A representation of the threatning dangers, impending over Protestants in Great Brittain With an account of the arbitrary and popish ends, unto which the declaration for liberty of conscience in England, and the proclamation for a toleration in Scotland, are designed.

A representation of the threatning dangers, impending over Protestants in Great Brittain With an account of the arbitrary and popish ends, unto which the declaration for liberty of conscience in England, and the proclamation for a toleration in Scotland, are designed.

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Title page

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POSTSCRIPT.

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[Page] REPRESENTATION Of The Threatning Dangers, Impending Over PROTESTANTS In GREAT BRITTAIN.

With an Account of the Arbitrary and Popish Ends, unto which the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience in England, and the Proclamation for a Toleration in Scotland, are designed.

Neque enim satis amarint bonos Principes, qui malos satis non oderint.

Plin. in Panegyr. c. 53.

Sedem obtinet Principis, ue sit Domino locus. id. ibid. c. 55.

Tantum tibi licet, quantum per leges licebit, Pacat. ad Theodos. August.

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[Page] THey are great strangers to the Transactions of the World, who know not how many and various the attempts of the Papists have been, both to hinder all endeavours towards a Reformation, & to overthrow and subvert it where it hath obtained and prevailed. For beside the innumerable Executions and Murders committed by means of the Inquisition to crush and stiffle the Reformed Religion in its rise and birth, and to prevent its succeeding and settlement in Spain, Italy, and many other Territories; there is no Kingdom or State, where it hath so far prevailed as to come to be universally received and legally established, but it hath been through strange and wonderful conflicts with the rage and malice of the Church of Rome. The Persecutions which the Primitive Christians underwent by vertu' of the Edicts of the Pagan Empero [...]s, were not more sanguinary and cruel, than what through the Laws and Ordinances of Popish Princes, have been inflicted upon those, who have testified against the Heresies, Superstitions, and Idolatries, and have withdrawn from the Communion of the Papal Church. Nor were the Martyrs that suffered for the Testimony of Jesus against Heathenism, either more numerous or worthier of esteem for vertu', Iustice and Piety; than they who have been slaughtered, upon no other pretence, but for Endeavouring to restore the Christian Religion to the simplicity and purity of its Divine and first Institution, and to recover it from the corruptions, wherewith it was become universally tainted in Doctrine, Worship, and Discipline. How have all the Nations in Europe been soak't with the Blood of Saints, through the Barbarous Rage of Popish Rulers, whom the Roman Bishops and Clergy stirred up and instigated, in order to support themselves in their secular grandure, and in their Tyranny over the Consciences of men, and to keep the World in Slavery under Ignorance, Errors, Superstition and Idolatry, which the reducing Christianity again to the Rule of the Gospel, would have redeemed mankind from, and been an effectual means to have dissipated and subverted? They of the Roman Communion, having strangely corrupted the Christian Religion in its Faith, Worship, and Discipline, and having prodigiously altered it, from what it was in the Doctrines and Institutions of our Saviour and his Apostles; they found no other way whereby to sustain their Errors and Corruptions, and to preserve themselves in the possession of that Empire, which they had usurped over Conscience, and in the enjoyment of the Wealth and secular Greatness, which by working upon the Ignorance, Superstition, Lusts, and Prophanness of People, they had skrewed and wound themselves into, but by adjudging all who durst detect or oppose them, to fire and Sword, or to miseries, to which Death in its worst shape were preferrable. Nor have they for the better obstructing the growth, and compassing the Extirpation of the Reformed Religion, omitted either the Arts and Subtlities of Julian, or the Fury and Violence of Gal [...]rius and Di [...] cletian. Whosoever hath not observed the Craft and Rage that have been employed and exerted against Protestants for these 170. Years, must have been very little Conversant in Histories, and strangely overlook't the conduct of affaires in the World, and the Transactions in Churches and States, during their own time. And tho the Papists do not think it fit, to put their Maxim's for preserving the Catholick Religion, and converting Hereticks, in Execution at all times, and in every place, yet some of their Writers are so ingenuous, as to tell us the reason of it, and that they do not forbear it upon Principles of Christianity or good Nature, but upon motives of Policy and Fear, lest the cutting one of our Throats might endanger two of their own. However they have been careful not to suffer a period of twenty years to elapse [Page] since the beginning of the Reformation, without affording us in some place or another, renewed evidences of Papal Charity, and of the Roman method of hindring the growth of Heresie, either by a Massacre, War, or Persecution, begun, and executed, upon no other account or provocation, but meerly that of our Religion, and because we cannot believe and practice in the matters of God, as they do. And having obtained of late, great Advantages for the pursuing their malice against us, more boldly and avowedly than at an other Season, and that not only through a strange concurrence and conjunction of Princes in the Papal Communion, who are more intoxicated with their Superstitions and Idolatries, or less wise, merciful, and humane, than some of their Predecessors of that Fellowship were, but through having obtained a Prince intirely devoted unto them, & under the implicit guidance of their Priests, to be advanced unto a Throne, where such sometime used to sit, as were the Terror of Rome, the Safeguard of the Reformed Religion, and the Sanctuary of oppresed Protestants; they have thereupon both assumed a Courage of stirring up new and unpresidented Persecutions in divers places, against the most useful, best and loyallest of Subjects, upon no other charge or Allegation, but for dissenting from the Tridentine Faith, and denying