Contracts lodg or translate private Rights; so the Publick Laws can likewise lodg such Rights, Prerogatives and Revenues in those under whose Protection they put themselves, and in such a manner, that they may come to have as good a Title to these, as any private Person can have to his Property: so that it becomes an Act of high Injustice and Violence to invade these: which is so far a greater Sin than any such Actions would be against a private Person, as the publick Peace and Order is preferrable to all private Considerations whatsoever. So that in Truth, the Principles of Natural Religion, give those that are in Authori­ty no Power at all, but they do only secure them in the Possessi­on of that which is theirs by Law. And as no Considerations of Religion can bind me to pay another more than I indeed owe him, but do only bind me more strictly to pay what I owe; so the Considerations of Religion do indeed bring Subjects un­der stricter Obligations to pay all due Allegiance and Sub­mission to their Princes, but they do not at all extend that Allegiance further than the Law carries it. And though a Man has no Divine Right to his Property, but has acquired it by human means, such as Succession, or Industry; yet he has a Security for the Enjoyment of it from a Divine Right: so tho Princes have no immediate Warrants from Heaven, either for their Original Titles, or for the extent of them, yet they are secured in the Possession of them by the Principles and Rules of Natural Religion.

V. It is to be considered, that as a private Person can bind himself to another Man's Service, by different degrees, either as an ordinary Servant for Wages, or as one appropriate for a longer time, as an Apprentice; or by a total giving himself up to another, as in the case of Slavery: in all which cases the general Name of Master may be equally used, yet the degrees of his Power, are to be judged by the nature of the Con­tract: so likewise Bodies of Men can give themselves up in different degrees to the Conduct of others: and therefore [Page 122] though all those may carry the same Name of King, yet every ones Power is to be taken from the measures of that Authority which is lodged in him, and not from any general Speculations founded on some Equivocal Terms, such as King, Sovereign, or Sapream.

VI. It is certain, that God, as the Creator and Gover­nour of the World, may set up whom he will to rule over other Men: But this Declaration of his Will must be made evident by Prophets, or other extraordinary Men sent of him, who have some manifest Proofs of the Divine Authority that is committed to them on such occasions, and upon such Per­sons declaring the Will of God in favour of any others, that Declaration is to be submitted to and obeyed. But this pre­tence of a Divine Delegation, can be carried no further than to those who are thus expresly marked out, and is unjustly claimed by those who can prove no such Declaration to have been ever made in favour of them, or their Families. Not does it appear reasonable to conclude from their being in Possession, that it is the Will of God that it should be so, this justifies all Usurpers when they are successful.

VII. The measures of Power, and by consequence of Obedi­ence, must be taken from the express Laws of any State or Body of Men, from the Oaths that they swear, or from imme­morial Prescription, and a long Possession, which both give a Title, and in a long Tract of Time make a bad one be­came good, since Prescription, when it passes the Memory of Man, and is not disputed by any other Pretender, gives by the common Sense of all Men a just and good Title: so upon the whole matter, the degrees of all Civil Authority are to be taken either from express Laws, immemorial Customs, or from particular Oaths, which the Subjects swear to their Princes: this being still to be laid down for a Principle, that in all the Disputes between Power and Liberty, Power must always be proved, but Liberty proves it self; the one being founded only upon a Positive Law, and the other upon the Law of Nature.

VIII. If from the general Principles of Human Society, and Natural Religion, we carry this matter to be examined by the Scriptures, it is clear that all the Passages that are in the Old Testament, are not to be made use of in this matter of [...] ­ther [Page 123] side. For as the Land of Canaan was given to the Jews by an immediate Grant from Heaven; so God reserved still this to himself, and to the Declarations that he should make from time to time, either by his Prophets, or by the Answers that came from the Cloud of Glory that was between the Cherubims, to set up Judges or Kings over them, and to pull them down again as he thought fit. Here was an express De­legation made by God, and therefore all that was done in that Dispensation, either for or against Princes, is not to be made use of in any other State that is founded on another Bottom and Constitution, and all the Expressions in the Old Testament relating to Kings, since they belong to Persons that were immediately designed by God, are without any sort of Reason applied to those who can pretend to no such Desig­nation, neither for themselves, nor for their Ancestors.

IX. As for the New Testament, it is plain, that there are no Rules given in it, neither for the Forms of Government in general, nor for the degrees of any one Form in particular, but the general Rules of Justice, Order and Peace, being esta­blished in it upon higher Motives, and more binding Consi­derations, than ever they were in any other Religion what­soever, we are most strictly bound by it to observe the Con­stitution in which we are; and it is plain, that the Rules serve in the Gospel can be carried no further. It is indeed clear from the New Testament, that the Christian Religion as such, gives us no grounds to defend or propagate it by force. It is a Doctrine of the Cross, and of Faith, and Patience under it: And if by the order of Divine Providence, and of any Con­stitution of Government, under which we are born, we are brought under Sufferings for our professing of it, we may in­deed retire and fly out of any such Country if we can; but if that is denied us, we must then, according to this Religion, submit to those Sufferings under which we may be brought, considering that God will be glorified by us in so doing, and that he will both support us under our Suffering, and glori­ously reward us for them.

This was the State of the Christian Religion, during the three first Centuries, under Heathen Emperors, and a Constitu­tion in which Paganism was establish'd by Law. But if by the [Page 124] Laws of any Government, the Christian Religion, or any Form of it, is become a part of the Subjects Property, it then falls under another Consideration; not as it is a Religion, but as it is become one of the principal Rights of the Subjects to believe and pro­fess it: and then we must judg of the Invasions made on that, as we do of any other Invasion that is made on our other Rights.

X. All the Passages in the New Testament that relate to Civil Government, are to be expounded as they were truly meant, in opposition to that false Notion of the Jews, who believed them­selves to be so immediately under the Divine Authority, that they could not become the Subjects of any other Power, par­ticularly of one that was not of their Nation, or of their Re­ligion; therefore they thought they could not be under the Roman Yoke, nor bound to pay Tribute to Caesar, but judged that they were only subject out of Fear, by reason of the Force that lay on them, but not for Conscience sake: And so in all their Dispersion, both at Rome and elsewhere, they thought they were God's Freemen, and made use of this pretended Li­berty as a Cloak of Maliciousness. In opposition to all which, since in a course of many Years, they had asked the Protecti­on of the Roman Yoke, and were come under their Authority, our Saviour ordered them to continue in that, by his saying, Render to Cesar that which is Cesar's; and both St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans, and St. Peter in his general Epistle, have very positively condemned that pernicious Maxim, but with­out any formal Declarations made of the Rules or Measures of Government. And since both the People and Senate of Rome had acknowledged the Power that Augustus had indeed violently usurped, it became Legal when it was thus submitted to, and confirmed both by the Senate and People: and it was established in his Family by a long Prescription, when those Epistles were writ: So that upon the whole matter, all that is in the New Testament upon this Subject, imports no more, but that all Christians are bound to acquiesce in the Government, and submit to it, according to the Constitution that is setled by Law.

XI. We are then at last brought to the Constitution of our English Government: So that no general Considerations from Speculations about Soveraign Power, nor from any Passages, either of the Old and New Testament, ought to determine us [Page 125] in this Matter; which must be fixed from the Laws and Regu­lations that have been made among us. It is then certain, that with Relation to the Executive part of the Government, the Law has lodged that singly in the King; so that the whole Ad­ministration of it is in him; but the Legislative Power is lodged between the King and the two Houses of Parliament; so that the Power of making and repealing Laws, is not singly in the King, but only so far as the two Houses concur with him. It is also clear, that the King has such a determined extent of Prerogative, beyond which he has no Authority: As for In­stance, If he levies Mony of his People, without a Law im­powring him to it, he goes beyond the Limits of his Power, and asks that to which he has no Right: So that there lies no Obli­gation on the Subject to grant it; and if any in his Name use Violence for the obtaining it, they are to be looked on as so many Robbers, that invade our Property; and they being vio­lent Aggressors, the Principle of Self-Preservation seems here to take place, and to warrant as violent a Resistance.

XII. There is nothing more evident, than that England is a Free Nation, that has its Libertits and Properties reserved to it by many positive and express Laws: If then we have a Right to our Property, we must likewise be supposed to have a Right to preserve it: for those Rights are by the Law secu­red against the Invasions of the Prerogative, and by consequence we must have a Right to preserve them against those Invasi­ons. It is also evidently declared by our Law, that all Orders and Warrants that are issued out in opposition to them, are null of themselves; and by consequence, any that pretend to have Commissions from the King for those Ends, are to be considered as if they had none at all; since those Commissions being void of themselves, are indeed no Commissions in the Construction of the Law; and therefore those who act in virtue of them, are still to be considered as private Persons who come to invade and disturb us. It is also to be observed, that there are some Points that are justly disputable and doubtful, and others that are so manifest, that it is plain that any Objections that can be made to them, are rather forced Pretences, than so much as plausible Colours. It is true, if the Case is doubtful, the Interest of the publick Peace and Order ought to carry it; but the Case [Page 126] is quite different, when the Invasions that are made upon Liberty and Property, are plain and visible to all that consider them.

XIII. The main and great Difficulty here, is, that though our Government does indeed assert the Liberty of the Subject, yet there are many express Laws made, that lodg the Militia singly in the King, that make it plainly unlawful, upon any Pretence whatsoever, to take Arms against the King, or any Commissioned by him: And these Laws have been put in the Form of an Oath, which all that have born any Employment, either in Church or State, have sworn; and therefore those Laws for the assuring our Liberties, do indeed bind the King's Conscience, and may affect his Ministers; yet since it is a Maxime of our Law, that the King can do no Wrong, these can­not be carried so far as to justify our taking Arms against him, be the Transgressions of Laws ever so many and so manifest. And since this has been the constant Doctrine of the Church of England, it will be a very heavy Imputation on us, if it appears, that though we held those Opinions, as long as the Court and Crown have favoured us, yet as soon as the Court turns against us, we change our Principles.

XIV. Here is the true Difficulty of this whole Matter, and therefore it ought to be exactly considered: 1. All general Words how large soever, are still supposed to have a tacit Exception and Reserve in them, if the Matter seems to require it. Children are commanded to obey their Parents in all things: Wives are declared by the Scripture, to be subject to their Husband in all things, as the Church is unto Christ: And yet how comprehensive soever these words may seem to be, there is still a Reserve to be understood in them; and though by our Form of Marriage, the Parties swear to one another till Death them do part, yet few doubt but that this Bond is dissol­ved by Adultery, though it is not named: for odious things ought not to be suspected, and therefore not named upon such occasions: But when they fall out, they carry still their own force with them. 2. When there sems to be a Contradiction between two Articles in the Constitution, we ought to examine which of the two is the most Evident, and the most Important, and so we ought to fix upon it, and then we must give such an accommodating sense to that which seems to contradict it, that [Page 127] so we may reconcile those together. Here then are two seeming Contradictions in our Constitution; The one is the Publick Liberty of the Nation; the other is the renouncing of all Resistance, in case that were invaded. It is plain, that our Liberty is only a thing that we enjoy at the King's Discretion, and during his Pleasure, if the other against all Resistance is to be understood according to the utmost Extent of the Words. Therefore since the chief Design of our whole Law, and of all the several Rules of our Constitution, is to secure and maintain our Liberty, we ought to lay that down for a Conclusion, that it is both the most plain, and the most impor­tant of the two. And therefore the other Article against Re­sistance ought to be so softned, as that it do not destroy us. 3. Since it is by a Law that Resistance is condemned, we ought to understand it in such a sense, as that it does not destroy all other Laws: And therefore the intent of this Law must only relate to the Executive Power, which is in the King, and not to the Legislative, in which we cannot suppose that our Legislators, who made that Law, intended to give up that, which we plainly see they resolved still to preserve entire, ac­cording to the Ancient Constitution. So then, the not re­sisting the King, can only be applied to the Executive Power, that so upon no pretence of ill Administrations in the Exe­cution of the Law, it should be lawful to resist him; but this cannot with any reason be extended to an Invasion of the Le­gislative Power, or to a total Subversion of the Government. For it being plain, that the Law did not design to lodg that Pow­er in the King; it is also plain, that it did not intend to secure him in it, in case he should set about it. 4. The Law men­tioning the King, or those Commissioned by him, shews plainly, that it only designed to secure the King in the Executive Pow­er: for the word Commission necessarily importts this, since if it is not according to Law, it is no Commission; and by Con­sequence, those who act in virtue of it, are not Commissiona­ted by the King in the Sense of the Law. The King likewise imports a Prince clothed by Law with the Regal Prerogative; but if he goes to subvert the whole Foundation of the Go­vernment, he subverts that by which he himself has his Power, and by consequence he annuls his own Power; and then he [Page 128] ceases to be King, having endeavoured to destroy that upon which his own Authority is founded.

XV. It is acknowledged by the greatest Assertors of Mo­narchial Power, that in some Cases a King may fall from his Power, and in other Cases that he may fall from the Exercise of it. His Deserting his People, his going about to enslave, or sell them to any other; or a furious going about to destroy them, are in the opinion of the most Monarchical Lawyers, such Abuses, that they naturally divest those that are guilty of them, of their whole Authority. Infancy or Phrenzy do also put them un­der the Guardianship of others. All the Crowned Heads of Europe have, at least secretly, approved of the putting the late King of Portugal under a Guardianship, and the keeping him still a Prisoner, for a few Acts of Rage, that had been fatal to a very few Persons: And even our Court gave the first counte­nance to it, though of all others the late King had the least rea­son to have done it, at least last of all, since it justified a younger Brother's supplanting the Elder; yet the Evidence of the Thing carried it even against Interest. Therefore if a King goes about to subvert the Government, and to overturn the whole Consti­tution, he by this must be supposed, either to fall from his Power, or at least from the Exercise of it, so far as that he ought to be put under Guardians; and according to the Case of Portugal, the next Heir falls naturally to be the Guardian.

XVI. The next Thing to be considered, is to see in Fact, whether the Foundations of this Government have been struck at, and whether those Errors that have been perhaps committed, are only such Malversations as ought to be imputed only to hu­mane Frailty, and to the Ignorance, Inadvertencies, or Passi­ons to which all Princes may be subject, as well as other Men. But this will best appear, if we consider what are the Funda­mental Points of our Government, and the chief Securities that we have for our Liberties.

The Authority of the Law is indeed all in one word, so that if the King pretends to a Power to dispense with Laws, there is nothing left upon which the Subject can depend; and yet as if the Dispensing Power were not enough, if Laws are wholly suspended for all Time coming, this is plainly a repealing of them, when likewise the Men, in whose Hands the Administra­tion [Page 129] of Justice is put by Law, such as Judges and Sheriffs are allowed to tread all Laws under-foot, even those that infer an Incapacity on themselves if they violate them: this is such a breaking of the whole Constitution, that we can no more have the Administration of Justice, so that it is really a Dissolution of the Government; since all Trials, Sentences, and the Executi­ons of them are become so many unlawful Acts, that are null and void of themselves.

The next Thing in our Constitution, which secures to us our Laws and Liberties, is a Free and Lawful Parliament. Now, not to mention the breach of the Law of Triennial Parliaments, it being above three Years since we had a Session that enacted any Law; Methods have been taken, and are daily a taking, that render this impossible. Parliaments ought to be chosen with an entire Liberty, and without either Force or Preingage­ments: whereas if all Men are required before-hand to enter into Engagements, how they will vote if they are chosen them­selves? or how they will give their Voices in the electing of others? This is plainly such a preparation to a Parliament, as would indeed make it no Parliament, but a Cabal; if one were chosen after all that Corruption of Persons who had prein­gaged themselves, and after the Threating and Turning out of all Persons out of Imployments who had refused to do it: And if there are such daily Regulations made in the Towns, that it is plain those who manage them, intend at last to put such a number of Men in the Corporations, as will certainly choose the Persons who are recommended to them. But above all, if there are such a number of Sheriffs and Mayors made over England, by whom the Elections must be conducted and returned, who are now under an Incapacity by Law, and so are no legal Officers, and by consequence those Elections that pass under their Authority are null and void: If, I say, it is clear that things are brought to this, then the Government is dissolved, because it is impossible to have a Free and Legal Par­liament in this state of things. If then both the Authority of the Law, and the Constitution of the Parliament are struck at and dissolved, here is a plain Subversion of the whole Govern­ment. But if we enter next into the particular Branches of the Government, we will find the like Disorder among them all.

The Protestant Religion, and the Church of England make a great Article of our Government, the latter being secured, not only of old by Magna Charta, but by many special Laws made of late; and there are particular Laws made in K. Charles the First, and the late King's Time, securing them from all Commissions that the King can raise for Judging or Censuring them. If then in opposition to this, a Court so condemned is erected, which pro­ceeds to judg and censure the Clergy, and even to disseise them of their Free-holds, without so much as the form of a Trial, though this is the most indispensible Law of all those that se­cure the Property of England; and if the King pretends that he can require the Clergy to publish all his Arbitrary Declara­tions, and in particular one that strikes at their whole Settle­ment, and has ordered Process to be begun against all that dis­obey'd this illegal Warrant; and has treated so great a number of the Bishops as Criminals, only for representing to him the Reasons of their not obeying him. If likewise the King is not satisfied to profess his own Religion openly, though even that is contrary to Law, but has sent Ambassadors to Rome, and re­ceived Nuncio's from thence, which is plainly Treason by Law; If likewise many Popish Churches and Chappels have been publickly opened; if several Colledges of Jesuits have been set up in divers parts of the Nation, and one of the Order has been made a Privy Counsellor, and a principal Minister of State: And if Papists, and even those who turn to that Reli­gion, though declared Traitors by Law, are brought into all the chief Imployments, both Military and Civil; then it is plain, That all the Rights of the Church of England, and the whole Establishment of the Protestant Religion are struck at, and design'd to be overturn'd; since all these Things, as they are notoriously illegal, so they evidently demonstrate, That the great Design of them all, is the rooting out of this Pesti­lent Heresy, in their Stile, I mean, the Protestant Religion.

In the next place, If in the whole course of Justice, it is visi­ble that there is a constant practising upon the Judges, that they are turned out upon their varying from the Intentions of the Court; and if Men of no Reputation nor Abilities are put in their places; If an Army is kept up in time of Peace, and Men who withdraw from that illegal Service, are hanged up as [Page 131] Criminals, without any colour of Law, which by consequence are so many Murders; and if the Souldiery are connived at and encouraged in the most enormous Crimes, that so they may be thereby prepared to commit greater ones, and from single Rapes and Murders proceed to a Rape upon all our Liberties, and a Destruction of the Nation: If, I say, all these things are true in Fact; then it is plain, that there is such a Dissolution of the Government made, that there is not any one part of it left sound and entire: And if all these things are done now, it is easy to imagine what may be ex­pected, when Arbitrary Power, that spares to Man, and Pope­ry that spares no Heretick, are finally established: Then we may look for nothing but Gabelles, Tailles, Impositions, Bene­violences, and all sorts of Illegal Taxes; as from the other we may expect Burning, Massacres, and Inquisitions. In what is doing in Scotland, we may gather what is to be expected in Eng­land; where if the King has over and over again declared, that he is vested with an Absolute Power, to which all are bound to obey without reserve, and has upon that annulled almost all the Acts of Parliament that passed in K. James I. Minority, though they were ratified by himself when he came to be of Age, and were confirmed by all the subsequent Kings, not excepting the present. We must then conclude from thence, what is re­solved on here in England, and what will be put in Execution as soon as it is thought that the Times can bear it. When likewise the whole Settlement of Ireland is shaken, and the Army that was raised, and is maintained by Taxes that were given for an Army of English Protestants, to secure them from a new Massacre by the Irish Papists, is now all filled with Irish Papists, as well as almost all the other Imployments; it is plain, that not only all the British Protestants inhabiting that Island, are in daily danger of being butchered a second time, but that the Crown of England is in danger of losing that Island, it being now put wholly into the Hands and Power of the Native Irish, who as they formerly offered themselves up some­times to the Crown of Spain, sometimes to the Pope, and once to the Duke of Lorrain, so are they perhaps at this present treating with another Court for the Sale and Surrender of the Island, and for the Massacre of the English in it.