Subjection to the Tripple Crown, and are raised into a Confidence of wholly Extirpating Protestancy, and of reestablishing the Papal Tyrannies and Superstition, in the several Countries whence they had been expelled, or stood so depressed and discountenanced, as that the Votaries and Partizans of their Church, had not the Sway and Domination. Nor need we any other conviction both of their Design, and of their Confidence of Succeeding in it, than what they have already done, & continue to pursue in France, Hungary and Piedmont, wheretheir prospering to such a degree in their Cruel and Barbarous Attempts, not only gives them boldness of entertaining thoughts of taking the like Methods, and Acting by the same measures, in all places where they find Rulers at their beck, and under their Influence, but to unite and provoke all Popish Monarchs to enter into a holy War against Protestants every where, that by Conquering and Subduing those States and Kingdoms, where the Reformed Religion is received and established, they may extirpate it out of the World, under the Notion of the Northern Heresie. If principles of humanity, Maxim's of Interest, Rules of Policy, Obligations of Gratitude, Ties of Royal and Princely Faith, or the repeated Promises, Oaths, Edicts, and Declarations of Soveraigns, could have been a Security to Protestants, for the Profession of their Faith and Exercise of their Worship, in the forementioned Territories and Dominions, they had all that could be rationally desired, for their Safety and Protection, in the free and open profession and Practice of their Religion; whereas by a violation of all that is Sacred among men, of a binding vertu unto Princes (except Chains and Fetters) or that confer a Right, Claim, and Security unto Subjects, the poor Protestants in those Places, have been, and still are, persecuted with a rage and Barbarity, which no age can parallel, and for which it is difficult to find words proper and severe enough, whereby to stamp a Character of infamy, upon the treacherous, cruel, and savage Authors, Promoters, and Instruments of it. Nor do's it proceed from a Malignancy of Nature peculiar to the Emperor, the French King, and the Duke of Savoy, above what is in other Princes of the same Communion, or that they are more regardless of Fame, and less concerned how future generations will brand their Memories, than other Papal Monarchs seem to be, that they have suffered themselves to be prevailed upon, to violate the Promises and Oaths they were bound by to their Protestant Subjects; seeing the Emperour is character'd for a person of a meek and gentle temper, and of the goodness of whose Nature, thereremain some shadows [Page] interwoven with the bloody streaks of the Hungarian Persecution. And the French King tho he stand not much commended for sweetness and Benignity of disposition, is known to be unmeasurably Ambitious, of having his name transmitted to Posterity in Letters of Greatness and Honor, which his behaviour towards his Subjects of the Reformed Religion, is no way's adapted unto, but calculated to make him hereafter listed with Nero and Julian. As to the Duke of Savoy, there seems by the whole course of his other Actions, to be a certain Greatness of Mind in him, not easily consisting with that savage and brutal temper, which the Cruelties he hath exercised upon the Protestants in Piedmont, would intimate and denote. But it ariseth from the Mischievousness and Pestilency of their Religion, their Bigottry in it, and their having put themselves so entirely under the conduct of the Clergy, particularly of the Jesuites, who are for the most part a set of men, especially the latter, that through acting in the prospect of no other Ends, but the Grandure, Wealth, and Domination of the Church of Rome, do with an unlimited rage, and a peculiar kind of Malice, persecute all that have renounced Fellowship with it, and care not if they Sacrifice the Honor, Glory and Safety of Monarchs, and bring their Kingdoms into contempt and desolation, by rendring them weak, poor, and dispeopled, provided they may wreck their spleen, and revenge, upon those, whose Religion is not only dissonant from theirs, but should it prevail to be the Religion of the Legislators and Rulers of Nations, those springs of Wealth would be immediately dried up, by which their Superior Clergy, and all their Religious Orders are enriched and fed up in idleness. And should the People come to be generally imbued with principles of Gospel, Light and Liberty, they would immediately shake off a blind and slavish Dependence upon Pope and Priests, and thereby subvert the Foundation upon which the Monarchick Grandure of the Romish Church and their whole Religion is superstructed and destroy the Engine by which they are inabled to Lord it over the Bodies, Estates, and Consciences of men. And if Protestants every where, especially under Popish Rulers, were not under a strange Infatuation, they would look for no fairer Quarter from Papists, than what their Brethren have met with in France and Piedmont, nor would they rely upon the Faith of any King, that stiles himself a Roman Catholick, seeing Sacred Promises, tremendous Oaths, and the most Authentick Declarations, are but Papal Arts, and Tricks sanctified at Rome, whereby to full Subjects into a Security, and delude them into a neglect of all means, for preserving themselves, and their Religion, till their Rulers can be in a condition, of obeying the Decrees of the fourth Lateran Council, that enjoins Kings to destroy and extirpate Hereticks, under pain of Excommunication, and of having both their Subjects absolved from Allegiance to them, and their Territories given away to others; and till without running any hazard, they may comply with the Ordinance of the Council of Constance, which not only releaseth them from all Obligation of keeping Faith to Hereticks, but requires them to violate it; and accordingly made Sigismond break his Faith to John Hus, whom in d [...] fiance of the Security given him by that King, they caused to be condemned and burnt. Nor is the practice and late Example of the Great Louis, designed for less than a pattern, by which all Popish Princes are to act, and his proceedings are to be the coppy & Moddel, which they who would merit the name of Zealous Catholicks, and be esteemed dutiful Sons of the Church, are to transcribe and limn out in lines of force, violence, and Blood, and for the better corresponding with the Original, to imploy Dragoons for Missionaries.

And tho I will not say, but that there may be some Popish Princes, who through an extraordinary measure of good Nature, and from principles of Compassion, woven into their Constitution, previously to all notices [Page] of Revelation whether real, or pre [...]ended, and who through Sentiments im [...]ib'd from a generous Education, and their [...]oming afterwards to be under the influence, [...]nd Management, of wise and discret Counsellors, may be able to resist the malignant [...]mpressions of their Religion, and so be preserved, from the inhumanities towards [...]hose of different perswasions from them in the things of God, which their Priests would lay them under Obligations unto, by the Doctrines of the Romish Faith; yet there appears no reason why an understanding man should be induced to believe, that the King of England, is likely to prove a Prince, of that great and noble temper, there being more than enough, both to raise a jealousie and beget a perswasion, that there is not a Monarch among all those who are commonly stiled Catholicks, from whom Protestants, may justly dread greater Severities, than from Him, or look for worse and more Barbarous Treatments. I am not ignorant, with what candor, we ought by the Rules of Charity and good manners, to speak of all men, whatsoever their Religion is, nor am I unacquainted with what Veneration and Deference, we are to Discourse of Crowned Heads; but as I dare not give those flattering Titles unto any, of which there are not a few in some of the late Addresses, presented to the King, by an inconsiderable and foolish sort of Dissenting Preachers; so I should not know, how to be accountable to God, my own Conscience, or the World, should I not in my station as a Protestant, and as a Lover of the Laws and Liberties of my Countrey, offer something, whereby both to undeceive that weak and short-sighted People, whom their own being accommodated for a Season by the Declaration of Indulgence, hath deluded into an Opinion, that His Majesty cherisheth no thoughts of subverting our Religion, and also further to enlighten and confirm others, in the just apprehensions they are possessed with, of the design carrying on in Grear Brittain, and Ireland, for the extirpation of Protestancy, and that the late Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, is emitted in subserviency thereunto, and calculated by the Court; toward the paving and preparing the way, for the more facile accomplishment of it. And while Mercinary Sycophants, by their Flatteries infect and corrupt Princes, and by their Representing them to the World, in Colours disagreable from their tempers and dispositions, and in milder and fairer Characters, than any thing observable in them, either deserveth, or correspondeth with, do delude Subjects, into such Opinions of them, as beget a neglect of means for preserving themselves; 'tis become a necessary Duty, and an indispensable Service to mankind, to deal plainly and above board, that so by describing Kings as they are, and setting them in a true and just Light, we may prevent the Peoples being further imposed upon, or if through suffering themselves to be still deceived, they come to fall under miseries and persecutions, they may lay all their Distresses, and Desolations, at the door of their own folly, in not having taken care, how to avoid, what they were not only threatned with, but whereof they were warned and advertised. For as I am not of Sr. Roger l'Estranges mind, That if we cannot avoide being distrustful Hist. of the Times. of our Safety, yet it is extreamly vain, foolish, and extravagant to talk of it; so I am very sensible how many of the French Ministers, by painting forth their King more like a God than a Man, and by possessing their people with a belief of Wisdom, Justice, Grace, and Mercy in Him, of which they knew him destitute, they both emboldned him, to attempt what he hath perpetrated, and laid them under snares, which they know not how to disentangle themselves from, in order to escape it. Nor would the King of England, have acted with that neglect of the future Safety of the Papists, nor have exposed them to the resentment, and hereafter revenge of three Nations, by the Arbitrary and Illegal steps he hath made in their favour, if he intended any thing less, [Page] than the putting Protestants for ever out of capacity and condition, of calling them to a reckoning, and exacting an account of them, which neither He, nor they about him, can have the weakness to think they have sufficiently provided against, without compelling us by an Order of à la mode France Missionaries to turn Catholicks, or by adjudging us to Mines and Galleys, according to the Versailles President, for our Heretical Stubborness, or which is the more expeditious way of converting three Kingdoms, to cause murder the Protestant Inhabitants, according to the pattern, which his Loyal Irish Catholicks, endeavoured to have set anno 1641. for the conversion of that Nation. Had his Majesty been contented with the bare avowing, and publishing himself to be of the Communion of the Church of Rome, and of challenging a Liberty, tho against Law, for the Exercise of his Religion, it might have awakened our