If thus all the several Branches of our Constitution are dis­solved, it might be at least expected that one part should be left entire, and that is the Regal Dignity. And yet even that is pro­stituted, when we see a young Child put in the Reversion of it, and pretended to be the Prince of Wales: concerning whose being born of the Queen, there appear to be not only no cer­tain Proofs, but there are all the Presumptions that can possi­bly be imagined to the contrary. No Proofs were ever given, ei­ther to the Princess of Denmark, or to any other Protestant La­dies, in whom we ought to repose any Confidence, that the Queen was ever with Child; that whole Matter being managed with so much Mysteriousness, that there were violent and publick Suspi­cions of it before the Birth. But the whole Contrivance of the Birth, the sending away the Princess of Denmark, the sudden shortning of the Reckoning, the Queen's sudden going to St. James's, her no less sudden pretended Delivery; the hurrying the Child into another Room without shewing it to those pre­sent, and without their hearing it cry; and the mysterious Conduct of all since that time; no Satisfaction being given to the Princess of Denmark upon her Return from the Bath, nor to any other Protestant Ladies, of the Queen's having been really brought to Bed. These are all such evident Indications of a base Imposture in this Matter, that as the Nation has the justest Rea­son in the World to doubt of it, so they have all possible Rea­son to be at no quiet till they see a Legal and Free Parliament assembled, which may impartially, and without either Fear or Corruption, examine that whole Matter.

If all these Matters are true in Fact, then I suppose no Man will doubt, that the whole Foundations of this Government, and all the most sacred Parts of it, are overturned. And as to the Truth of all these Suppositions, that is left to every English-man's Judgment and Sense.

1. THE Prince's unwillingness to charge the Gowern­ment with any thing but what was evident and un­deniable, affords the Reflection with which this Paper begins: That all the noise of a secret League with France has been only a feigned Danger, and a false Fear, since it is not so much as mentioned in the Prince's Declaration. It is cer­tain, that the French Ambassador asserted it in a publick Au­dience, and in a Memorial given in to the States General at the Hague; and all the World has clearly seen through the Grimmace that the Court of England made upon it to Mr. Skel­ton; for it is not to be supposed, that the Court of France would have published this Alliance, unless it had been made, or that they would have made it, unless they had seen full Powers for it in Mr. Skelton's hands. But after all, as the Ar­ticles of it are secret, so the Court of England having disown'd it, the Prince's exactness in not mentioning a doubtful thing, deserved rather a Reflection in his Favour.

2. The Reflector is offended at the Prince's using the Stile of We and Us, for it seems Thou and Thee are so dear to him, that he cannot hear any thing out of that Cant. But though by the Connivance of our Court, France has robb'd the Prince of his Principality, yet the Rights and Dignity of a Soveraign Prince remain still with him, which will justify his speaking in the plural number: And the other terms of Authority that [Page 134] are in his Declaration, being the usual Stile of all that com­mand Armies, his using them imports no more, than that he is re­solved to use Force for the restoring of our Liberty; and if the Stile is a little high, it is their fault who would not hearken to softer and humbler Representations, and that had made it a Crime so much as to Petition.

3. There is nothing works more on weak People, than the fastning an ill Name even on the best Actions, and therefore Invasion being a Term that naturally gives Horror, the Re­flector fastens that upon the Prince's Attempt to save the Na­tion; but things appear now too broad to be disguised, and therefore the wise and worthy part of the Nation esteems that to be a Deliverance, which is here called an Invasion. It is true, the Prince promises to send back his Forces, which imports, that he intends to stay behind; for he having engaged to see a Free Parliament called and assembled, must stay after his Army is sent away, since no Parliament can be chosen with Freedom, while the Nation is over-awed by a Military Power; but when that is laid down of all hands, then the Prince will be ob­liged to see the Promise that he has made to the Nation for a Free Parliament executed. So that all the malicious Insinu­ations of his aspiring to be King, which return so often in the Reflections, are thrown out only to create an unjust Jealousie of His Highness's Intentions.

4. The Security which the Reflector promises to the Nation, and the Religion, by the Concurrence of Protestants to save the Court, is now a little too late, the same Cheat will hardly pass twice. This had once a great effect in bringing the Na­tion off from the design of the Exclusion, and Men in the sim­plicity of their Heart believed it. But the Court has taken so much pains to convince them of their Error, and has suc­ceeded so effectually in it, that it is too great an imposing upon us, to fancy that we can be so soon deluded again in the same manner. We know now, by sad expererience, what all the Promises and Oaths that a Papist can make to Protestants do signify; and we see how little is to be built even on the Ho­nour of a Prince, when a Jesuit has the keeping of his Con­science. Nor can it be any Reproach on our Religion, if the Nation comes under the Protection of a Prince that has [Page 135] so near an Interest in the Succession to the Crown, to pre­serve it self and the Establish'd Religion from the Conspiracies of those who intend to destroy both, and had made a great way in it, and would have probably brought their Designs to a full Ripeness this Winter, if the Prince's coming had not check'd them. The Reflector thinks the Prince ought to have turned his Arms rather on France, and allows that he has a just Right to do it. But England had a greater Title to his Protection, and ought to have been first taken care of by him, and when that is once done, the Proposition here made, with relation to France, may be more seasonable.

5. Great Exceptions are taken, because the Prince founds the Invasions that are made on the Protestant Religion, on this, that it is the Religion establish'd by Law; since our Reflector tells us, that it is the Truth and not the Legality of a Religion that is its Warrant; and that otherwise Paganism and Judaism had been still the Establish'd Religion. But the Reflector con­founds things of different Natures. If we consider Religion, as it gives us a Title to the Favour of God, and to Eternal Happiness, we ought to have no regard but to the Truth of it. But when Religion is considered as the first of all Civil Rights, then the Legal Establishment is the Foundation of its Title: And if Legislators had not changed Laws, Paganism had been still the Legal Religion, notwithstanding its falshood; and though the Truth of the Christian Religion is the only ground upon which we believe it, yet it must become Legal as well as it is true, before we can claim the Protection of the Law and the Government that has secured it to us; so that to fight against Popery, where that is the Establish'd Religion, is as certainly a Sin, as it is a Debt that we owe our Religion and Country, to fight for the Protestant Religion, when the Law is for it, and illegal Violence is imployed to pull it down.

6. The Reflector's Common-place-stuff, with relation to the Dispensing Power, has been so oft exposed, that it scarce deserves a Review. The Obligation of all Laws depends on the force of the Penalties against Trangressors; so that the Dispensing with Penal Laws, carries in it the Dispensing with all Laws whatsoever; and by this Doctrine, the whole Frame and Security of our Government is at the King's Discretion: [Page 136] Nor will that distinction of malum in se, and malum prohibitum save the matter, unless all the World were agreed upon the point, What things are evil of themselves, and what not. In the sense of a Papist, all the Laws against their Religion are so far from being Obligatory of their own Nature, that they are impious Attempts upon that Authority which they think infallible. Therefore all the distinction that is offered to save us from the exorbitancy of this Dispensing Power, as if it could not reach to things that are evil of themselves, is of no force, unless a measure were laid down, in which both Pro­testants and Papists were agreed concerning things that are good or evil of themselves. For instance, Murther is allowed by all to be evil of it self; yet if the Extirpation of Here­ticks is a Duty incumbent on a Catholick King, as we are sure it is, then a Commission given to destroy us, would be a justi­fiable Action; and so the Laws against Murder and Man­slaughter might in that case be dispensed with, since the killing of Hereticks is by the Doctrine of Papists only Malum prohibi­tum, and not malum in se.

7. Our Author might have spar'd his Rhetorick how well soever he loads it upon the Head of Persecution and Liberty of Conscience, if it had been but for this Reason, that it discover'd too plainly who it was that wrote these Reflections, which perhaps he may have e're long some Reasons to wish it were not so well known, as he has taken pains to do by his luxuriant Stile. All that can be said on this Head, belongs very pertinently to the Consideration of a Parliament, but is very improperly urged in favour of the bloodiest of all Per­secutors, who could not begin their breaking in upon our Laws and our Religion more dextrously than at this of Liberty of Conscience, tho they themselves had been the Authors of all the Severities that had been acted among us, and intended by this shew of Ease to bring us under all the Cruelties of an Inquisition, which is one of the inseparable Perquisites of that bloody Religion.

8. The greatest part of the Invasions made on our Govern­ment, that are set forth in the Prince's Declaration, are ac­knowledged to be such by our Reflector: But he thinks they are now redressed. The High Commission is at an end; Mag­dalen [Page 137] Colledge is restor'd. If the King had of his own motion, and from a sense of the justice of the thing, done all this while he apprehended no danger, and if he had brought the Authors of those Pernicious Councils to condign Punishment, then it had been more reasonable to value those Acts of Justice, by which the former Violences had been in some measure repaired: but what is done in the present Circumstances, shews only a meanness of Spirit, and a feebleness in the Government: And some Mens Tempers are too well known, to suffer us once to doubt of their returning back to all their former Violences, and of their carrying them on to greater Excesses; if God for the sins of the Nation, should blast this Glorious Undertaking. And if the Charters are now restor'd, we know by the Proceedings of the late Regulators of Corporations, that it was far from their thoughts but a little while ago; so that this is likewise an effect of the present Fear they are under; and it shews that after all their Huffings during their Prosperity, they sink under Dangers as much as others, whose Memory they are so careful to blemish, how much soever they are beholden to them. It is here said, that most of the Charters were taken away in the late King's time: But as it is well known under whose Influence the last years of the late Reign were conducted, so the limiting the Elections to a speical number, contrary to Custom and Prescription, was the Invention of the present Reign.

9. But if the Reflector will not justify every thing that the Go­vernment has done, and thinks the present state of things could hardly bear so gross an Abuse; yet he insists often upon this, that these Illegal things were fit for the Consideration and the Redress of a Parliament, and that they do not justify the Prince of Orange's Attempt. But the Prince's Design is only to see a Free Parliament Chosen and Assembled according to Law. For our Author and his Complices (for he reckons him­self in the Ministry §. 23. when he names the things ob­jected against the Ministry, as objected against us,) had taken such care to keep off a Parliament, and to overturn all Corpo­rations, to corrupt all Elections, and to provide for false Re­turns by Popish Sheriffs and Mayors, that we were out of all hopes, or rather out of a possibility of ever seeing a Free Par­liament again; so that any nearer Prospect that we now have [Page 138] of one, is wholly owing to the Prince's Undertaking; and in­deed what is given us at present, is done with so ill a Grace, and the Popish and corrupt Ministry, is still preserved and cherished with so particular a Confidence, that they seem to have a mind to make the Nation see that all is done so grosly, that those who are cheated by it, will have no excuse for their Folly, since the trick is acted with too bare a face to pass on any.

10. The Reflector thinks that the Prince ought to have com­plained to the King of these Abuses, though in other places of this Paper, he pretends that the Prince was not a proper Judg in those Matters; he aggravates the Prince's breaking with an Uncle and a Father-in-Law without warning given. Indeed, if this were the Case, all that could be said upon it, was, that he had copied from the Pattern that was set him in 1672, in that famous Attempt on the Sinirna Fleet: What Complaints the Prince made, or what encouragement he had to make any, and how they were entertain'd and answer'd, are domestick matters, of which the World knows little, since all that has appear'd in publick was in Mr. Fagel's Letter; and how well that was received and how civilly it was answer'd, all Eng­land saw. It is true, the Prince is very nearly related to the King, but there are other Ties stronger than the Bonds of Flesh and Blood; He owes more to the Protestant Religion and to the Nation, than can be defaced by any other Relation what­soever; and if the faling in one Relation excuses the other, then enough might be said, to shew at what pains the Court of England has been, to free the Prince from all other Engage­ments, except those of Loving Enemies, and doing good to those who despitefully use us, for upon this account the Prince lies under all possible Obligations.

11. The Reflector thinks, that those who left Ireland, were driven by a needless Fear; but tho' he has no reason to appre­hend much from the Irish Papists, yet those who saw the last Bloody Massacre, may be forgiven, if they have no mind to see such another. He faintly blames that great Change that was lately made in the whole Government of Ireland; but he pre­sently excuses it, since it was natural for the King and his Friends to desire to be safe some where; till they had fair Quar­ter in England, they must make sure of Ireland; but he adds, [Page 139] that as soon as that was done, the thing must have returned in­to its old Channel again. This ought to be writ only to Irish­men, for none of a higher size of Understanding can bear it; if it can ever be shewed that Papists have yielded up any thing, which they had once wrung out of the Hands of Protestants, except when they were forced to it; we may believe this, and all the other gross things which are here imposed on us. The plain Case was, the Papists resolved to destroy us, and to put them­selves in case to do it as soon as was possible. So they went about it immediately in Ireland, only they have delay'd the giving the Signal for a new Massacre, till Matters were ripe for it in England.

12. The Reflector has reason to avoid the saying any thing to the Article of Scotland, for even his Confidence could not support him in justifying the King's claiming an Absolute Power, to which all are bound to obey without reserve, and the Repeal­ing of a great many Laws upon that Pretension; this is too gross for Humane Nature, and the Principles of all Religions whatsoever. Our Author avoids speaking to it, because he does not know the Extent of the Prerogative of that Crown. But no Prerogative can go to an Obedience without Reserve, nor can Absolute Power consist with any Legal Government.

13. The Declaration had set forth, that the Evil Counsel­lors had represented the Expedient, offer'd by the Prince and Princess, as offer'd on design to disturb the Quiet and Happi­ness of the Kingdom; upon which the Reflector bestows this kind Remark on the Ministry: And did they not say true, as it happens? Believe me, some Folks think many of them are not often guilty of such forelight: The Writer is angry that his Side is not uppermost; and tho' he includes himself in the Ministry by saying Us, when he speaks of them, yet here, tho' he was to censure the Party that is against him, he distinguishes them, by saying, many of the Counsellors use not to have such foresight: But perhaps they can object as much to his foresight, and with as much reason. But if the King comes up to Mr. Fagel's Letter, why was it rejected with so much Scorn, and answered with so much Insolence? Now perhaps they would hearken to it, when they have brought both themselves and the Nation to the brink of Ruin, by their mad Councils: But [Page 140] they ought to be forgiven, since they have been true to the Principles and Dictates of their Religion.

14. Our Reflector thinks a Free Parliament a Chimera, and indeed he and his Friends have been at a great deal of pains to render it impossible. But perhaps he may be quickly cured of his Error, and a Free One is the sooner like to be chosen, when he, and such as he, are set at a due distance from the Publick Councils. If Members are sometimes chosen by Drink­ing, and other Practices, this is bad enough, but still it is not so bad as the laying a Force upon the Electors, and a Restraint upon the Election. Nor is it very much to the King's Honour, to remember how the last Parliament was chosen; it was indeed a very disgusting Essay in the beginning of a Reign, and gave a sad prospect of what might be look'd for; but if one Vio­lence was born with, when the struggle of another Party seem­ed to excuse it; this does not prove that a course of such Vio­lences, when the Design is become both more visible, and less excusable, ought to be endured. If the Members of that Par­liament proved Worthy Patriots, I do not see why they ought not to be remembred with Honour, tho' there is a great deal to be said upon their first elevation to that Character, which they maintained indeed nobly; so that if the first Conception of the Parliament was Irregular, yet its End was Honourable, since never a Parliament was dissolv'd upon a more Glorious Account.

15. The Reflector sets up all his Sail, when he enters upon the Article of the pretended Prince of Wales: This was a Point by which he hoped to merit highly, and upon that, to gain ground on that Party of the Court, on whom he had re­flected with so much scorn. Therefore here must the Prince be attack'd, with all the malicious Force to which his Rhetorick could carry him; and all those Men of Honour that went over to wait on him at the Hague and to represent to him the bleeding and desperate Condition of the Nation, must be stigmatized as a lewd Crew of Renegadoes; tho, I must tell him, that the com­mon acceptation of Renegado, is one that changes his Religion, and by this he will find some near him to whom that Character belongs more justly. He almost blames the King for the low Step he lately made to prove that Birth: It was a low one in­deed, [Page 141] to make so much ado, and to bring together such a So­lemn Appearance, to hear so slight a Proof produced; which could have no other Effect, but to make the Imposture so much the more visible, when the utmost Attempts to support it, ap­pear to be now so feeble, that as to the main Point of the Queen's bearing the Child, there is not so much as a colour of a Proof produc'd: And it is certain, that if this had been a fair thing, the Court would have so managed it, that it should not have been in the Power of any Mortal to have called it in question: And on the other hand, they have so managed it, that one must needs see, in every step of it, broad Marks of an Imposture. It will not be half Proofs, nor suborned Wit­nesses, that will satisfy the Nation in so great a Point. But I will enter into no Particulars relating to this Business, which will be better laid open when a Free Parliament meets to exa­mine it.

16. The Reflector charges upon the Prince all the Miseries that may follow on a War, as an unsuitable return to the Kindness that the Nation has shewed him. But if the Dissolu­tion of the Government, brought on by the Court, has given a just Rise to his coming, then the ill Effects that may fall out in the Progress of his Design, are no more to be charged on him, than the Miseries to which a severe Cure of the ill Effects of a wilful Disorder, expose a Patient, ought to be imputed to a Physician, that betrays his Patient if he flatters him; and that must apply violent Remedies to obstinate Distempers. I do not hear from other Hands, that the Lords and Bishops a­bout the City have disowned their inviting the Prince: and I do not believe it the better, because the Author affirms it. But if it were true, there are others in England besides those about the City: so the thing may be true, though a few about the City had not been in it. A small Civility is bestowed on the Prince, when it is said, that he would not have affirmed it, if he did not believe it; but this is soon taken off, and it is said, doubtless he was abused in this. If this is to be supposed, the Prince is as weak a Man, as his Enemies, for their own sakes, ought to wish to be; if he could suffer himself to be engaged in a matter of this nature, without being well assured of the grounds he went on.

17. What is said of the Prince's referring all matters to the determination of a Free Parliament, is too flat to require an Answer: This was a plausible thing, and therefore it ought to have been either quite past over, or somewhat of force ought to have been set against it. This is not the referring of other peoples Rights to a Parliament; but the leaving the healing of the Nation to those who are its proper Physicians. And the taking a Cure out of the hands of the Court, instead of that, is like the renouncing a sure Method and a good Physician, and the hearkening to the arrogant promises of a bold Moun­tebank. The Prince has promised to send away his Army as soon as the state of the Nation will permit, upon which the Re­flector says, that here is but a Foreigner's word against our own King's; and he refers it to our Allegiance to judg; which of the two we ought to trust. But I cannot find out in what the Prince's promise contradicts any that the King has made; for I do not hear that the King has promised that these Troops shall not return; and unless that were the Case, I cannot find out the Contradiction; and after all, if we must speak out, there is some odds to be made between a Prince whose Religion, as well as his Honour, has ever determined him to keep all his Promises, and another whose Religion has taught him so often to make bold with all his.