Pity, and Compassion, to see him embrace a Religion, where there are so many impediments of Salvation, and in doing whereof, he was become obnoxious unto the imprecation of his Grandfather, who wished the curse of God, to fall upon such of his Posterity, as should at any time turn Papists; but it would have raised no intemperated heats in the minds of any against him, much less have alienated them, from the Subjection and Obedience, which are due unto their Soveraign, by the Laws of the several Kingdoms, and the Fundamental Rules of the respective Constitutions. Or could he have been contented, with waving the rigorous Execution of the Laws against Papists, of whatsoever Quality, Rank, or Order they were, and with the bestowing personal, and private Favours, upon those of his Religion, it would have been so far from begetting rancor or discontent in his Protestant Subjects, that they would not only have connived at, and approved such a procedure, and those little Benignities and Kindnesses, but had the Papists quietly acquiesced in them, and modestly improved them, it might have been a means of reconciling the Nation to more lenity towa [...] them for the future, and might have i [...] fluenced our Legislators, when God sh [...] vouchsafe us a Protestant on the Throne, [...] moderate the Severities to which by th [...] Laws in being they are obnoxious, and [...] render their condition as easie, and safe, [...] that of other Subjects, and only to take car [...] for precluding them such places of powe [...] and trust, as should prevent their being ab [...] to hurt us, but could bring no damage or i [...] convenience upon themselves. But th [...] King instead of terminating here, an [...] allowing only such Graces and Immun [...] ties to the Popists, as would have been [...] nough, for the placing them in the priva [...] Exercise of their Religion, with Security [...] them, and without any threatning dange [...] to us. He hath not only suspended all th [...] penal Laws against Roman Catholicks, but [...] hath by an usurped Prerogative, that is par [...] mount to the Rules of the Constitution, and [...] all Acts of Parliament, dispensed with, an [...] disabled the Laws that enjoin the Oath of A [...] legeance and Supremacy, and which appoi [...] and prescribe the Tests, that were the Fence [...] which the Wisdom of the Nation ha [...] erected, for preserving the Legislative A [...] thority, securing the Government, and keeping places of Power, Magistracy and Offic [...] in the Hands of Protestants, and thereby [...] continuing the Protestant Religion, and Engli [...] Liberties, to our selves, and the generation that shall come after us. And as if this wer [...] not sufficient, to awaken us to a consideration of the danger we are sin, of havin [...] our Religion supplanted and overthrown▪ He hath not only advanced the most viole [...] Papists, unto all places of Military comman [...] by Sea and Land; but hath established many of them, in the Chief Trusts and Offi [...] of Magistracy, and Civil Judicature, so th [...] there are scarce any continued in Powe [...] and Employment, save they who have [...] ther promised, to turn Roman Catholicks, [...] who have engaged, to concur and assist [...] the subverting our Liberties, and Religion, u [...] der the Mask and disguise of Protestan [...] [Page] [...] is already evident, that it is beyond the [...]lp, and relief, of all Peaceable and Civil [...]eans, to preserve and uphold the Protestant [...]eligion in Ireland, and that nothing but force [...]nd an intestine War, can retrieve it unto, [...]nd reestablish it there, in any degree of safe [...]. Nor is it less apparent, from the Arbi [...]ary and Tyrannous Oath, ordained to be [...]quired of His Majesties Protestant Subjects [...] Scotland, whereby they are to swear O [...]dience to Him without Reserve, that our Re [...]gion is held only precariously in that King [...]m; and that whensoever he shall please to [...]mmand the establishment of Popery, and [...] enjoin the people to enter into the Com [...]union of the Church of Rome, He expects [...] have his Will immediately conformed [...]nto, and not to be disputed or controlled. [...]ut lest what we are to expect from the [...]ing, as to the extirpation of the Reformed [...]eligion, and the inflicting the utmost Seve [...]ties upon his Protestant Subjects, that Papal [...]ge, armed with power, can inable him un [...], may not so fully appear, from what hath [...]een already intimated, as either to awa [...]en the Dissenters out of the Lethargy, into which the late Delaration hath cast them, or [...] quicken those of the Church of England, to [...]hat zealous care, vigilancy, and use of all Lawful means, for preserving themselves, [...]nd the Protestant Religion, that the impen [...]ent danger, wherewith they are threatned; [...]equires at their hands; I shall give that farmer Confirmation of it, from Topicks and motives of Credibility, Moral, Political, and [...]istorical, as may serve to place it in the [...]rightest light, and fullest evidence, that a [...]atter future and yet to come, which is on [...] the object of our prospect and dread, and [...]ot of our feeling and experience, is capa [...]le of.