18. The Prince's summoning the Nobility and Gentry, as it is the usual stile of all Generals, so it requires them only to appear and to act for their Country and their Religion; and his promising to have a Parliament called in Scotland and Ireland, im­ports no more but that he is come with a Resolution to have the Government setled on its true Basis, and that he will see it done.

19. The Reflector is in great wrath, because the Prince has, in his Additional Declaration, shewed how little regard ought to be had to that imperfect Redress of Grievan­ces that has been offered of late. But it had been a con­curring in the Cheat, to suffer it to pass, without laying it open: When fair things are offered from Men to whom we ought to trust, it is as seasonable to receive them, as it is to reject all deceitful things, when the Truth is apparent. Therefore as the Prince had no reason to abandon the Cure of the Nation, after the steps that he had made, because of the [Page 143] endeavours of the Court to lay it asleep; so he has so purged himself from the Imputations of designing a Conquest, that all our Reflector's Malice cannot make them stick; and all that Noble Company that came over with him, and that have since come in to him, are a proof of this beyond Exception. Let all Men of Sense judg, whether an Army composed of so ma­ny Irish Papists, or another made up of so many Noblemen and Gentlemen of great Families and Estates, are likeliest to set about the Conquering the Nation.

20. He fancies, that what the Prince gets by the Sword, he will keep by the Sword: And upon this he tells us, that he said Once to the King, that the bringing the Dutch Army to the Dis­cipline in which it was, had cost 1300 Lives: Upon which he wishes those who value the Magna Charta, and Trials by Ju­ries to make some Reflections. But since the Situation and Constitution of Holland, makes an Army necessary to them; and since they have provided, by particular Laws, that Mar­shal Discipline should be maintain'd by a Council of War, no­thing could have been contriv'd more for the Prince's Honour, than to tell us that he has so ordered the Matter, that the Ar­my is become one of the most regular and inoffensive Bodies of Men that is in all Holland: which this Nation sees now, with no small astonishment; to whom one Regiment of Irish has given more Fear and Disorder, than this great Army has done to the places through which it has passed. The Reflector tells us also, as a very ridiculous thing, that the Prince, who has left the Dutch no Liberty at Home, comes now to secure ours here. And to make the Parallel compleat, between the Prince and a near Relation of his, he pretends that he broke his Oath to the States of Holland, he having promised never to be Statholder, though it should be offer'd him: And to con­clude all against him, he says, there is no more proportion be­tween the Ancient Liberties of Holland, and his present Go­vernment, than there is between London and Brandford. Here is the Force of all his Malice, but we who have seen the State of Affairs in Holland, and the Freedom of the Government there, know that England can wish for no greater Happiness, than that the Laws and Government here, may be maintained as exactly here, as they are there: And the late Unanimous [Page 144] Concurrence of all the Provinces, and of all the Negatives in every Province, and not only of all the Members in every one of these Bodies, but indeed of the whole People all over the Provinces, Amsterdam it self leading the way to all the rest, by which they gave their Fleet, their Army, and their Trea­sure so frankly up to the Prince, was an Evidence of his good Government, beyond all that can be set forth in words; for real Arguments conclude always truly. And for the Prince's Oath, it was an Obligation to the States, and was intended, even by those who framed it, only to hinder all Caballing for obtaining any such Offer to be made him. But when they were brought to that Extremity, to which we helped to drive them, so that there was a change made in the greatest part of the whole Government, they Unanimously found the necessity of Vesting the Prince with the full Authority of Statholder; and therefore the Oath being made to them, it was in their power to give it up: So that here was no breach of Oath, but only a Relaxation of the Obligation that was made to the States. The Reflections end with a piece of Railery, which might pass, if it were either witty or decent: But if the things that are objected seem irregular, I fancy that Mr. Pen's writing for Popery, and Mr. Stewart's for Tyranny, are things every whit as Incongruous as any of these, with which the Re­flector diverts himself.

Printed for John Starkey, 1688.

I Know the Disadvantages of pleading ones Innocence, espe­cially when he is prosecuted at the Suit of his Natural Prince, to whom he owes so profound a Duty: and this has kept me so long in a respectful silence, after I had seen my Name in so many Gazettes, aspersed with the blackest of all Crimes: But there is both a time to be silent, and a time to speak. And as hitherto I have kept my self within the bounds of the one, so I do now take the Liberty which the other al­lows me: But I was not hitherto silent where I ought to speak; for I have made many humble Addresses to his Majesty, by the Earl of Middletoun his Secretary of State; hoping that my In­nocence, joined with my most humble Duty, would have broke through all those Prejudices and false Informations with which my Enemies had possessed his Majesty against me.

Upon the first Notice that I had of his Majesty's having writ to the Privy Council in Scotland, ordering Process to be issued out against me for High Treason, I writ my First Letter: In that I could enter into no Particulars; for in the Advertisement that was sent me, it was said, that there was no special Matter [Page 146] laid to my Charge in the King's Letter. Some days after that, I received a Copy of my Citation, to which I presently writ an Answer, and sent that with my Second Letter to the same Noble Person; to both these Letters I received no Answer; but I was advertised, that some Exceptions were taken at some words in my First Letter, and this led me to write my Third Letter, for explaining and justifying those words. I have kept my self thus within all those Bounds that I thought my Duty set me; and am not a little troubled, that I am now forced to speak for my self. I have delayed doing it, as long as I had any reason to hope, that my Justification of my self was like to produce the Effect which I most humbly desired, and which I expected: But now the Day of my Appearance being come, in which it is probable Sentence will pass against me, since I have had no Intimations given me to the contrary, I hope it will not shew either the least Impatience, or the want of that Submission, which I have on all Occasions payed to every thing that comes to me from that Authority, under which God had placed me, that I publish these Papers for my own Vindication. If it had been only in defence of my Life and Reputation, that I had been led to appear in such a manner, I could have more easily restrained my self: and have left these to be Sacrifices to the Unjust Rage of those, who have so far prevailed on his Majesty's readiness to believe them, as to drive this Matter so far: but the Honour of that Holy Religion which I profess, and the Regard I bear to that Sacred Function to which I am dedicated, lay such Obligati­ons on me, that I am determined by them, to declare my In­nocence to the World; which I intend to do more copiously within a little while: but in the mean time, I hope the fol­lowing Papers will serve to shew how clear I am of all the Matters that are laid to my charge.

There is one Particular, which is come to my knowledg since I writ my Answer, that will yet more evidently discover my Innocence: I have received certain Informations from England, that both Sir John Cochran and his Son, and Mr. Baxter, have declared upon many occasions, and to many Persons, that they cannot imagin how they come to be cited as Witnesses against me; that they can scarce believe it can be true; since [Page 147] they know nothing that can be any way to my Prejudice; and that they must clear me of all the Matters objected to me in this Citation: and the two Witnesses, that as it seems are cited for that Article that relates to Holland, have solemn­ly declared, that they know nothing relating to me, or to the Matters specified in this Citation, which one of them has signified to my self in a Letter under his hand; so that the Falsehood of this Accusation is so evident, that it serves to discover the Folly, as well as the Impudence of those who have contrived it.

But it is yet too early to set on a Persecution for Matters of Religion; therefore Crimes against the State must be pretended, and fastned on those whom these Men intend to destroy. And as foul and black Scandals are invented to Defame me, and put in the mouths of those who are ready to believe and re­port every thing that may disgrace me, without considering that they do a thing that is as unbecoming them, as it is Base and Injust in it self; so all Arts are used to destroy me; but I trust to the Protection of that GREAT GOD, who sees the Injustice that is done me, and who will in his own Time and Way vindicate my Innocence; and under him I trust to the Protection of the HIGH AND MIGHTY STATES OF HOLLAND AND WEST-FRIESE­LAND.

A Silence for so many Months, in which my Name has been so much tossed in Libels, as well as in Gazettes, has shewed the World, with how much uneasiness I am drawn to say any thing in my own Defence, when so sacred a Name has been made use of to give an Authority to what has been said or done against me: A Christian cannot fail when he goes by so Divine a Pattern as our Saviour himself has set the World. He, when he was accused, for a great while answered not a word; yet at last being required to do it by the High Priest, he spoke for himself: But when he was reviled, he reviled not again.

In an humble Imitation of that Example, as I will return no reviling Words, for all those that are so liberally thrown out upon me; so the Justifying of my self, being now become an Apology for the Protection that is granted me by the States of Holland, (whose Subject I am) as well as for my self, I am in some sort forced again to appear in my own Defence. If this Pamphlet had not carried such a License as it has in its Front; and if the States had not been worse used in it, than I my self am, I had passed over all the Malice that is in it, with the same Si­lence that I have shewed on other occasions. But it being judged necessary that I should plead my own Cause a little, since the Protection that the States give me, has made it now likewise theirs, and that it may appear that they have no just Reason to be ashamed of me, I shall Answer all that relates to my self, except the foul Language that is in it. But I will repeat nothing that was in the Paper that I publisht last June: in [Page 173] which I set down the first Citation, together with the Answer that I made to it, and my Letters to the Earl of Middletoune, together with some Reflections upon the whole Matter; so I offer this only as a Supplement to that Paper.

I will begin with setting down the second Citation, after I have made this short Remark on the first, That those very Per­sons, for conversing with whom, I was accused in it, being now pardoned, and in Scotland, the Government there, has a sure means in their hands, to know the Falshood of that Accusa­tion: so that those who offered those Informations against me, which gave the rise to all that has since followed, ought to be lookt on as Calumniators, and to be punished accordingly: and if any ill chosen Expression had fallen from me in the Letter that I writ to the Earl of Middletoune, the Privacy of the Let­ter, the Respect that was in it, and the Provocation that drew it from me, (an Accusation of High Treason, which is now evidently made out to be a Calumny) all these, I say, give me some reason to conclude, that if a secret Animosity of some of my Enemies that have abused their Credit with the King to my Prejudice, had not wrought more than a regard to Justice, there had not been a second Prosecution, when the first was found to be so ill grounded, that they were forced to let it fall. The Citation is in these Words.

After this follows the form of Law ordinary in such Citati­ons, by which I am required to appear on the 9th day of Au­gust, in order to my Tryal, which was to be six days after that, under the Pains of being declared a Rebel, and a Fugitive; and all bears date the 10th of June, 1687.

I shall offer only two Exceptions to this, in point of Form; 1st, there is no Special Law set forth here, upon which I am to be Judged; which, as I am informed by those who understand the Law of Scotland, makes the Citation null in point of Form, [Page 176] since High Treason is a Crime of such a Nature, that no Man can be concluded Guilty of it, but upon a special Law. 2dly, In Criminal matters, no Proofs of any Writing upon the Simili­tude of Hands, are so much as admitted by the Law of Scot­land; so that all such Proofs are only General Presumptions; and therefore, since there is no other Proof that can be pre­tended in this case; it is not possible according to the grounds and practice of the Scottish Law, to find me Guilty upon this Citation. Upon my not appearance on the 9th day of August, the matter was for some time delayed. At last a Writ was issued out against me, called in the Law of Scotland, Letters of Horning, because they are published with the blast of a Horn; in which I am declared the King's Rebel; but this is not issued out upon the account of the Matter of the Citation, of which no Cognizance has been taken: But only for my not appea­rance to offer my self to Tryal; and the Operation of this in Law, is only the putting me out of the King's Protection, and the present Seizing on my personal Estate, and after a year, the Seizing any thing that I enjoy for Term of Life; but this Writ does neither affect my Life, nor my Posterity, nor can an Estate of Inheritance be so much as Confiscated by it; and tho the term Rebel is put in it, that word is only a Form of Law; for every man that does not pay his Debts is liable to such a Writ, and he is declared the King's Rebel, just as the Chancery in England issues out a Writ of Rebellion upon Contempts; so that if the being called a Rebel in such a Writ, gives the Government a right to demand me, then every Man that retires into Holland, either out of England or Scotland, upon the account of a disor­der in his Affairs, may be demanded as soon as any such Writ goes out against him.

As for the matter of this Citation, I said so much upon it in my former Paper, that since no Answer has been made to that, I do not think it necessary to say any more than what will oc­cur to me in the account of the Progress of this Affair. Mr. d' Albeville his Majesties Envoy, did in the Month of July last, put in a Memorial against me, which being already in Print, I shall only offer here the abstract of it. In the Preamble it sets forth, That whereas I had obtained Letters of Burgership in the Town of Amsterdam: In the Vertue thereof, these Letters being [Page 177] presented to the States of Holland, by the said Town, I had obtained the Protection of the States: with which I was not satisfied, but by my Libels I defamed the King and his Government: of which it of­fered two Instances: one, that I represented my self as Persecuted up­on the account of Religion: which was so false, that all Religions were tolerated by the King. The other was, that I pretended that my life was in danger: for which, If I had any grounds, I ought to have represented it to the King's Ministers in England, or to his Minister bere: and that it was Notorious that the greatest of all Criminals were in safety here, for fear to draw upon themselves his Majesties displeasure: who abhors such practices, tho by the King's Laws eve­ry one of his subjects was warranted to seise on them here, in what manner soever. Upon all which it concluded, That the States ought to punish both me and my Printer, without naming him.

I hope I may without being wanting to the respect due to his Character, make some observations on this. It is well known, that I was never made Burgess of Amsterdam; so that all the Pre­amble falls; and it appears, that the Envoy has not taken the pains that forraign Ministers ordinarily do, to be rightly infor­med of this matter, when he began to move in it. I applied my self immediately to the States of Holland, in order to my being Naturalized, and in my Petition I set forth the Reason of it, which ever since Solons Laws, has been thought the justest ground for it, and that was a Marriage, and this was no pretended colour, for I was contracted the same day. I had lived before that, a year at the Hague, and I saw clearly a storm coming upon me, yet I had used no precaution to cover my self from it: but when a Marriage and a settlement in Holland, made it necessary for me to desire the Rights and Priviledges of the Countrey, it cannot be thought strange if I petitioned for it: and the States, who know how long I had both lived and preached publickly at the Hague, under the eyes of two of the Kings Ministers, one after another, saw no sort of reason, so much as to deliberate upon my petiti­on, but granted it to me as a thing of course: As for the matter that His Majesties Envoy objected to me, I said nothing in the paper I printed but what plainly contradicts the first point: my words relating to it are, that it is yet too early to set on a Persecution for matters of Religion, and therefore Crimes against the State must be pretended and fastned on those whom these men intend to destroy. [Page 178] Now it is plain, that by these men, I intend those who had Infor­med against me, the matters that are in the first Citation; and that being let fall as a Calumny, too gross to be any longer sup­ported, I had all reason to pass that censure on these men. But these words cannot be supposed to have any relation to the King, unless in that part of them, that it is yet too early to Per­secute for matters of Religion, which import that my Enemies dare not attempt to carry his Majesty to that; so that this period in my paper is evidently contrary to the Inference that is drawn from it.

The 2d point is no better grounded: since I published no­thing relating to the Danger in which I was, but my Letters to the Earl of Middleton; so that I had begun my Complaints to him, but I was never encouraged to go to the naming of parti­culars. As for that period, that the greatest of Criminals are here safe from such Attempts, for fear of drawing upon themselves the King's displeasure: (de peur de s'attirer) certainly the Envoy was in haste, when he drew it, for the want of a clear sense in it, is such, that it cannot be carried off by an Ignorance of the French tongue, since sure those Criminals are not afraid to Draw upon themselves the King's displeasure by attempting on themselves. So that some such words as these (all his Majesties good subjects avoiding such prac­tices, for fear of drawing upon themselves his Displeasure) must be supposed to make the period Clear sense. But if I had any apprehensions of Danger before this Memorial, they are justly encreased by it; since the Envoy concludes the paragraph, by saying, that every one of the King's subjects were warranted by his Laws to seise on such here in what manner soever (a s'y emparer en quelque maniere que ce soit) in what manner soever does al­ways, on such occasions, signifie either Dead or Alive. Now when the Kings Envoy did in a Memorial to the States, which was afterwards printed, assert that this was Law, It is easy to Infer from hence, what just apprehensions this might suggest to me. As for his desire to have me Punished for that Libel; he did in that Appeal which he made to the Justice of the States, ac­knowledge me to be their Subject: but if I have by printing of that or any other Paper, made my self liable to the punishment of the States, the Complaint ought to have been made in the form of Law, to the Court of Holland, as it would be in England to [Page 179] the Kings Bench, since the States themselves do not not enter into the prosecutions of Justice, and to that Court I most hum­bly submit my self, and acknowledg, that if I cannot justify my self of every thing that can be laid to my Charge, they ought to punish me with the utmost severity of Justice. Since a man of my Profession, as he ought to be an Example for his good beha­viour, so he ought to be made an Example of Justice, when he brings himself within the compass of the Law.

This was the first step that was made in my affair, which lay in this state till the Envoy's return from England in December last; upon which he gave in a long Memorial, of which I was made one Article. He set forth, that I being now Judged a Rebel and Fugitive in Scotland, the States were bound to deliver me up, or to banish me out of their Dominions, and so he demanded that this might be executed. Upon this I was called before some of the Depu­ties of the States: and both the Envoys Memorials being read to me, I was required to offer what I had to say upon them. I could not but first take notice of the great difference that was between them: The first complaining of me as a subject of the States, and demanding that I might be punished by them; and the second demanding me as the King's Subject. To the first, I an­swered according to the Reflections that I have already menti­oned. To the second, I said, I could not be a Fugitive, since I had come out of Scotland fourteen years ago, and after eleven years stay in England, had come out of it three years ago by the King's leave. As for my being a Rebel; I could answer no­thing to that, till I saw the Judgment that had passed upon me: but I was now the Subject of the States, and as I humbly claimed their Protection, so I pretended to no Protection against Justice: but offered my self to a Tryal, if any thing was laid to my charge. This being reported to the States of Holland, they were so far satisfied with my Answer, that the substance of it was put in the form of an Answer to the two Memorials: The whole a­mounts to this, that I was become their subject by being naturalized before this process was begun against me: so that I am now under their Protection: But if there is any thing to be objected to me, that can bear a Tryal, they will give order that full and speedy Justice shall be done upon it, in the Court of Holland.

Upon this a 3d Memorial was given in, to which the Arti­cles [Page 180] of the Treaty between the King and the States, were an­nexed, relating to Fugitives and Rebels; and it was said in it, that the States were bound to execute these with relation to me, without taking upon them to examine the grounds upon which the sentence was past. And because here lies the strength of the whole matter, I shall offer such Considerations upon it, as will, I hope satisfie all persons. 1. No Sentence is either passed or produced against me; for I am not declared by any Judgment either Rebel or Fugitive; and by the 7th Article all Condemna­tions ought to be notified by publick and Authentical letters: which must be understood of a Record of the sentence, that ought to be produced: whereas there is nothing shewed in my case but only a Memorial. 2. All Treaties, especially in the odious parts of them, are to be understood according to the common acceptation of the terms contained in them, and not according to the particular forms of any Courts of Justice; the common acceptance of Fugitive, is a man that flies away after a crime committed, from the prosecution of Justice; and a Rebel in the common acceptation, is a man that has born Arms against his Prince: since then I am not so much as charged with either of these, I cannot be comprehen­ded in the Article of the Treaty; for this must be the only sense, according to which the States are bound to deny harbour to De­clared Rebels and Fugitives. 3. That which puts an end to the whole matter is, that before I writ that Letter, upon which I am now prosecuted; I was become a Subject of the States, and by Consequence was no more in a Capacsty to be either the King's Rebel or Fugitive. And the point of Naturalizing Stran­gers, is now such an universal Practice, that the right of gran­ting it, is inseperable from Soveraign Power: so that either the States have this Right, or they are no more a Free and Soveraign State. And the obligations of honour that all Soveraigns come under to protect those whom they naturalize, against every thing but their own Justice, is no dark point of Law, but is that which every Prince knows and practices as oft as there is occasi­on for it. The King of France has used all the Naturalized Srangers in the same manner that he has used his own subjects in the point of Religion: and tho the French Protestants, that are gone into England, are according to the severity of the Edicts [Page 181] passed against them, made Criminals for flying out of that King­dom; so that according to the Letter of those Edicts they are Fugitives, yet the King has received them all, owned them for his Subjects, naturalised some, and supplied others of them, by a Bounty truly worthy of so great a Prince; and if the King does this to those of another Religion, that do fly out of the Do­minions of a Prince, with whom he is in peace, The States could not with any colour of reason, refuse to Naturalise me who am of their own Religion, when after so long a stay among them, it appeared that the King had nothing ro lay to my charge; and they having Naturalised me, if they should with­draw their Protection, before I had forfeited it by any illegal Action of mine, they should make a Breach upon the Publick Liberty, upon which their Government is chiefly founded. And it is to be observed, that the Treaty between the King and them, as to the Articles concerning Rebels and Fugitives, is Reciprocal; as all the Ancient Treaties between the Crown of England, and the Princes of these Provinces, before the formation of the Com­monwealth, ever were as to this particular; so that they can be no more bound to the King by it, than the King is bound to them. Now let us suppose that the King Naturalises a Dutchman, by which he is admitted to all the Priviledges of an Englishman; if the Dutch should after that condemn this person, as guilty of Rebellion; the King could not upon the States demanding of him, deliver him up or banish him at his pleasure, since this can­not be done arbitrarily to any Englishman, without a legal tryal by his Peers; and therefore it is plain that my case does not at all fall within the Articles of the Treaty; so that in this whole matter the States have acted as a free State, that was careful to maintain its Honour, and to assert its being an Independent Sove­raignty: and for my own part, I can appeal to all the Members of the States of Holland, if I made any applications to them, as if I would value my self on my being supported in opposition to the Envoy's Memorial; I staid at home, while the thing was un­der consultation, without making Addresses to any one of them as to my own particular. It is true, I would not withdraw of my own accord, from my own house, which I thought would have been a forsaking the Rights of the Countrey, a mistrusting the Protection of my Soveraigns, as well as my own Innocence, [Page 182] and an abandoning of the post in which God by his Providence has placed me. And I am resolved rather to run the risque of all that with which I am threatned, than show the least unbeco­ming fear. I thank God I make use of that common but Noble expression, that I am neither afraid to dye, nor ashamed to live. I will not go further into dark thoughts, tho I know enough of of the contrivances against me, by an order of men, whose souls are as black as their Habits. Tho for a great while I thought that the meanness of my person was such, that even success in any design against me could not have counterballanced the Infamy of it.

Thus I hope those hard words of high treason or Rebellion will make no impressions on any to my prejudice: for it is with them, as with Blasphemy or Heresy which are very odious words; but if mens passions carry them to apply these to the most Innocent things, they lose that force which is in them, and this will make the ancient observation return into mens minds, that Treason was become the crime of those (qui ab omni crimine innoxii erant) who were free from all crimes: so when all this prosecution is so slightly founded, I make no doubt the world will do me Ju­stice in it; and I can as little doubt, that if my cause could be so fairly represented to His Majesty, that he might see it with­out those false colours with which the Malice of my Enemies dar­ken it. He who has of late shewed a disposition to receive even into his favour those who were formerly esteemed, both his Fa­thers Enemies, his Brothers and his own, would return to juster and softer thoughts of me. For since I have done nothing that deserves his displeasure, it would be a greater crime, than any of which I stand accused, to think that it would be lasting.

This Author lays several Papers to my charge, but he does not prove that they were writ by me: and I do not think my self obliged to satisfie every spiteful man, that will fasten all such things upon me, as he thinks will render me odious. I did solemnly purge my self of the matters laid to my charge in the first Citation: but I said then, that I would not give my Enemies the satisfaction of doing that any more; or of clearing my self, as oft as they should think fit to lay any thing to my charge; so when there is any thing brought against me in a legal way, I make no doubt but that I shall be able either to clear my self of it, or [Page 183] to justifie my self in it; But since this Author thought fit to fasten so many Papers on me which I have not owned, he should in common equity and decency, have taken some notice of a Dis­course which I have owned: and that was my Preface to Lactan­tius's book of the Death of the Persecutors; in which I pleaded against Persecution; perhaps with more force than most of those who have of late undertaken the Argument: I carried the point so far, as to include even the Papists, in that General Toleration which I recommended. This I had writ be­fore either the King's Declaration appeared, or that the procee­dings against me were begun; but tho the state of Affairs with relation to my self, was upon that altered, and the point was so tender, that I had reason to apprehend it might offend many of my Brethren and best Friends, at a time when I had no Rea­son to make Enemies to my self; yet I published it, without al­tering it in any one thing. In the circumstances in which I was, I could do nothing more to shew how far I was from desiring to Imbroil matters, than when I touched so nice a matter, with so much plainness. As for all the other Reproaches with which he pursues me, I think it below me to answer such a Scribler; but for the sake of the License, I take the liberty to say, That I am not afraid, neither of the Calumnies, nor the Violences of my Enemies. I lived many Years in England under a great deal of displeasure from the Court, and yet there never was found the least appearance of any Guilt in me, with relation to the Government. Many of my friends have had pardons, and by consequence did very probably discover all they knew of me: for I have been credibly Informed that many have been Inter­rogated, and some under Torture with relation to me: but there never appeared the least shadow of a guilty Compliance with ill, Principles: not only was I free from accession to ill things, I was free also even from faults of Omission, with relati­on to the Publick; for I never failed as oft as I saw the least oc­casion for it, to bear down all things that tended to disturb the Publick Peace, and this both in Books, in Sermons, and in private Conversation: and I have Compurgators in this matter, that are beyond exception, as well as above Scandal. I do not carry this matter further; tho I could say that which might cover all my Enemies with Shame: and which will perhaps apppear to their [Page 184] amasement when they may have put an end to my being in this world.

I have ever gone by the Principles in which I was bred up at first, under a Father that from first to last, adhered to the King's Cause, without so much as one stumble, or making even an Ad­dress of Civility to his Enemies: but was as much an Enemy to Arbitrary Power, as he was to Rebellion, and thought it was as base and unwarrantable a thing, for Subjects to give up their just and legal Rights, as it was for them to fly out upon every pretended violation of them. In these Principles I have fortifi­ed my self, by study and observation; and I may Love them, for they have stood me very Dear. I went no further than to assert an Obedience and submission according to law, when I was Imployed to assert the Laws of Scotland, against those who studi­ed to overturn them, in which it was thought I did the Go­vernment some service, and for which the late King was pleased to thank me. It is true, I never could descend to the Methods of aspiring to Preferment that are expected in some Courts: but if this made some look on me as sullen or affected, yet it might have freed me from the Imputations of being Malecontent, when there are many Vouchers for me, who know that I avoided all Preferment as Industriously, as the most ambitious do court it. I came under ill Characters both in the Court, and elsewhere, be­cause first and last I was always against the Prosecution of the Dis­senters: and I always thought that greater endeavours ought to have been used for the Composing of the small Differences a­mong our selves, and that greater gentleness ought to be ex­pressed even to those who could not be brought within any terms of reconciliation. These were my only Crimes and Here­sies; and for these Opinions I was represented as a favourer of the Kings and the Churches Enemies. And therefore it cannot but seem strange, that I, who was hardly used upon those ac­counts, should be now singled out to be the chief Instance of an unrelenting severity. The designs against my Person seem not enough to satisfie that Malice that works so quick a­gainst me, but they must lash out on my good name, and my Reputation, which I confess is the greater tryal of the two to my Patience: but tho with relation to God I must lay my hand on my mouth, and say, that I am the Chief of sinners; yet as to all [Page 185] men, I may boldly say, What have I done? I hope God will not lay to the Charge of my Enemies, all those Slanders, and all that Injustice with which they have prosecuted me.

This Author and some others have often given it out, as if I had Betrayed a Master; and I may expect the next time, that they will say, that I Murdered my Father; for the one is as true as the other. I never had a Master but the King, for the whole course of my Life raised me above the serving of any Subject. A design proposed to me, by one that is now Dead, and there­fore shall not be named by me, of bringing in an Army out of Scotland, for the Spoiling and Subduing of England, gave me a just horror at the Proposition, and I did all I could to with­stand it. The same great Person did quickly take up such a Jealousy of me, that he did all he could to ruin me, tho His present Majesty, who had then the Goodness for me to endea­vour to Pacify him, owned to me that he could see nothing in his hatred of me, but a violent Passion: Yet he was resolved to throw me in a Prison, where very probably I had languished away the rest of my Life, if the King that now is, had not been so gracious to me, as to warn me of my Danger, which made me leave Scotland; and after I had suffered near two years, all that Wrath armed with Power, could do to me; at last, while I was under one of the sharp effects of that great Minister's anger, I told a Person of Honour that which I believed was one of the grounds of it. The Gentleman set this so about, that as he himself was a Member of the House of Com­mons, so it was known to a great many others; upon which I was sent for by the House; I declined for four several times, to say what had been proposed to me; and at last, being threatned to be prosecuted by the House of Commons, as an Enemy to the Nation, I was thus unwillingly brought to own it. But that Great Man fell no sooner under an Eclipse of Favour, then tho I had felt the weight of his Credit for seven years together, I made not only all the steps necessary for a Reconciliation, but I engaged some then in Favour, so far into his Interests, that he expressed a very thankful acknowledgment of it, and a per­fect Reconciliation with me: Tho upon some Reasons of his own, our Meeting was not thought convenient; and his own Nephew, who being now of the Roman Communion, is a Wit­ness, [Page 186] to whom I may the more freely appeal, brought me very kind Messages from him, and signified them to me after his Death.

As for all the other things that can be objected to me, I pass them over, as things which can very little hurt me. The Author it seems pities Varillas's defeated Condition, who as my Friends from Paris write to me, does not so much as pretend to justify himself of all those gross Errors of which I have discovered him Guilty; but says, he has received an Order from the King, to insist no more in the Dispute in which he and I were engaged. Our Author will be a very fit Person to succeed to that Despicable Writer; who fancies that I contradict my self, in setting forth Q. Maries Clemency in one place, and yet shew­ing in another, how Unmerciful she shewed her self towards those that were condemned of Heresy. The best Natures in the World can be corrupted by a false Religion; and they be­ing once possessed with cruel Principles, the more Pious they are, they will be the more true to the Doctrines of their Church, and by consequence, they will execute all its severe Decrees with an unrelenting Rigour. And we have clear Instances of this in the Age in which we live, of Princes whose Inclina­tions to Clemency, are as well known as the Severities to which the Credit of the Society has carried them are Deplo­rable.

There is another spiteful Insinuation with which I shall con­clude my Apology: This Author finding that the Matters of State, of which he had accused me, were not like to Blemish me much, resolved to try what he could do in a Subject of ano­ther Nature, which was indeed above him; for tho it seems he is entertained to Scribble upon the Politicks, yet the matters of Divinity probably do not lie within his Province; but it seems he thought that any thing was to be ventured on that might Defame me. He represents me as an Enemy to the Divinity of Jesus Christ, because of the various readings of a verse in St. John's Epistle, that I gave from some Ancient Manuscripts, which I saw in my Travels. And these men who have of late studied to make all the World either Deists or Socinians, if they cannot make them Papists, by representing that, unless we be­lieve the Infallibility of the Church, we cannot upon good grounds [Page 187] believe either the Christian Religion, or the Mysteries of it, and this with so much Heat and Industry, as if their design were to have us to be any thing rather than Protestants; yet will accuse some of our Church of those Doctrines, against which we have writ with greater force than any of our Calumniators. (For we have Accusers of the other side too.) All the Fathers that writ against the Arians, believed those Mysteries, tho they never cited that Passage, from which it was reasonable to conclude, that it was not in their Bibles; otherwise it is not to be imagi­ned, that such Men as St. Athanase and St. Austin, should not have mentioned it; now the many other places of Scripture, that determine me to believe the Divinity of the Saviour of the World, are so clear, that I believe it equally well, whether this passage be acknowledged to be genuine or not. But having for some years taken pleasure to compare Manuscripts, those of the Holy Scriptures were naturally the most looked into by me; and since a Man that has but a transcient View of M. SS. can­not stay to examine them in many Passages, that Passage being the most Important of all that are controverted, I turned always to it, and have given the account of what I saw sincerely, both for it and against it. For I have learned from Job, not to lye for God, since truth needs no support from falshood: And I may well forgive those of a Church, who have built so much upon Forgeries and Counterfeit Pieces, to be angry with me, for giving so sincere an account, as I did of a Matter of Fact. But that Divine Saviour, whom I adore daily, as God equal with the Fa­ther, knows the Injustice that is done me in this, as well as in the other false Accusations with which my Enemies study to blacken me: I can assure them, that I have that Detestation of all Idolatry, and of theirs in particular, that I should never adore him as I do, if I did not think him to be by Nature God, over all, blessed for ever.

And now to conclude, if Men will not receive this Vindica­tion of my self, with the Justice that is due to me, I humbly commit my Cause to him, who judges righteously; who sees all things, and who will bring to light the hidden things of dishonesty; and who will either compass me with his favour as with a shield, and cover me from the rage of my Enemies; or if he lets me fall into their hands, will accept of the Sacrifice of [Page 188] my Life that I offer to him, and receive me into his Presence, where I shall be at quiet, and safe both from the Strife of Tongues, and from the Pride of Man.

WHen the Cardinals in Rome go abroad without Fiocco's on their Horses heads, it is understood that they will be then Incognito, and they expect nothing of that Respect which is payed them on other Occasions. So since there is no Fiocco at the Head of this Discourse, no Name nor Designation, it seems the Writer offers himself to be examined without those nice regards, that may be due to the Dignity he bears; and indeed, when a Man forgets what he is himself, it is very natural for others to do it likewise.

It is no wonder to see those of the Roman Communion bestir themselves, so much as they do, to be delivered from the Test, and every thing else that is uneasy to them; and tho others may find it very reasonable to oppose themselves in all the just and legal ways that agree with our Constitution, to this Design; yet it is so natural to all that are under any Pressure, to desire to get free from it, that at the same time that we can­not forbear to withstand them, we cannot much condemn them; but it raises nature a little, to see a Man that has been so long fatned with the Spoils of our Church, and who has [Page 201] now got up to a degree so disproportioned to his Merit, to turn so treacherously upon it. If he is already weary of his comfor­table importance, and will here give her into the Bargain, and declare himself; no Body will be surprized at the change of his Masque: since he has taken much pains to convince the World, that his Religion goes no deeper than his Habit: yet, tho his Confidence is of a piece with all his other Virtues, few thought it could have carried him so far: I confess I am not surprized, but rather wonder to see that others should be so: for he has given sufficient warning of what he is capable of; he has told the World what is the worst thing that Dr. Burnet can do, p. 50. But I am sure the Dr. cannot be quit with him, to tell what is the worst thing that he can do; it must needs be a very fruitful sancy that can find out all the degrees of wickedness to which he can go: and tho this Pamphlet is a good Essay of his Talent that way, yet that Terra Incognita is boundless. In the title Page it is said that this was first writ for the Author's own satisfacti­on, and now published for the benefit of all others whom it may con­cern. But the words are certainly wrong placed; for the truth of the matter is, That it was Written for the Author's own bene­fit, and that it is now published for the satisfaction of all others whom it may concern: in some sense perhaps it was written for the Author's own satisfaction: for so petulant and so depraved a mind as His, is capable of being delighted with His Treachery: and a poor Bishoprick with the addition of a Presidentship being too low a prize for His Ambition and Avarice, He resolved to as­sure Himself of the first great Bishoprick that falls; the Liege Letter lets us see how far the Jesuits were assured of Him, and how much courted by Him: and that He said, That none but Atheists supported the Protestant Religion now in England; yet how many soever of these may be among us, He is upon the point of lessening their number, by one at least: and he takes care to justifie the hopes which these Fathers conceived of Him. They are severe Masters, and will not be put off with secret Civilities, lewd Jests, Entertainments, and Healths drank to their good Success; so now the Price of the Presidentship is to be pay'd, so good a Morsel as this deserved that Dr. Stillingfleet, Dr. Tillotson, Dr. Burnet, and some other Divines should be ill used, and He to preserve the Character of Drawcansir, which is [Page 202] as due to Him as that of Bays, falls upon the Articles of the Church, and upon both Houses of Parliament. It is Reproach enough to the House of Lords, that He is of it; but it is some­what new, and a Character becoming Sa. Oxon, to arraign that House with all the Insolence to which he can raise his wanton Pen. Laws that are in being are treated with respect even by those who move for their Repeal; but our Drawcansir scorns that modest strain, he is not contented to arraign the Law, but calls it Barbarous, and says, That nothing can be more Barbarous and Prophane than to make the renouncing of a Mystery, so unanimous­ly received, a State Test; pag. 133. pag. 64. But he ought to have avoided the word Prophane, since it leads men to remem­ber, that he had taxed the Praying for the King, as under God and Christ, as Crude, not to say Prophane: when in the Prospect he had then [36] of a Bishoprick, he raised the King above Christ, but now another Prospect, will make him sink him beneath the Pope, who is but at best Christ's Vicar. But this is not all, there comes another Flower that is worthy of him; he tells us, That the TEST was the first-born of Oats's Plot, and brought forth on purpose to give Credit and Reputation to the Perjury, p. 5. And because this went in common between the Two Houses, he be­stows a more particular mark of his Favour on the House of Lords: and tells them, That this was a Monument erected by themselves in honour of so gross an Imposture. (Ibid.) But after all, the Royal Assent was added; and here no doubt it itched somewhere, for if it had not been for the manner of the Late King's Death, and the Papers published since his Death, he would have wreaked his Malice upon his Memory, for he will never forgive his not advancing him: And the Late King being so true a Judg of Wit, could not but be much taken with the best Satyr of our Time; and saw that Bays's Wit, when measured with another's, was of a piece with his Virtues, and therefore judged in favour of the Rehearsal Transpros'd: this went deep, and though it gave occasion to the single piece of Modesty, with which he can be charged, of withdrawing from the Town, and not importuning the Press more for some years, since even a Face of Brass must grow red, when it is so burnt as his was then; yet his Malice against the Elder Brother was never ex­tinguished but with his Life: But now a strange Conjuncture has [Page 203] brought him again on the Stage, and Bays will be Bays still.

He begins his Prologue with the only soft word in the whole piece, I humbly Conceive; but he quickly repents him of that De­bonarity, and so makes Thunder and Lightning speak the rest, as if his Designs were to Insult over the two Houses, and not to convince them. He who is one of the Punies of his Order, and is certainly one of its justest Reproaches, tells us pag. 8. ‘That to the Shame of the Bishops, this Law was consented to by them in the House of Lords:’ But what shame is due to him, who has treated that Venerable Bench, and in particular his Me­tropolitan, in so scurrilous a manner? The Order has much more cause to be ashamed of such a Member: tho if there are two or three such as he is among the twenty six, they may Com­fort themselves with this, that a dozen of much better Men, had one ameng them, that I confess was not much worse, if it was not for this, that he let the Price of his Treachery fall much lower than Sa. Oxon does, who is still true to his old Maxim, that he delivered in Answer to one who asked him, ‘What was the best Body of Divinity? Which was, That that which could help a man to keep a Coach and six Horses, was certain­ly the best.’ But now I come to Examine his Reasons for A­brogating the TEST.

The first is, ‘That it is contrary to the Natural Rights of Peerage, and turns the Birth-Right of the English Nobility into a Precarious Title, which is at the mercy of every Faction and Passion in Parliament; and that therefore, how useful soever the TEST might have been in its Season, it some time must prove a very ill President against the Right of Peerage: and upon this he tells a Story of a Protestation made in the House of Lords, against the TEST, that was brought in in 1675, together with the Resolution of the House against that Penalty upon the Peers, of losing their Votes in case of a Refusal: he represents this, as a Test or Oath of Loyalty against the Lawfulness of taking Arms up­on any pretence whatsoever against the King.’

But in Answer to all this, one would gladly know what are the Natural Rights of Peerage, and in what Chapter of the Law of Nature they are to be found; for if those Rights have no other Warrant, but the Constitution of this Government, then [Page 204] they are still subject to the Legislative Authority, and may be regulated by it. The Right of Peerage is still in the Family, only as the exercise of it is limited by the Law to such an Age, so it may be Suspended as oft as the Publick Safety comes to re­quire it: even the indelible Character it self, may be brought under a total Suspension, of which our Author may, perhaps, afford an instance at some time or other.

2.. Votes in either House of Parliament, are never to be put in ballance with Establish'd Laws: These are but the Opinions of One House, and are changeable.

3. But if the TEST might have been useful in its Season, one would gladly see how it should be so soon out of Season: for its chief use being to Secure the Protestant Religion in 1678, it does not appear, That now in 1688, the Dangers are so quite dissipated, that there is no more need of securing it. In one Sense we are in a safer Condition than we were then: For some false Brethren have shewed themselves, and have lost that little Credit which some unhappy Accidents had procured them.

4. It was not the Loyalty in the TEST of the Year 1675, that raised the greatest opposition to it: But another part of it, ‘That they should never Endeavour any alteration in the Go­vernment, either in the Church or State.’ Now it seemed to be an unreasonable Limitation on the Legislative Body, to have the Members engaged to make no Alteration: And it is that which would not have much pleased those, For whose satis­faction this Book is published.

The second Reason was already hinted at, of its dishonourable birth and original; p. 10. which according to the decency of his Stile, he calls the first Sacrament of the Otesian Villany, pag. 9. This he aggra­vates as such a Monstrous and Inhuman piece of Barbarity as could never have entered into the thoughts of any man but the infamous Author of it; this piece of Elegance, tho it belongs to this Reason, comes in again in his fourth Reason, pag. 6. and to let the House of Lords see their Fate, if they will not yield to his Reasons, he tells them that this will be not only an ‘Eternal National Reproach, but such a blot upon the Peers, that no length of time could wear away, nothing but the Universal Conflagration could destroy;’ Which are the aptest Expressions [Page 205] that I know to mark how deeply the many blots with which he is stigmatized are rooted in his Nature. The wanton man in his Drawcansir-humor thinks that Parliaments and a House of Peers are to be treated by him with as much scorn as is justly due to himself. But to set this matter in its true Light, it is to be remembred that in 1678, there were besides the Evidences of the Witnesses, a great many other Discoveries made of Let­ters and Negotiations in forreign Parts, chiefly in the Courts of France and Rome, for Extirpating the Protestant Religion; upon which the Party that was most united to the Court, set on this Law, for the Test, as that which was both in it self a just and necessary Security for the Establish'd Religion, and that would probably lay the fermentation which was then in the Nation: and the Act was so little acceptable to him, whom he calls its Author, that he spake of it then with Contempt, as a Trick of the Court to lay the Nation too soon asleep. The Negotiations beyond Sea were too evidently proved to be denied; and (which is not yet generally known) Mr. Coleman when Examined by the Committee of the House of Commons, said plain enough to them, that the Late King was concerned in them; but the Com­mittee would not look into that matter, and so Mr. Sacheverill, that was their Chair-man, did not report it; yet the thing was not so secret but that one to whom it was trusted, gave the late King an Account of it; who said, That he had not heard of it any other way, and was so fully convinced that the Nation had cause given them to be jealous, that he himself set forward the Act, and the rather because he saw that the E. of S. did not much like it. The Parliament as long as it was known that the Religion was safe in the King's Negative, had not taken any great care of its own Constitution, but it seemed the best Expe­dient that could be found, for laying the Jealousies of His late Majesty, and the apprehensions of the Successor, to take so much care of the two Houses, that so the Dangers with which men were then allarm'd, might seem the less formidable, upon so effectual a security: and thus all the stir that he keeps with Perjury and Imposture, ought to make no other impression, but to shew the wantonness of his own Temper, that meddles so boldly with things of which he knew so little the true Secret: For here was a Law passed of which all made great use that [Page 206] opposed the Bill of Exclusion, to Demonstrate to the Nation that there could be no danger of Popery, even under a Prince of that Religion; but as he would turn the matter, it amounts to this, That that Law might be of good use in that season to lay the Jealousies of the Nation, till there were a Prince on the Throne of that Communion, and then when the turn is served, it must be thrown away, to open the only door that is now shut upon the Re-establishment of that Religion. This is but one hint among a great many more of the state of Affairs at the time that this Act of the TEST was made, to shew that the Evidence given by the Witnesses, had no other share in that matter, but that it gave a rise to the other Discoveries; and a fair Opportunity to those who knew the secret of the late King's Religion, and the Negotiation at Dover, to provide such an ef­fectual Security, as might both save the Crown, and secure the Religion: and this I am sure some of the Bishops knew, who (to their Honour) were faithful to both.

The third Reason he gives for Repealing the Act, is the In­competent Authority of those who Enacted it; for it was of an Ec­clesiastical nature: and here he stretches out his Wings to a Top-flight, and charges it with nothing less than the Deposing of Christ from his Throne, the disowning, neglecting and affronting his Commission to his Catholick Church, and entrenching upon this sacred Prerogative of his Holy Catholick Church: and then that he might have occasion to feed his spleen with railing at the whole Order, he makes a ridiculous objection of the Bishops being present in the House of Lords, that he might shew his respect to them, by telling in a Parenthesis that (to their shame) they had consented to it. But has this Scaramuchio no shame left him? Did the Par­liament pretend by this Act to make any Decision in those two Points of Transubstantiation and Idolatry? Had not the Convo­cation defined them both for above an Age before? In the 28th Article of our Church these words are to be found: Transubstan­tiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ: but it is re­pugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthrows the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions; and for the Idolatry of the Church of Rome that was also declared very expresly in the same body of Articles: since in the Article 35, [Page 207] the Homilies are declared ‘to contain a godly and wholesom Doctrine necessary for those times: and upon that it is judged that they should be read in the Churches, by the Ministers, diligently and distinctly, that they may be understood of the People.’ And the Second of these, which is against the Peril of Idolatry, aggravates the Idolatry of that Church in so many particulars, and with such severe Ex­pressions, that those who at first made those Articles, and all those who do now sign them, or oblige others to sign 'em, must either believe the Church of Rome to be guilty of Idolatry, or that the Church of England is the Impudentest Society that ever assumed the Name of a Church, if she proposes such Ho­milies to the People, in which this Charge is given so home, and yet does not believe it her self. A man must be of Bays's pitch to rise up to this degree of Impudence. Upon the whole matter then, these points have been already determined, and were a part of our Doctrine enacted by Law: All that the Parliament did, was only to take these out of a great many more, that by this Test it might appear whether they who came into either House were of that Religion or not; and now let our Reasoner try what he can make out of this; or how he can justify the Scandal that he so boldly throws upon his Order, as if they had as much as in them lay destroyed the very being of a Christian Church, and had profanely pawned the Bishop to the Lord: and betrayed the Rights of the Church of England as by Law Esta­blished in particular, as well as of the Church Catholick in general. p. 8, 9. All this shews to whom he has pawned both the Bishop and the Lord, and something else too, which is both Conscience and Ho­nour, if he has any left. When one reflects on two of the Bi­shops, that were of that Venerable Body, while this Act passed, whose Memory will be blessed in the present and following Ages, those two great and good Men that filled the Sees of Chester and Oxford, he must conclude, that as the World was not worthy of them, so certainly their Sees were nor worthy of them, since they have been plagued with such Successors; that because Bays delights in figures taken from the Roman Empire, I must tell him, that since Commodus succeeded to Marcus Aurillius, I do not find a more incongrous Succession in History. With what sensible regret must those who were so often edified with the Gravity, the Piety, the Generosity, and Charity of the [Page 208] late Bishop of Oxford, look on, when they see such a Harleguin in his room.

His Fourth Reason is taken from the uncertainty and falsehood of the matters contained in the Declaration it self, pag. 9. for our Comedian maintains his Character still, and scorns to speak of Establish'd Laws with any Decency; here he puts in a para­graph, as was formally marked, which belonged to his Second Reason, but it seems some of those to whom he has pawn'd him­self, thought he had not said enough on that head, and there­fore to save blottings, he put it in here. After that, he tells the Gentry, that Transubstantiation was a Notion belonging to the School-men and Metaphysitians, and that he may bespeak their Favour, he tells them in very soft words, That their Learning was more polite and practicable in the Civil Affairs of Human Life, to understand the Rules of Honour, and the Laws of their Countrey, the Practice of Martial Discipline, and the Examples of Great Men in former Ages, and by them to square their Actions in their respe­ctive Stations, and the like. But sure the Bishop is here without his Fiocco, yet at least for Decency's sake he should have named Religion and Virtue among the proper Studies of the Gentry: and if he dares not trust them with the reading the Scriptures, yet at least they might read the Articles of our Church, and hearken to the Homilies; for tho it has been long one of the first Maxims that he has infused into all the Clergy that come near him, that the People ought to be brought into an ignorance in matters of Religion; that Preaching ought to be laid aside, for a Preaching Church could not stand; that in Sermons no points of Doctrine ought to be explained, and that only the Rules of Human Life ought to be told the People; yet after all, they may read the short Articles: and tho they were as blindly Im­plicit as he would wish them to be, yet they would without more Enquiry, find Transubstantiation to be condemned in them. Next he Triumphs over the renouncing of it, pag. 11. ‘as too bold and too prophane an Affront to Almighty God: when men Abjure a thing which it is morally impossible for them to understand.’ And he appeals to the Members of both Houses (whom in a fit of Respect he calls Honourable, after he had Reproach'd them all he could) ‘if they have any di­stinct Idea or Notion in their minds, of the thing they here [Page 209] so Solemnly Renounce.’ I do verily believe none of them have any distinct Notion of Transubstantiation; and that it is not only Morally, but Physically impossible for them to understand it: But one would think that this is enough for declaring that they do not Believe it, since the TEST contains no declarati­on concerning Transubstantiation it self, whether it is a True or a False Doctrine: but only concerning the Belief of him that takes it. And if one can have ‘no distinct Notion of it, so that it is morally impossible for him to understand it, he may very well declare That he does not believe it.’ After a Farce of a slight Story, he concludes, that there seems to be nothing but a Prophane Levity in the whole matter: and a shameless abuse put upon God and Religion, to carry on the Wicked Designs of a Rebel-Faction. For he cannot for his heart, abate an ace of his Inso­lence, even when he makes the King, Lords, and Commons, the subject of his Scorn. Certainly whatever his Character is, it ought not to be expected that a man who attacks all that is Sa­cred under God and Christ, should not be treated as he deserves: it were a feeble weakness, to have so great a regard to a Cha­racter that is so prostituted by him. He tells us pag 47. ‘That all parties agree in the thing: and that they differ only in the word and manner:’ and here he makes a long excursion to shew his Learning, in tacking a great many things together, which passes with Ignorant Readers as a mark of his great Reading: whereas in this, as well as in all his other Books, in which any shews of Learning appear, those who have searched into the Fountains, see that he does nothing but gather from the Collection of others: only he spoils them with the Levities of his Buffoon Stilo, and which is worse, with his Dis-ingenuity. I leave all these matters to be examined, by those who have leisure for it, and that think him worth their pains: But as for Transubstantiation, the words that I have cited from out of our Articles, shew plainly that it is rejected in our Church, so that he is bound either to renounce it, or to renounce our Church: therefore all that shew he makes with our History, comes to nothing, since whatever he may say with relation to Edward the Sixth's Reign, it cannot be denied but they were Enacted by the Convocation in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's Reign, and they have been ever since, the Doctrine of our Church: so [Page 210] that without going further, this is now our Doctrine, and since Sa. Oxon carries the Authority of the Convocation so high, he will find the Original Record of these Articles in Corpus-Christi Col­ledg in Cambridge, subscribed by the Members of both Houses, in which there is a much more Positive Decision, than is in the Prints, not only against Transubstantiation, but against any Cor­poral or Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacra­ment: And if he will give himself scope, to rail at those who suppressed this, I leave him to his Liberty. But here is the formal decision of this Church, and the pretending that there was no Evidence of Cranmer's Opinion, but in an unknown Manuscript, or a Famous Invisible Manuscript, p. 49, 47. when there are two Books writ on this matter by Cranmer himself, and when all the Disputes in Queen Mary's time, besides those that were both in Oxford, and Cambridge, in King Edward's time, shew so clearly, That this was his Doctrine, is a strain becoming his Sincerity, that gives this among many other Essays of the Trust that is due to him.

But it seems he thought that Dr. Tillotson, Dr. Stillingfleet, and Dr. Burnet, besides some others whom he does not Name, had not Reputation enough in the World, and therefore he intend­ed to raise it, by using them ill: which is all the effect that his Malice can have. He had set on one of his poor underwork­men, some years ago, to decry the Manuscript which Dr. Stil­lingfleet had in his keeping for above Twenty Years, and which Dr. Burnet had in his Hands, for many months, and which they shewed to as many as desired to see it, but that had turn­ed so much to his Shame that first vented the Calumny, that it seems he summoned Sa. Oxon to appear his second in the Slander: and he whose Brow is of so peculiar a Composition, will needs bring it here, tho ever so impertinently. But I for­give the Hatred that he bears both to that Manuscript, and to those Doctors, since nothing could be less to the satisfacton of those for whom he published his Book, than to see the Mature and Regular Methods in which the Reformation was advanced, for the Bishops and Divines were appointed to Examine all Points with much care, and to bring every man his Opinion in Writ­ing, all which were compared very faithfully, and upor these the Decisions were made.

There are many other Papers yet extant which by compa­ring the Hands shew these to be Originals: and they were in the Salisbury Family probably ever since they were at first brought together. Their Ancestor the Lord Burleigh who was Secretary of State in Edward the Sixth's time, gathered them up; and as appears in a Letter under his own Hand yet extant, he had 6 or 7 Volumns of them, of which Dr. Stillingfleet had only two: but Dr. Burnet saw two more of these Volumes.

The History of the Reformation sells still so well, that I do not believe Mr. Chiswell the Printer of it has made any Present to this Reasoner, to raise its Price; for to attack it with so much Malice, and'yet not to offer one Reason to lessen its Credit, is as effectual a Recommendation, as this Author can give it.

He pretends that Dr. Burnet's design was, to make Cranmer appear a meer Sacramentarian as to Doctrine, as he had made him appear an Erastian, as to Discipline; and he thinks the vain Man was flattered into all the Pains he took, that he might give Reputation to the Errours of his Patrons, and that those two grand Forgeries are the grand Singularities of his History: and the main things that gave it Popular Vogue and Reputation with his Party. So that were these two blind Stories, and the Reasons depending upon them retrenched, it would be like the shaving off Samsons Hair, and destroy all the strength pecu­liar to the History. But to all this stuff I shall only say. 1. That the Charge of Forgery falls back on the Reasoner, since as to Cranmers opinion of the Sacrament, his own Books and his Dis­pute at Oxford are such plain Evidences, that none but Bays could have questioned it; and for his being an Erastian Dr. Bur­net had clearly proved that he had changed his Opinion in that Point, so that tho he shewed that he had been indeed once en­gaged in those Opinions, yet he proved that he had forsaken them: Let the Reader judg to whom the charge of Forgery belongs. 2. Dr. Burnet has indeed some temptations to Vanity now, since he is ill used by Bays; and put in such Company: but I dare say if he goes to give him his Character he will never mention so slight a one as Vanity, in which how excessive so ever he may be, yet it is the smallest of all his Faults. 3. These two Particulars here mentioned, bear so inconsiderable a share in that History, and have been so little minded, that I dare say [Page 212] of an hundred that are pleased with that Work, there is not one that will assign these as their Motives.

He censures Dr. Burnet for saying he had often heard it said that the Articles of our Church were framed by Cranmer and Rid­ley, as if it were the meanest Trade of an Historian to stoop to hear­says, p. 55. But the best of all the Roman Historians (Salust. in bello Catil.) does it, and in this Dr. Burnet maintains the Cha­racter of a sincere Historian, to say nothing that was not well grounded: and since it has been often said by many Writers, that these two Bishops prepared our Articles, he finding no par­ticular Evidence of that, delivers it with its own doubtfulness. It is very like Sa. Oxon would have been more positive upon half the grounds that Dr. Burnet had, but the other chose to write exactly: yet he adds, That it is probable that they penned them: and if either the Dignity of their Sees, or of their Per­sons be considered, the thing will appear reasonable enough. But I do not wonder to see any thing that looks like a modesty of Stile offend our Author. He is next so kind to Dr. Burnet, as to offer him some Counsel, (p. 50.) that he would be well advised to imploy his Pains in writing Lampoons upon the present Princes of Christendom (especially his own) which he delights in most; because it is the worst thing that himself can do; than collecting the Records of former times; for the first will require time and Postage, to pur­sue his Malice; but the second is easily traced in the Chimney-corner.

One would think that this period was Writ by Mr. South, it is so obscure and ill expressed, that nothing is plain, but the malice of it: but he of all men should be the furthest from re­proaching any for Writing Lampoons, who has now given so rude a one, on the late King and the Lords and Commons; if bold Railing without either Wit or Decency, deserves that Name. I will only say this further, That if one had the ill nature to write a Lampoon on the Government, one of the se­verest Articles in it, would be, That it seems Writers are hard to be found, when such a Baboon is made use of. It is Lampoon enough upon the Age, that he is a Bishop, but it is downright Reproach that he is made the Champion of a Cause, which if it is bad of it self, must suffer extreamly by being in such Hands.

And thus I think enough is said in Answer to his impertinent digression upon Transubstantiation; let him renounce the Article of our Church, and all that he possesses in Consequence to his having signed it, and then we will argue all the rest with him upon the square: but as long as he owns that, he is bound likewise to own the first Branch of the TEST, which is the Renouncing of Transubstantiation. In this Discourse he makes his old hatred to Calvin and the Calvinists return so often, that it appears very Conspicuously. I believe it is stronger now than ever, and that for a particular reason; when the Prince and Princess of Orange were Married, he was perhaps the only Man in England that Expressed his uneasiness at that Happy Con­junction, in so Clownish a manner, that when their Highnesses past through Canterbury, he would not go with the rest of that Body, to which he was so long a Blemish, to pay his Duty to them; and when he was asked the Reason, he said, He could have no regard to a Calvinist Prince. Now this Calvinist Prince has declared his mind so openly and fully against the Repeal of the TEST, that no doubt this has encreased Bays's distemper, and heightned his Choler against the whole Party.

The second Branch of the TEST is the Declaration made of the Idolatry committed in the Roman Church; upon which he tells us, p. 71, 72. That Idolatry is a Stabbing and Cut-throat Word, and that it is an Inviting and Warranting the Rabble when­ever Opportunity favours, to destroy the Roman Catholicks; and here Bays will outdo himself, since this was a Master-piece of Service; therefore he makes the taxing the Church of Rome with Idolatry, a piece of Inhumanity that outdoes the Savages of the Canibals themselves: and damns at once both body and Soul. He charges Dr. Stillingfleet, as the great Founder of this, and all other Anti-catholick and Anti-christian and uncharitable Principles among us; and that the TEST is the Swearing to the Truth of his unlearned and Phanatick Notion of Idolatry, pag. 130, 135. and the result of all is, That Idolatry made the Plot, and then the Plot made Idolatry, and that the same persons made both. He has also troubled the Reader with a second impertinence to shew his second-hand Reading again upon the Notion of Idolatry: but all this falls off with a very short Answer, if he is of the Church of England, and believes that the Homilies contain a [Page 214] Godly and Wholesom Doctrine, all this Clamour against Idolatry, turns against himself, for he will find the Church of Rome charg­ed with this almost an Age before Dr. Stillingfleet was Born: and tho perhaps none has ever defended the Charge, with so much Learning as he has done, yet no malice less Impudent than his is, could make him the Author of the Accusation. It will be another strain of our Author's modesty, if he will pre­tend that our Church is not bound to own the Doctrine that is contained in her Homilies, he must by this make our Church as Treacherous to her Members, as Sa. Oxon is to her; for to deliver this Doctrine to the People, if we believe it not our selves, is to be as impudent as he himself can pretend to be. A Church may believe a Doctrine which she does not think neces­sary to propose to all her Members: but she were indeed a So­ciety fit for such Pastors as he is, if she could propose to the People a Doctrine, chiefly one of so great Consequence as this is, without she believed it her self. So then he must either Re­nounce our Church and her Articles, or he must Answer all his own Plea for clearing that Church of this Imputation: which is so slight, that it will be no hard matter even for such a tri­fling Writer as himself is, to do it: As for what he says of Stab­bing and Cut-throat Words, he may charge us with such words, if he will, but we know who we may charge with the Deeds I would gladly see the List of all that have been murder'd by these Words, to try if they can be put in the Ballance, either with the Massacre of Ireland, or that of Paris; upon which I must take notice of his flight way of mentioning Coligny, and Faction, and telling us in plain words, pag. 45. ‘That they were Rebels.’ This is perhaps another instance of his kindness to the Calvinist Prince, that is Descended from that Great Man.

If Idolatry made our Plot, it was not the first that it made; but his malignity is still like himself, his charging Dr. Stilling­fleet, who he says is the Author of the Imputation of Idolatry, as if he had suborned the Evidence in our Plot. I should con­gratulate to the Doctor the Honour that is done him by the Malice of one who must needs be the object of the hatred of all good Men, if I did not look upon him as so contemptible a person, that his love and his hatred are equally insignificant. [Page 215] If he thinks our Church worse than Canibals, I wish he would be at the pains to go and make a trial, and see whether these Salvages will use him as we have done. I dare say they would not Eat him, for they would find so much Gall and Choler in him, that the first bit would quite disgust them.

THE two seemingly contrary Advices of the Wise man, of Answering a Fool according to his Folly, and of not Answer­ing him according to his Folly, are founded on such Excellent Reasons, that if a man can but rightly distinguish the Circum­stances, he has a good Warrant for using both upon different occasions. The Reason for Answering a Fool according to his Folly, is, lest he be wise in his own eyes; that so a haughty and petulant humour may be subdued; and that a Man that is both blinded and swelled up with self-conceit, may by so severe a Remedy be brought to know himself, and to think as mean­ly of himself as every Body else does. But the reason against Answering a Fool according to his Folly, is, lest one be also like un­to him, and so let both his mind and stile be corrupted by so Vi­cious a Pattern. Since then in a former Paper, I was wrought on to let our Author see, what a severe Treatment he has justly drawn on himself, and to write in a stile a little like his own; I will now let him see, that he is the Man in the World, whom I desire the least to resemble: and so if I writ before in a stile that I thought became him, I will now change that into ano­ther, which I am sure becomes my self. In the former, I ex­amined his Arguments for abrogating the Test, in a strain, which I thought somewhat necessary for the Informing the Na­tion [Page 216] aright, in a matter of such Consequence, that the Preser­vation of our Religion is judged to depend upon it, by the Pre­sumptive Heir of the Crown: but now, that I am to argue a point, which requires more of a Gravity, than of an acrimony of stile, I will no more consider the Man, but the Matter in hand.

In a word, ‘He would persuade the World, that Transubstan­tiation is but a Nicety of the Schools, calculated to the Ari­stotelian Philosophy, and not defined positively in the Church of Rome: but that the Corporal and Real Presence of the sub­stance of Christ's Body and Blood in the Sacrament, was the Doctrine of the Universal Church in the Primitive Times: and that it is at this day the generally received Doctrine by all the different Parties in Europe, not only the Ro. Catholicks and Lutherans, but both by the Churches of Switzerland and France, and more particularly by the Church of England; so that since all that the Church of Rome means by Transubstan­tiation is the Real Presence; and since the Real Presence is so U­niversally received, it is a heinous thing to renounce Tran­substantiation; for that is in effect the renouncing the Real Presence.’

This is the whole strength of his Argument, which he for­tifies by many Citations, to prove that both the Ancient Fa­thers and the Modern Reformers, believed the Real Presence; and that the Church of Rome believes no more. But to all this I shall offer a few Exceptions.

I. If Transubstantiation is only a Philosophical Nicety concerning the manner of the Presence; where is the hurt of renouncing it? and why are the Ro. Catholicks at so much pains to have the Test repealed? for it contains nothing against the Real Presence; indeed if this Argument has any force, it should rather lead the Ro. Catholicks to take the Test, since according to the Bp. they do not renounce in it any Article of Faith, but only a bold curiosity of the Schoolmen. Yet after all, it seems they know, that this is contrary to their Doctrine, otherwise they would not venture so much upon a point of an old and decried Philo­sophy.

II. In order to the stating this matter aright, it is necessary to give the true notion of the Real Presence, as it is acknowled­ged by the Reformed. We all know in what sense the Church of Rome understands it, that in the Sacrament there is no Real Bread and Wine, but that under the appearance of them, we have the true substance of Christ's glorified Body. On the other hand, the Reformed, when they found the world generally fond of this phrase; they by the same Spirit of Compliance, which our Saviour and his Apostles had for the Jews, and that the Primi­tive Church had (perhaps to excess) for the Heathens, retai­ned the phrase of Real Presence: but as they gave it such a sense as did fully demonstrate, that tho they retained a term that had for it a long Prescription, yet they quite changed its meaning: for they always shewed, that the Body and Blood of Christ, which they believed present, was his Body broken and his Blood shed; that is to say, his Body, not in its glorified state, but as it was crucified. So that the presence belonging to Christ's dead Body, which is not now actually in being, it is only his Death that is to be conceived to be presented to us; and this being the sense that they always give of the Real Presence, the reality falls only on that conveyance that is made to us in the Sacrament, by a federal rite of Christ's Death as our Sacrifice. The learned Answerer to the Oxford Discourses has so fully demonstrated this from the copious explanations which all the Reformed give of that phrase, that one would think it were not possible either to mistake or cavil in so clear a point. The Papists had gene­rally objected to the Reformers, that they made the Sacrament no more than a bare Commemoratory Feast; and some few had carried their aversion to that gross Presence which the Church of Rome had set up, to another extream to which the People by a principle of Libertinism might have been too easily carried; if the true Dignity of the Sacrament had not been maintained by expressions of great Majesty: so finding that the world was possessed of the phrase of the Real Presence, they thought fit to preserve it, but with an Explanation that was lia­ble to no Ambiguity. Yet it seems our Reformers in the begin­ning of Queen Elizabeth's Reign had found that the phrase had more power to carry men to Superstition, than the explana­tions given to it, had to retire them from it, and therefore the [Page 218] Convocation ordered it to be laid aside, tho that order was sup­pressed out of prudence: and the phrase has been ever since in use among us, of which Dr. Burnet has given us a copious ac­count, Hist. Reform. 2. Vol. 3. Book.

III. The Difference between the notion of the Sacrament's be­ing a meer Commemoratory Feast, and the Real Presence, is an great as the value of the Kings head stamped upon a Medal differs from the currant coyn, or the Impression made by the Great Seal upon Wax differs from that which any Carver or Graver may make. The one is a meer Memorial, but the o­ther has a sacred badge of Authority in it. The Paschal Lamb was not only a Remembrance of the Deliverance of the People of Israel out of Egypt, but a continuance of the Covenant that Moses made between God and them, which distinguished them from all the Nations round about them, as well as the first Pass­over had distinguished them from the Egyptians. Now it were a strange Inference, because the Lamb was called the Lords Passeover, that is, the Sacrifice, upon the sprinkling of whose Blood the Angel passed over or passed by the Houses of the Israe­lites, when he smote the first-born of the Egyptians, to say, that there was a change of the substance of the Lamb: or because the Real saith of a Prince is given by his Great Seal, printed on Wax, and affixed to a Parchment, that therefore the substance of the Wax is changed: so it is no less absurd to imagine, that because the Bread and the Wine are said to be the Body and Blood of Christ as broken and shed, that is, his death Really and effectu­ally offered to us, as our Sacrifice, that therefore the substance of the Bread and Wine are changed.

And thus upon the whole matter, that which is present in the Sacrament is Christ Dead, and since his death was transacted above 1600. years ago, the reality of his presence can be no other than a Real offer of his death made to us in an instituted and federal symbole. I have explained this the more fully, because with this, all the ambiguity in the use of that com­monly received phrase, falls off.

IV. As for the Doctrine of the Ancient Church, there has been so much said in this Enquiry, that a Man cannot hope to add any new discoveries to what has been already found out: therefore I shall only endeavour to bring some of the most Im­portant [Page 219] Observations into a narrow compass, and to set them in a good light: and shall first offer some general Presumptions, to shew that it is not like, that this was the Doctrine of the Pri­mitive times, and then some Positive proof of it.

1. It is no slight Presumption against it, that we do not find the Fathers take any pains to answer the Objections that do na­turally arise out of the present Doctrine of the Church of Rome: these Objections do not arise out of profound study, or great learning, but from the plain dictates of common sense, which make it hard (to say no more) for us to believe, that a Body can be in more places than one at once, and that it can be in a place after the manner of a spirit: that Accidents can be without their subject; or that our senses can deceive us in the plainest cases: We find the Fathers explain some abstruse difficulties that arise out of other Mysteries, that were less known, and were more Spe­culative: and while they are thought perhaps to over-do the one, it is a little strange that they should never touch the other: but on the contrary, when they treat of Philosophical matters, they express themselves roundly in opposition to those conse­quences of this Doctrine: whereas since this Doctrine has been received, we see all the speculations of Philosophy have been so managed, as to keep a reserve for this Doctrine. So that the uncautious way in which the Fathers handled them (in proof of which, Volumes of quotations can be made) shews they had not then received that Doctrine, which must of ne­cessity give them occasion to write otherwise than they did.

2. We find the Heathens studied to load the Christian Religion with all the heaviest Imputations that they could give it. They objected to them the believing a God that was born, and that died, and the Resurrection of the Dead, and many lesser mat­ters, which seemed absurd to them; they had malice enough to seek out every thing that could disgrace a Religion which grew too hard for them: but they never once object this, of making a God out of a piece of Bread, and then eating him: if this had been the Doctrine of those Ages, the Heathens, chiefly Celsus, and Porphiry, but above all Julian, could not have been Ignorant of it. Now it does not stand with common sense to think, that those who insist much upon Inconsiderable things, could have passed over this, which is both so sensible and [Page 220] of such Importance, if it had been the received belief of those Ages.

3. It is also of weight, that there were no disputes nor He­resies upon this point during the first Ages; and that none of the Hereticks ever objected it to the Doctors of the Church. We find they contended about all other Points: now this has so many difficulties in it, that it should seem a little strange, that all mens understandings should have been then so easy and con­senting, that this was the single point of the whole Body of Divinity, about which the Church had no dispute for the first Seven Centuries. It therefore inclines a Man rather to think, that because there was no disputes concerning it, therefore it was not then broached: since we see plainly, that ever since it was broached in the West, it has occasioned lasting Disputes, both with those who could not be brought to believe it, and with one another concerning the several ways of explaining and maintaining it.

4. It is also a strong Prejudice against the Antiquity of this Doctrine, that there were none of those rites in the first Ages, which have crept in, in the latter: which were such natural consequences of it, that the belief of the one making way for the other, we may conclude, that where the one were not practised, the other was not believed. I will not mention all the Pomp which the latter Ages have Invented to raise the lu­stre of this Doctrine, with which the former Ages were unac­quainted. It is enough to observe, that the Adoration of the Sacrament, was such a necessary Consequence of this Doctrine, that since the Primitive Times know nothing of it, as the Greek Church does not to this day, it is perhaps more than a Pre­sumption, that they believed it not.

5. But now I come to more Positive and Convincing proofs: and

1. The language of the whole Church is only to be found in the Liturgies which are more severely composed than Rhe­torical Discourses; and of all the parts of the Office, the Prayer of Consecration, is that in which we must hope to find most certainly the Doctrine of the Church; we find them in the 4th Century, that in the Prayer of Consecration, the Elements were said to be the Types of the Body and Blood of Christ, as St. Basil [Page 221] Informs us from the Greek Liturgies; and the Figure of his Body and Blood, as St. Ambrose Informs us, from the Latine Liturgies: The Prayer of Consecration, that is now in the Canon of the Mass, is in a great part the same with that which is cited by St. Ambrose, but with this Important difference, that instead of the words, which is the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ, that are in the former, there is a petition added in the latter, that the gifts may be to us the Body and Blood of Christ. If we had so many of the Masses of the Ancient Liturgies left, as to be able to find out the time in which the Prayer of Consecration was altered, from what it was in St. Ambrose's days, to what it is now, this would be no small Article in the History of Tran­substantiation: but most of these are lost; since then the Ancient Church could not believe otherwise of the Sacrament, than as she expressed her self concerning it, in the Prayer of Consecra­tion; It is plain, that her first Doctrine concerning it, was, that the Bread and Wine were the Types and the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ.

2. A second proof is from the Controversy, that was began by the Apollinarists, and carried on by the Eutichians, whether Christ's humanity was swallowed up of his Divinity or not? The Eutichians made use of the General Expressions, by which the change in the Sacrament seemed to be carried so far, that the Bread and Wine were swallowed up by it; and from this they inferred, that in like manner the human nature of Christ was swallowed up by his Divinity: but in opposition to all this, we find Chrysostome the Patriarch of Constantinople, Ephraim the Patriarch of Antioch, Gelasius the Pope, Theodoret a Bishop in Asia the lesser, and Facundus a Bishop in Africk, all within the compass of little more than an Age, agree almost in the same words, in refuting all this: asserting, that as the human nature in Christ remained still the same that it was before, notwith­standing its union with his Divine Nature; even so the Bread and Wine retained still their former Nature, Substance and Form, and that they are only sanctified, not by the change of their Nature, but by adding Grace to Nature. This they do in terms plain, and beyond all exception; and Theodoret goes over the matter again and again, in two different Treatises; so that no matter of fact can appear more plainly, than that the whole Church East [Page 222] and West, and South, did in the fifth and sixth Centuries believe that the Sanctification of the Elements in the Sacrament, did no more destroy their natures, than the union of the two Natures in Christ, did destroy his humane nature.

A Third proof is taken from a practice which I will not offer to justify, how Ancient soever it may have been: It appears in­deed in the Ancientest Liturgies now extant; and is a Prayer in which the Sacrament is said to be offered up in honour of the Saint of the day, to which a petition is added, that it may be accepted of God, by the Intercession of the Saint. This is yet in the Missal, and is used upon most of the Saints days. Now if the Sacrament was then believed to be the very Body and Blood of Christ, there is nothing more crude, not to say prophanc, to offer this up to the honour of a Saint, and to pray that the Sacri­fice of Christ's Body may be accepted of God through the In­tercession of a Saint. Therefore to give any tollerable sense to these words, we must conclude, that tho these Prayers have been continued in the Roman Church since this Opinion pre­vailed, yet they were never made in an Age in which it was re­ceived. The only meaning that can be given to these words, is, that they made the Saints days, days of Communion, as well as the Sundays were; and upon that they prayed that the Sacrament which they received that day, to do the more ho­nour to the Memory of the Saint, might be recommended to the Divine Acceptance by the Intercession of the Saint: so that this Superstitious practice shews plainly, that the Church had not, even when it began, received the Doctrine of the change of the Elements into the Body and Blood of Christ.

I will not pursue the proof of this point further, nor will I enter into a particular recital of the Sayings of the Fathers upon this subject; which would carry me far: And it is done so copiously by others, that I had rather refer my Reader to them, than offer him a lean abridgement of their labours.

I shall only add, that the Presumptions and Proofs that I have offered are much more to be valued, than the Pious and Rhe­torical Figures by which many of the Fathers have set forth the manner of Christ's Presence in the Sacrament. One thing is plain, that in most of them, they represent Christ present in his dead and crucified state, which appears most eminently in St Chryso­stom; [Page 223] so that this agreed with that notion of a Real Presence, that was formerly explained. Men that have at the same time, all the heat in their Imaginations that Eloquence can raise, and all the fervour in their heart which devotion can inspire, are seldom so correct in their phrases and figures, as not to need some allowances: therefore one plain proof of their Opi­nions from their Reasonings when in cold blood, ought to be of much more weight than all their Transports and Amplifi­cations.

From this General view of the State of the Church during the first Centuries, I come next to consider the steps of the change which was afterwards made. I will not offer to trace out that History, which Mr. Larrogue has done Copiously, whom I the rather mention, because he is put in English. I shall only observe, that by reason of the high expressions which were used upon the occasion of the Eutichean Controversy, formerly men­tioned, by which the Sanctification of the Elements was com­pared to the Union of the humane nature of Christ with his Di­vinity, a great step was made to all that followed: during the Dispute concerning Images, those who opposed the worship of them said, according to all the Ancient Liturgies, that they indeed acknowledged one Image of Christ, which was the Sa­crament; those who promoted that piece of superstition (for I refer the calling it Idolatry to its proper place) had the Impu­dence to deny that it had ever been called the Image of Christ's Body and Blood: and said, that it was really his Body and Blood. We will not much Dispute concerning an Age, in which the World seemed mad with a zeal for the Worship of Images; and in which Rebellion, and the Deposing of Princes upon the pre­tence of Heresy, began to be put in practice: such times as these, we willingly yield up to our Adversaries. Yet Dama­scene, and the Greek Church after him, carried this matter no further than to assert an Assumption of the Elements, into an union with the Body and Blood of Christ. But when the Monk of Corbie began to carry the matter yet further, and to say, that the Elements were changed into the very body of Christ that was born of the Virgin, we find all the great men of that Age, both in France, Germany, and England, writ against him; and he himself owns that he was looked upon as an Innovator. [Page 224] Those who writ against him, chiefly Rabanus Maurus, and Bertram, or Ratramne, did so plainly assert the Ancient opinion of the Sacraments being the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ, that we cannot express our selves more formally than they did: and from thence it was that our Saxon Homily on Easter Day was so express in this point. Yet the War and the Northern Invasions that followed, put the World into so much disorder, that all Disputes were soon forgot, and that in the Eleventh Century, this Opinion which had so many Partisans in the Ninth, was generally decried, and much abandoned.

VI. But with relation to those Ages in which it was received, some observations occur so readily, to every one that knows History, that it is only for the sake of the more Ignorant, that I make them.

1. They were times of so much Ignorance, that it is scarce conceivable to any but to those who have laboured a little in reading the productions of those Ages; which is the driest piece of study I know: The stile in which they writ, and their way of arguing, and explaining Scripture, are all of a piece, both matter and form are equally barbarous. Now in such times, as the Ignorant populace were easily misled, so there is some­what in Incredible Stories and Opinions, that makes them pass as easily, as men are apt to fancy they see Sprights in the Night: nay, the more of Mystery and Darkness that there is in any Opinion, such times are apt to cherish it the more for that very reason.

2. Those were Ages in which the whole Ecclesiastical Order had entred into such Conspiracies against the State, which were managed and set on by such vigour by the Popes, that every Opinion which tended to render the persons of Churchmen Sacred, and to raise their Character, was likely to receive the best entertainment, and the greatest encouragement possible. Nothing could so secure the persons of Priests, and render them so considerable, as to believe that they made their God: and in such Ages no Armour was of so sure a proof as for a Priest to take his God in his hands.

Now it is known, that as P. Gregory the 7th, who condem­ned Berengarius, laid the foundations of the Ecclesiastical Em­pire, [Page 225] by establishing the Deposing Power; so P. Innocent the 3d. who got Transubstantiation to be decreed in the Fourth Council of the Lateran, seemed to have compleated the project, by the Addition made to the Deposing Power, of transferring the Dominions of the Deposed Prince to whom he pleased. Since before this, the Dominions must have gone to the next Heirs of the Deposed Prince. It is then so plain, that the Doctrine of Transubstantiation, was so suitable to the advancing of those ends, that it had been a wonder indeed, if it being once set on foot, it had not been established in such times.

3. Those Ages were so corrupt, and more particularly the Clergy, and chiefly the Popes, were by the Confession of all Writers so excessively vicious, that such men could have no regard to truth in any of their Decisions. Interest must have carried all other things before it, with such Popes, who, ac­cording to the Historians of their own Communion, were per­haps the worst men that ever lived. Their Vices were so cry­ing, that nothing but the credit that is due to the Writers of their own time, and their own Church, could determine us to believe them.

4. As the Ignorance and Vices of those times derogate justly from all the credit that is due to them; so the Cruelty which followed their Decisions, and which was Imployed in the Exe­cution of them, makes it appear rather a stranger thing that so many opposed them, than that so many submitted to them. When Inquisitors or Dragoons manage an Argument, how strong soever the Spirit may be, in opposing it, it is certain the Flesh will be weak, and will ply easily. When Princes were threat­ned with Deposition, and Hereticks with Extirpation, and when both were executed with so much rigour, the success of all the Doctrines that were established in those days, ought to make no Impression on us, in its favour.

VII. It is no less plain that there was a great and vigorous opposition made to every step of the progress of this Doctrine: When the Eutichians first made use of it, the greatest men of that Age set themselves against it. When the Worshippers of Images did afterwards deny that the Sacrament was the Image of the Body and Blood of Christ, a General Council in the East assert­ed, according to the Ancient Liturgies, the Contrary Proposition. [Page 226] When Paschase Radbert set on Foot the Corporal Presence, in the West, all the great men of the Age writ against him. Beren­ger was likewise highly esteemed, and had many secret Follow­ers, when this Doctrine was first decreed: and ever since the time of the Council of the Lateran, that Transubstantiation was established, there have been whole bodies of men that have opposed it, and that have fallen as Sacrifices to the Rages of the Inquisitors. And by the Processes of those of Tholouse, of which I have seen the Original Records, for the space of Twen­ty years, it appears that as Transubstantiation was the Article upon which they were always chiefly examined, so it was that which many of them did the most constantly deny; so far were they on both sides from looking on it only as an Expla­nation of the Real Presence.

VIII. The Novelty of this Doctrine appears plainly by the strange work that the Schools have made with it, since they got it among them, both in their Philosophy and Divinity, and by the many different methods that they took for explaining it, till they had licked it into the shape in which it is now: which is as plain an Evidence of the Novelty of the Doctrine as can be imagined. The Learned Mr. Alix has given us a clear Dedu­ction of all that confusion into which it has cast the Schoolmen, and the many various Methods that they sell on for maintain­ing it. First, they thought the Body of Christ was broken by the Teeth of the Faithful: then that appearing absurd, and subjecting our Saviour to new sufferings; the Doctrine of a Bo­dies being in a place after the manner of a spirit, was set up. And as to the change, some thought that the Matter of Bread remained, but that it was united to the Body of Christ, as nourishment is digested into our Bodies; others thought that the Form of Bread remained, the Matter only being changed: And some thought, that the Bread was only withdrawn to give place to the Body of Christ, whereas others thought it was Annihilated. While the better Judges had always an eye either to a Consubstantiation, or to such an Assumption of the Bread and Wine by the Eternal Word, as made the Sacrament in some sense his Body indeed; but not that Body which is now in Heaven. All these different Opinions, in which the School­men were divided, even after the Decision made by Pope Inno­cent, [Page 227] in the Council of the Lateran, shew, that the Doctrine, being a Novelty, men did not yet know how to mould or form it, but in process of time the whole Philosophy was so digest­ed, as to prepare all Scholars in their first formation to receive it the more easily. And in our Age, in which that Philosophy has lost its credit, what pains do they take to suppress the New Philosophy, as seeing that it cannot be so easily subdued to support this Doctrine as the Old one was. And it is no unplea­sant thing to see the Shifts to which the Partisans of the Cartesian Philosophy are driven to explain themselves; which are in­deed so very ridiculous, that one can hardly think that those who make use of them, believe them: for they are plainly ra­ther Tricks and Excuses, than Answers.

IX. No man can deny, that Transubstantiation is the Doctrine of the Church of Rome, but he that will dispute the Authority of the Councils of the Lateran and Trent: Now tho some have done the first avowedly, yet as their number is small, and their Opinion decried; so for the Council of Trent, tho I have known some of that Communion, who do not look upon it as a Gene­ral Council, and tho it is not at all received in France, neither as to Doctrine nor Discipline, yet the contrary opinion is so universally received, that they who think otherwise, dare not speak out; and so give their Opinion as a secret, which they trust in confidence, rather than as a Doctrine which they will own. But setting aside the Authority of these Councils, the common Resolution of Faith in the Church of Rome being Tradition, it cannot be denied, that the constant and general Tradition in the Church of Rome, these last Five hundred years, has been in favour of Transubstantiation, and that is wit­nessed by all the Evidences by which it is possible to know Tra­dition. The Writings of Learned Men, the Sermons of Preach­ers, the Poceedings of Tribunals, the Decisions of Councils, that if they were not general, were yet very numerous, and above all by the many Authentical Declarations that Popes have made in this matter. So that either Tradition is to be for ever rejected as a false conveyance, or this is the received Doctrine of the Church of Rome, from which She can never depart, without giving up both her Infallibility, and the Authority of Tradition.

X. There is not any one point, in which all the Reformed Churches do more unanimously agree, than in the rejecting of Transubstantiation: as appears both by the Harmony of their Consessions, and by the current of all the Reformed VVriters. And for the Real Presence, tho the Lutherans explain it by a Consubstantiation, and the rest of the Reformed, by a Reality of Virtue and Efficacy, and a Presence of Christ as crucified; yet all of them have taken much pains to shew, that in what sense soever they meant it, they were still far enough from Transubstantiation. This demonstrates the wisdom of our Le­gislators, in singling out this to be the sole point of the Test for Imployments; since it is perhaps the only point in Controversy, in which the whole Church of Rome holds the Affirmative, and the whole Reformed hold the Negative. And it is as certain, that Transubstantiation is the Doctrine of the Church of Rome, as that it is rejected by the Church of England; it being by name condemned in our Articles.

And thus I hope the whole Plea of our Author in favour of Transubstantiation is overthrown, in all its three Branches, which relate to the Doctrine of the Primitive Church, the Doctrine of the Church of Rome, and the Doctrine of the Church of Eng­land, as well as of the other Reformed Churches. I have not loaded this Paper with Quotations; because I intended to be short: but I am ready to make good all the matters of fact as­serted in it, under the highest pains of Infamy if I fail in the performance: and besides, the more Voluminous works that have been writ on this subject, such as Albertine's, Claud's An­swer to Mr. Arnaud, and F. Nonet, Larrogue's History of the Eucharist, there have been so many learned Discourses written of late on this Subject, and in particular two Answers to the Bishops Book, that if it had not been thought expedient that I should have cast the whole matter into a short Paper, I should not have judged it necessary to trouble the world with more Discourses on a subject that seems exhausted. I will add no more, but that by the next I will give another Paper of the same Bulk upon the Idolatry of the Church of Rome.

THE words of the Test, that belong to this Point, are these, The Invocation or Adoration of the Virgin Mary, or any other Saint, and the Sacrifice of the Mass, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are Superstitious and Idolatrous: Upon which our Author fastens this Censure, ‘That since by this the Church of Rome is charged with Idolatry, which both forfeits Mens Lives here, and their Salvation hereafter, according to the express words of Scripture, it is a damnable piece of Cruelty and Uncharitableness to load them with this Charge, if they are not guilty of it; and upon this he goes to clear them of it, not only in the two Articles mentioned in the Test, the Worship of Saints, and the Sacrifice of the Mass, but that his Apology might be compleat, he takes in, and indeed insists chiefly on the Worship of Images, tho that is not at all mentioned in the Test. He brings a great many Quota­tions out of the Old Testament, to shew the Idolatry prohibited in it, was the worshipping of the Sun, Moon and Stars, or the making an Image to resemble the Divine Essence, upon which he produces also some other Authorities:’ And in this consists the Substance of his Plea for the Church of Rome.

But upon all this he ought to have retracted both the Li­cense that himself gave some years ago, to Dr. Stillingfleets Book Of the Idolatry of the Church of Rome; and his own hasty Assertion in condemning both Turk and Papist as guilty of Ido­latry; the one for worshipping a leud Impostor, and the other for worshipping a senseless piece of Matter. Def. of his Eccl. Pol. p. 285, 286 It seems he is now con­vinced, that the latter part of this Charge that falls on Papists, was as false, as the former that falls on the Turks, certianly is; for [Page 230] they never worshipped Mahomet, but hold him only in high Reverence, as an extraordinary Prophet, as the Jews do Mo­ses. It is very like that, if the Turks had taken Vienna, he would have retracted that, as he has now in effect done the other; for I believe he is in the same Disposition to reconcile himself to the Mufti, and the Pope: but the Ottoman Empire is now as low, as Popery is high; so he will brave the Turk still to his Teeth, tho he did him wrong, and will humble himself to the Papist, tho he did him nothing but right; but now I take leave of the Man, and will confine my self severely to the matter that is before me: And

I. How guilty soever the Church of Rome is of Idolatry, yet the Test does not plainly assert that; for there is as great a dif­ference between Idolatrous and Idolatry, as there is in Law, be­tween what is Treasonable, and what is Treason. The one Im­ports only a worship that is conformable to Idolatry, and that has a tendency to it; whereas the other is the plain Sin it self; there is also a great deal of difference between what is now used in that Church, and the Explanations that some of their Doctors give of that usage. We are to take the usage of the Church of Rome from her Publick Offices, and her authorised Practices; so that if these have a Conformity to Idolatry, and a tendency to it, then the words of the Test are justified, what Sense soe­ver some learned Men among them may put on these Offices and Practices; therefore the Test may be well maintained, even tho we should acknowledg that the Church of Rome was not guilty of Idolatry.

II. If Idolatry was a Crime punishable by Death under the Old Testament, that does not at all concern us; nor does the Charge of Idolatry authorise the People to kill all Idolaters: un­less our Author can prove, that we believe our selves to be un­der all the Political and Judiciary Precepts of the Law of Moses; and even among the Jews the Execution of that severe Law, belonging either to the Magistrate, or to some autho­rised and inspired Persona, who as a Zealot might execute the Law, when the Magistrate was wanting to his Duty. So that this was writ invidiously, only as it seems to inflame the Papists the more against us. But the same Calvinist Prince, [Page 231] that has expressed so just an Aversion to the repealing the Test, has at the same time shewed so merciful an Inclination towards the Roman Catholicks, that of all the Reproaches in the World, one that intended to plead for that Religion ought to have avoided the mentioning of Blood or Cruelty with the greatest care.

III. It is true, we cannot help believing that Idolatry is a damnable Sin, that shuts Men out of the Kingdom of Heaven; and if every Sin in which a Man dies without Repentance, does it, much more this, which is one of the greatest of all Sins. But yet after all, there is Mercy for Sins of Ignorance, upon Mens general Repentance; and therefore, since God alone knows the degrees of Mens Knowledg, and of their Ignorance, and how far it is either Affected on the one hand, or Invincible on the other; we do not take upon us to enter into Gods Secrets, or to Judg of the Salvation or Damnation of particular Persons; nor must we be byassed in our Enquiry into the nature of any Sin, either by a fond regard to the State of our Ancestors, or by the due respect that we owe to those who are over us in Civil Matters. In this Case, things are what God has declared them to be: we can neither make them better nor worse than he has made them; and we are only to Judg of things, leaving Persons to the merciful, as well as the just and dreadful Judg­ment of God.

IV. All the stir that our Author keeps with the examining of the Idolatry committed by the Jews, under the Old Testament, supposing it were all true, will serve no more for acquitting the Church of Rome, than a Plea would avail a Criminal, who were arraigned of High Treason for Coyning Money, or for Countefeit­ing the Kings Seal, in which one should set forth that High Trea­son was the Murdering the King, or the levying War against him; and that therefore the Criminal who was guilty of neither of these two, ought to be acquitted. Idolatry as well as Treason, is a comprehensive Notion, and has many different Branches; so that tho the worshipping the Host of Heaven, or the worship­ping an Image as a Resemblance of the Divinity, may be ac­knowledged to be the highest degrees of Idolatry, yet many other Corruptions in the worship of God are justly reducible to it, and may be termed not only Idolatrous, but Idolatry it self.

V. Our Saviour in his Sermon on the Mount has shewed us how many sins are reducible to the Second Table of the Law, besides those of Murder, Adultery, &c. that are expresly named in it: and tho the Jews in that time having delivered them­selves entirely from the sin of Idolatry, to which their Fathers were so prone, gave him no occasion of commenting on the first and second Commandment; yet by the parity of things we may conclude, that many sins are reducible to them, besides those that are expresly named. And tho we have not so com­pleat a History of the Idolatry of the Neighbouring Nations to Judea, before the Captivity; yet we do certainly know what was the Idolatry of which the Greeks and Romans were guilty when the New Testament was writ. And tho the greatest part of the New Testament is written chiefly with relation to the Jews, whose freedom from Idolatry gave no occasion to treat of it; yet in those few passages which relate to the Heathen Idolatry then on foot, the holy Writers retain the same phrases and stile, that were used in the Old Testament: which gives us just reason to believe, that the Idolatry was upon the matter and in its main strokes the same under both: and if so, then we have a door opened to us to discover all our Author's false Rea­sonings: and upon this discovery we shall find that all the In­spired Writers charged the Heathen Worship with Idolatry, not so much with relation to the glosses that Philosophers and other political men might put on their Rites, but with relation to the practice in it self.

VI. But since Idolatry is a sin against a moral and unchange­able Law, let us state the True Notion of the right VVorship of God, and by Consequence of Idolatry (tho this is done with that exactness by the worthy Master of the Temple, that it should make a man afraid to come after him.) Our Ideas of God, and the homage of VVorship and Service that we offer up pursuant to these, are not only to be considered as they are just thoughts of God, and Acts suitable to those thoughts; but as they are Ideas that tend both to elevate and purifie our own natures: for the thoughts of God are the seeds of all Truth and Virtue in us, which being deeply rooted in us, make us become conformable to the Divine Nature. So that the sin of Idolatry consists in this, that our Ideas of God being corrupted, [Page 233] he is either defrauded of that honour, which, tho due to him, is transferred to another; or is dishonoured by a worship that is unsuitable to his nature; and we also by forming wrong Ideas of the object of our VVorship, become corrupted by them. Nothing raises the soul of Man more than sublime thoughts of God's Greatness and Glory: and nothing perfects it more, than just notions of his VVisdom and Goodness. On the con­trary, nothing debases our natures more, than the offering our VVorship and Service to a Being that is low and unworthy of it: or the depressing the supream Being in our thoughts or wor­ship, to somewhat that is like our selves, or perhaps worse. Therefore the design of true Religion being the forming in us such notions as may exalt and sanctify our natures, as well as the raising a Tribute to the Author of our being, that is in some sort worthy of him, the sin of Idolatry is upon this ac­count chiefly forbidden in Scripture, because it corrupts our Ideas of God, and by a natural tendency this must likewise corrupt our natures, when we either raise up an Idol so far in our thoughts, as to fancy it a God, or depress God so far as to make him an Idol; for these two Species of Idolatry, have both the same effect on us. And as a wound in a Man's vitals, is much more destructive than any, how deep and dangerous so­ever, that is in his limbs; since it is possible for him to recover of the one, but not of the other; so Idolatry corrupts Religion in its source. Thus Idolatry in its moral and unchangeable na­ture is the Honouring any Creature as a God, or the Imagin­ing that God is such a being as the other Creatures are: and this had been a sin, tho no Law against it had ever been given to mankind, but the light and law of nature.

VII. But after all this, there are different degrees in this sin; for the true notion of God being this, that he comprehends all perfections in his essence; the ascribing all these to a Creature, is the highest degree of Idolatry: but the ascribing any one of these Infinite perfections, (or which is all one with relation to our actions) the doing any thing which Imports, or is under­stood to Import it, is likewise Idolatry, tho of a lower degree of guilt; so likewise the Imagining that the true God is no other than as an Idol represents him to be, is the highest degree of the other species of Idolatry; but the conceiving him as having a [Page 234] Body in which his Eternal mind dwells, or fancying that any strange Virtue from him dwells in any Body to such a degree, as to make that Body the proper object of Worship, unless he has assured us that he is really united to that Body, and dwells in it, which was the case of the Cloud of Glory under the Old Te­stament, and much more of the humane nature of Christ under the New; this is likewise Idolatry. For in all these, it is plain that the true Ideas of God, and the Principles of Religion are cor­rupted.

VIII. There are two principles in the nature of man that make him very apt to fall into Idolatry, either inward or out­ward. The first is the weakness of most peoples minds, which are so sunk into gross phantasms and sensible objects, that they are scarce capable to raise their thoughts to pure and spiritual Ideas: and therefore they are apt either to forget Religion quite, or to entertain it by objects that are visible and sensible: the other is, that mens appetites and passions being for the most part too strong for them, and these not being reconcilable to the true Ideas of a pure and Spiritual Essence, they are easily disposed to embrace such notions of God as may live more peaceably with their vices: and so they hope by a pro­fusion of expence and honour, or of fury and rage, which they Imploy in the Worship of an Imaginary Deity, to pur­chase their pardons, and to compensate for their other crimes, if not to authorise them.

These two principles, that are so rooted in our frail and corrupt natures, being wrought on by the craft and authority of ambitions and covetous men, who are never wanting in all Ages and Nations, have brought forth all that Idolatry, that has appeared in so many different shapes up and down the World, and has been diversified according to the various tem­pers, accidents and Constitutions of the several Nations and Ages of the World.

IX. I now come to examine the beginnings of Idolatry, as they are represented to us in the Scripture, in which it will appear, that our Authors account of it shews him guilty, ei­ther of great Ignorance, or of that which is worse. ‘He pre­tends that the first plain Intimation, that we have of it in Pa­lestine, is when Jacob after his conversation with the Schiche­mites, [Page 235] commanded his family to put away their Strange Gods.’ VVhereas we have an earlier and more particular account of those Strange Gods in the same Book of Genesis, Chap. 31. where when Jacob fled away from Laban, it is said, Vers. 19. that Rachel stole her fathers Images or Tera­phim: and these are afterwards called by Laban his Gods, vers. 30. and these very Images are called by Joshua 24.2. Strange Gods: So that the Strange Gods, from which Jacob cleansed his family, Gen. 35.2. were no other than the Teraphim; and that in the Teraphim, we are to seek for the true Original of Idolatry, and for the sense of the phrase of other Gods, or Strange Gods, which is indeed the true key to this whole matter.

These were little statues, such as the Dii lares or Penates were afterwards among the Romans, or the Pagods now in the East, in which it was believed, that there was such a divine vertue shut up, that the Idolaters expected protection from them. And as people in all times are apt to trust to Charms, so those who pretended to chain down the Divine Influences to those Images, had here a great occasion given them to deceive the world; of this sort was the Palladium of Troy, and the Ancelle of Rome. And this gave the rise to all the cheats of Telesmes and Talismans that came afterwards. These were of different figures: and since our Author confesses p. 124. that Cherubim and Teraphim are sometimes used promiscuously for one another, it is proba­ble that the figure of both was the same; and since it is plain from Ezekiel that the Cherubim resembled a Calf (Compare Ezek. 1.10. with chap. 10.14. where what is called in the first the face of an Ox, is called in the other the face of a Cherub) from hence it is probable that the Teraphim, or at least some of them, were of the same figure. In these it was also believed, that there were different degrees of Charms; some were be­lieved stronger than others: So that probably Pharaoh thought that Moses and Aaron had a Teraphim of greater virtue than his Magicians had, which is the clearest account that I know of his hardening his heart against so many Miracles: and this also seems to be the first occasion of the phrase of the Gods of the several Nations, and of some being stronger than other: that is, the Teraphim of the one were believed to have a higher degree of enchantment in them, than the others had.

This then leads us to the right Notion of Aaron's Golden Calf, and of the terms of graven or carved Images in the Second Com­mandment, and even of the other Gods in the first Commandment: for we have seen that both in the Stile of Moses and Joshua, the Images were those Teraphim, which they also called strange Gods. When the Israelites thought that Moses had forsaken them, they came to Aaron desiring him to make them gods, that is, Teraphims; yet they prescribed no form to him, but left that wholly to him; and so the dream of their fondness of the Egyp­tian Idolatry vanishes; for it was Aarons choice that made it a Calf; perhaps he had seen the Divine Glory, as a Cloud between the Cherubims when he went up into the Mountain, Exod. 24.9, 10. For a Pattern being shewed to Moses of the Tabernacle that he was to make; it is probable, Aaron saw that likewise, and this might dispose him to give them a Seraphim in that Figure; this is also the most probable account both of the Calves of Dan and Bethel, set up by Jeroboam, and also of the Israelites wor­shipping the Ephod that Gideon made, Judg. 8.27. of the Idola­try of Micah and the Danites, who robbed him, Judg. 17.18. and of the Israelites offering Incense to the Brazen Serpent, 2 Kings 18.4. which seemed to have all the Solemnities of a Teraphim in it; so that it is plain, the greatest part of the Idola­try under the Old Testament, was the worship of the Tera­phim.

X. But to compleat this Argument with relation to the pre­sent Point, it is no less plain, that the true Jehovah was Wor­shipped in those Teraphim. To begin with the first. It is clear that Laban in the Covenant that he made with Jacob, appeals not only to the God of Abraham, Gen. 31.53. but likewise to Je­hovah, v. 49. for tho that name was not then known, yet Moses by using it on that occasion, shews us plainly, that Laban was a VVorshipper of the true God. Aaron shews the same by intimating that Feast, which he appointed to Jehovah, Exod. 32.5. (which our Author thought not fit to mention) the Peo­ple also by calling these, v. 4. the Gods that brought them out of Egypt, shew that they had no thoughts of the Egyptian Idola­try; but they believed that Moses had carried away the Tera­phim, in the vertue of which it seems they fancied, that he had wrought his Miracles; and that Aaron, who they believed [Page 237] knew the Secret, had made them new ones; and this is the most probable account of their joy in celebrating that Feast. And as for Jeroboam, the case seems to be plainly the same; he made the People believe that the Teraphim, which he gave them in Dan and Bethel, were as good as those that were at Jerusalem. For as his design was no other than to hinder their going thither, 1 Kings 12.27. so it is not likely, that either he would, or durst venture upon a total Change of their Reli­gion; or that it could have passed so easily with the People; whereas the other had nothing extraordinary in it. It is also plain, that as Jeroboam called the Calves the Gods that brought them out of Egypt, v. 28. so he still acknowledged the true Jehovah; for the Prophets both true and false in his time pro­phesied in the name of Jehovah, 1 Kings 13.2, 18, 26. and when his Son was Sick, he sent his Wife to the Prophet Jeho­vah, c. 14. The Story of the new Idolatry, that Achab set up of the Baalim, shews also plainly, that the old Worshippers of the Calves, adhered to the true Jehovah; for Elijah states the mat­ter, as if the Nation had been divided between Jehovah and Baal, 1 Kings 18.21, 39. And the whole Story of Jehu con­firms this, 2 Kings 9.6, 12, 36. he was Anointed King in the Name of Jehovah; and as soon as the Captains that were with him, knew this, they acknowledged him their King; he like­wise speaking of the Fact of the Men of Samaria, cites the Au­thority of Jehovah, 2 Kings 10 10, 16, 29. which shews that the People acknowledged it still: and he called his Zeal against the worship of Baal, his Zeal for Jehovah, and yet, both he and his Party worshipped the Calves. It is no less clear that Micah, who called the Teraphim his Gods, Judges 18.24. was a Worshipper of the true Jehovah, Judges 17.13. and there is little reason to doubt that this was the case of Gideons Ephod, and of the Brazen Serpent. It were needless to go about the proving, that all these corrupt ways of worship were Idolatrous; the Calf is expresly called an Idol by St. Stephen, Acts 7.41. and the thing is so plain, that it is denied by none that I know of; so here we have a Species of Idolatry plainly set forth in Scripture, in which the true God was worshipped in an Image; and I fancy it is scarce necessary to inform the Reader, that wherever he finds LORD in Capitals in the English Bible, it is for Jehovah in the Hebrew.

XI. It is very true that the great and prevailing Idolatry of all the East grew to be the worship of the Host of Heaven, which seems to have risen very naturally out of the other Idolatry of the Teraphim, which probably was the Ancienter of the two. For when men came to think that Divine Influences were tied to such Images, it was very natural for them to fancy, that a more Soverain Degree of Influence was in the Sun, and by con­sequence that he deserved Divine Adoration much more than their poor little Teraphim. But it is also clear, that this Ado­ration, which they offer to the Sun, was not with Relation to the matter of that shining Body, but to the Divinity which they believed was lodged in it. This appears not only from the Greek writters, Zenophon and Plutarch, but from the greatest Antiquity that now is in the VVorld; the Bas reliefs that are in the ruins of the Temple of Persepolis, which are described with so much cost and care, by that Worthy and Learned Gentle­man, Sir John Chardin, and which the World expects so gree­dily from him; He favoured me with a sight of them, and in these it appears, that in their Triumphs, of which a whole Series remains entire, they carried not only the Fire, which was the Emblem of the Body of the Sun, but after that the Em­blem of the Divinity that it seems they thought was in it, under the Representation of a Head environed with Clouds, which is the most natural Emblem that we can fancy of an Intelligent, and an Incomprehensible Being. It is true, as Idolatry grows still grosser and grosser, the Intelligent Being was at last forgot, tho it seems it was remembred by their Philosophers, since the Greeks came to know it, and all their Worship was paid to the Sun, or to his Emblem the Fire; so that even this Idolatry was most probably the Worship of the true God at first, under a visible Representation. And that this was an effect of the for­mer Idolatry, is confirmed from what is said by Moses, Deut. 4.14, to 19. where he plainly intimates the progress that Idolatry would have, if they once came to worship graven or molten Images, or make any sort of Similtude for the Great God; this would carry them, to lift up their Eyes to Heaven, and Worship and Serve the Host of them.

XII. The next shape that Idolatry took, was the worshipping some subordinate Spirits, their Genii, which were in effect An­gels, [Page 239] or departed Men and Women, and this filled both Greece and Rome, and was the prevailing Idolatry when the New Testament was writ. But that all these Nations believed still one Supream God, and that they considered these just as the Roman Church does now Angels and Saints, (mutatis mutandis) has been made out so invincibly, by the Learned Dr. Stillingfleet, that one would rather think that he had over charged his Argument with too much proof, than that it is any way defective. And yet this Worship of those secondary Deities is charged with Idolatry, both in the Acts, and in the Epistles, so often, that it is plain, the Inspired Writers believed, that the giving any degrees of divine worship to a Creature, tho in a subordinate Form, was Idolatry; and St. Paul gives us a Comprehensive Notion of Idolatry, that it was the giving Divine Service (the word is Dulia) to those that by nature were not Gods, Gal. 4.8. and he throws off all Lords, as well as all the Gods of the Hea­then as Idols, and in opposition to these, reduces the VVorship of Christians to the Object of one God the Father, and of one Lord Jesus Christ, 1 Cor. 8.5, 6. So that the Greek and Roman Idolatry being strictly that which is condemned in the New Testament, of which we have such a copious Evidence from their writings, it is plain, that even inferior degrees of worship, when offered up to Creatures, tho Angels, is Idolatry; and tho the Heathens thought neither Jupiter nor Mercury the Supream Deities, yet the Apostles did not for all that forebear to call them Idols, Acts 14.15.

XIII. Our Author pretends to bear a great respect to Anti­quity: And therefore I might in the next place, send him to all that the Fathers have writ against the Greek and Roman Idola­try, in which he will find that the Heathens had their Explai­ners, as well as the Church old Rome has. They denied they worshipped their Images; but said, they made use of them on­ly to raise up their Minds by those visible Objects; yet as St. Paul begun the charge against the Athenians of Idolatry, Acts 17.29. for their Gods of gold and silver, wood and stone; so it was still kept up, and often repeated by the Fathers, tho the Philosophers might have thrown it back upon them, with all that Pomp of dreadful words, which our Author makes use of, against those that fasten the same Charge upon the Church of [Page 240] Rome. The same might be said with relation to the Fathers, accusing them of Polytheism, in worshipping many Gods, and of Idolatry in worshipping those that had been but Men like themselves. For it is plain, that at least all the Philosophers and wise Men believed, that these were only deputed by the Great God, to govern some Countrys and Cities; and that they were Mediators and Intercessors between God and Men. But all this, that appears so fully in Celsus, Porphyry, and ma­ny others, did not make the Fathers give over the Charge; Dr. Stillingfleet has given such full Proofs of this, that nothing can be made plainer than the matter of Fact is. We know likewise, that when the Controversy arose concerning the Godhead of Jesus Christ, Athanasius and the other Fathers made use of the same Argument against the Arrians, who wor­shipped him; that they could not be excused from the Sin of Idolatry, in worshipping and invocating him, whom they belie­ved to be only a Creature; which shews, that it was the Sense of the Christians of that Age, that all Acts of Divine Worship, and in particular, all Prayers that were offered up to any that was not truly, and by nature God, and the Eternal God, were so many Acts of Idolatry. So that upon the whole matter, it is clear, that the Worshipping the true God under a Corporeal Representation, and the worshipping or Invocating of Crea­tures, tho in an inferior degree, was taxed by the Apostles, and by the Primitive Church, as Idolatrous. When they accuse them for those Corruptions of Divine Worship, they did not consider the softning Excuses of more refined Men, so much as the Acts that were done, which to be sure do always carry the stupid Vulgar to the grossest degrees of Idolatry; and there­fore every step towards it, is so severely forbid by God; since upon one Step made in the publick Worship, the People are sure to make a great many more in their Notions of things. Therefore if we should accuse the Church of Rome, for all the Excesses of the past Ages, or of the more Ignorant Nations in the present Age, such as Spain and Portugal, even this might be in some degree well grounded; because the publick and au­thorized Offices and Practices of that Church, has given the rise to all those Disorders; and even in this, we should but Copy after the Fathers, who always represent the Pagan Idolatry, [Page 241] not as Cicero or Plutarch had done it, but according to the grossest notions and practices of the Vulgar.

XIV. All that our Author says concerning the Cherubims, deserves not an answer; for what use soever might be made of this, to excuse the Lutherans, for the use of Images, without worshipping them (tho after all, the doing such a thing upon a Divine Command, and the doing it without a Command, are two very different things) yet it cannot belong to the worship of Images, since the Israelites payed no worship to the Cherubims. They pay'd indeed a Divine worship to the Cloud of Glory, which was between them, and which is often in the Old Testament called God himself, in all those expressions in which he is said to dwell between the Cherubims. But this being a miraculous Symbole of the Divine presence, from which they had answers in all extraordinary cases, it was God himself, with­out any Image or Representation, that was worshipped in it. As we Christians pay our Adorations to the Humane Nature of Christ, by vertue of that more sublime and ineffable indwelling of the Godhead in Him: in which case it is God only that we worship, in the man Christ. Even as the respect that we pay to a man terminates in his mind, tho the outward expressions of it go to the body, to which the mind is united. So in that unconceivable Union between the Divine and Humane Natures in Christ, we adore the Godhead only, even when we worship the man.

XV. The General part of this Discourse being thus stated, the application of it to the Church of Rome will be no hard matter. I will not insist much on the Article of Image Worship, because it is not comprehended in the Test, tho our Author dwells longest on it, to let us see how carefully, but to how little purpose he had read Dr. Spencer's Learned Book. But if one considers the Ceremonies and Prayers with which Images, and particularly Crosses, are to be dedicated by the Roman Pon­tifical, and the formal Adoration of the Cross on Good-Friday, and the strange vertues that are not only believed to be in some Images by the rabble, but that are authorized not only by the Books of Devotion publickly allowed among them, but even by Papal Bulls and Indulgences, he will be forced to confess, that the old notions of the Teraphim are clearly revived among [Page 242] them. This could be made out in an infinite Induction of par­ticulars, of which the Reader will find a large account in the Learned Dr. Brevint's Treatise, entitled, Saul and Samuel at Endor. But I come now to the two Branches mentioned in the Test.

XVI. One is the Sacrifice of the Mass, in which if either our Senses, that tell us, it is now Bread and Wine, or the New Testa­ment in which it is called both Bread and the fruit of the Vine, even after the Consecration, or if the Opinion of the first seven Centuries, or if the true principles of Philosophy, concurring al­together, are strong enough, we are as certain as it is possible for us to be of any thing, that they are still according to our Authors own phrase, a senseless piece of matter. VVhen there­fore this has Divine Adoration offered to it; when it is called, the good God, carried about in solemn Processions, and receives as publick and as humble a Veneration, as could be offered up to the Deity it self, if it appeared visibly: here the highest degree of Divine worship is offered up to a Creature; nor will such worshippers, believing this to be truely the Body of Christ, save the matter, if indeed it is not so. This may no doubt go a great way to save themselves, and to bring their sin into the Class of the sins of Ignorance; but what large thought soever we may have of the mercies of God to their persons, we can have no Indulgence for an act of Divine Adoration, which is di­rected to an Object that we are either sure is Bread, or we are sure of nothing else.

XVII. As for the Invocation and Adoration of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, I shall offer only three Classes of Instances to prove it Idolatrous. 1. In the Office of the Mass on many of the Saints days, that Sacrifice, which is no other than the Body and Blood of Christ, according to them, is offered up to the honour of the Saints, and they pray to God to accept of it through the Saints Intercession. One would think, it were enough to offer up the Sacrifices of prayers and praises to them: but here is a Sacrifice, which carries in the plain words of it, the most absurd Idolatry that is possible; which is the offering up the Creator to the honour of a Creature.

2. In the Prayers and Hymns that are in their publick Offices, there are Petitions offered up to the Saints, that in the plain [Page 243] sense of the words import their pardoning our sins, and chan­ging our hearts. The dayly prayer to the Virgin goes far this way: Tu nos ab hoste protege, & hora mortis suscipe: Do thou protect us from our Enemy, and receive us in the hour of death. Another goes yet further: Culpas nostras ablue, ut perennis se­dem gloriae, per te redempti, valeamus scandere: VVash thou away our sins, that so being redeemed by thee, we may ascend up to the mansions of glory. That to the Angels is of the same nature, Nostra diluant jam peccata praestando supernam Coeli gloriam: May they wash away our sins, and grant us the hea­venly glory. I shall to this add two Addresses to two of our English Saints; the first is to St. Alban, Te nunc petimus Patrone praeco sedule, qui es nostra vera gloria, solve precum votis, servo­rum scelera: We implore thee, our Patron, who art our true Glory, do thou take away the crimes of thy Servants, by thy Prayers. And the other relates to Thomas Becket, whom I be­lieve, our Author will not deny to have been as great a Rebel, as either Coligny, or his Faction: and yet they pray thus to Christ, Tu per Thomae sanguinem, quem pro te effudit, fac nos Christe scandere quo Thomas ascendit. Do thou, O Christ, make us by the blood of Thomas, which he shed for thee, to ascend up whither he has ascended: And the Hymn upon him, is that Verse of the Eighth Psalm, Thou hast crowned him with Glory and Honour, and has set him over all the works of thy hands. One would think, it were no bold thing to pronounce all this, and innumerable more Instances, which might be brought to the same purpose, to be Idolatrous. If we are sent by our Au­thor to the senses that may be put on these words, I shall only say with relation to that, that the Test condemns the Devotions as they are used in the Roman Church: so this belongs to the plain sense of the words; and if it is confessed that these are Idolatrous, as ascribing to Creatures the right of pardoning sin, and of opening the Kingdom of Heaven, which are main parts of the Divine Glory, then the matter of the Test is justified.

A Third sort of Instance is in the Prayer that comes after the Priest has pronounced the words of Absolution, Passio Domini nostri Jesu Christi, merita B. Mariae Virginis, & omnium Sancto­rum, & quicquid boni feceris, vel mali sustinueris, sint tibi in re­missionem peccatorum, augmentum gratiae, & premium vitae eternae: [Page 244] May the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Merits of the B. Virgin, and all the Saints, and all the good thou hast done, or the evil that thou hast suffered, be to thee effectual, for the re­mission of thy sins, the encrease of grace, and the reward of Eternal life. Absolution in its true and unsophisticated mean­ing, being the declaration made to a Penitent of the Mercies of God in Christ, according to the Gospel, I would gladly know, what milder censure is due to the mixing the merits of the Virgin and the Saints, with the Passion of Christ, in order to the obtaining this Gospel Pardon, with all the effects of it, than this of our Test, that it is Idolatrous.

I have now examined the two points, in which our Author thought fit to make an Apology for the Church of Rome, with­out descending to the particulars of his Plea more minutely. I have used him in this more gently than he deserves; for as I examined his Reasonings, I found all along both so much Ig­norance, and such gross disingenuity, that I had some difficulty to restrain my self from flying out on many occasions: But I resolved to pursue these two points, with the gravity of stile which the matter required, without entangling the discourse with such unpleasant digressions, as the discovery of his Errors might have led me to. And I thought it enough to free un­wary Readers from the mistakes into which his Book might lead them, without encreasing the contempt belonging to the Writer, who has now enough upon him; but I pray God grant him Repentance and a better mind.