It ought to be of weight upon the minds [...]f all English Protestants, that the King of [...]eat Brittain, is not only an open and avowed [...]apist, but as most Apostates use to be, a [...]ery Bigot in the Romish Religion, and who [...] the Leige Letter from a Jesuite to a Bro [...]er of the Order tells us, is resolved either to convert England to Popery, or to die a Martyr. Nor were the Iewish zealots, of whose rageful transports, Iosephus gives us so ample an account, nor the Dervises among the Turks, and Indians, of whose mad attempts, so many Histories make mention, more brutal in their fanatical Heats, than a Popish Bigot useth to be, when favoured with advantages, of exerting his animosity against those who differ from him, if he be not carefully watched against, and restrained. Beside the innumerable instances of the Tragical Effects of Romish Bigottry, that are to be met with in Books of all kinds, we need go no further for an evidence of it, than to consult the Life of Dominick, the great Instigator and Promoter of the Massacre of the Waldenses, and the Founder of that Order, which hath the Management of the bloody Inquisition; together with the Life of Henry the third of France, who contrary to the advice of Maximilian the Emperor, and the repeated intreaties of the wisest of his own Councellors, the Chancellor de l'Hospital, and the President de Thou, not only revived the War and Persecution against his Reformed Subjects, after he had seen what Judgments, the like proceedings had derived upon his Predecessors, and how prejudicial they had proved to the Strength, Glory, and Interest of his Crown and Kingdom, but he entred into a League with those that sought to depress, abdicate, and depose him, and became the Head of a Faction for the destroying that part of his Subjects, upon whom alone he could rely for the defence of his person, and support of his Dignity. Nor were the Furies of the Duke de Alva heretofore, or the present Barbarities of Louis the Fourteenth, so much the effects of their haughtie and furious tempers, as of their Bigottry in their inhumane and sanguinary Religion. That the King of England, is second to none, in a blind and rageful Popish Zeal, his behaviour both while a Subject, and since he arrived at the Crown, doth not only place it beyond the limits of a bare suspition, but affords us such evidences of it, as that none [Page] in consistency with principles of wisdom, and discretion, can either question or contradict it. To what else can we ascribe it, but to an excessive Bigottry, that when the Frigat wherein he was sailing to Scotland anno 1682. struck upon the Sands, and was ready to sink, he should prefer the Lives of one or two pittiful Priests, to those of men of the greatest Quality, and receive those mushrom's into the Boat, in which himself escaped, while at the same time, he refused to admit, not only his own Brother-in-Law, but divers Noblemen of the Supreamest Rank, and Character, to the benefit of the same means of deliverance, and suffered them to perish, tho they had undertaken that Voyage out of pure respect to his person, and to put an Honor upon him, at a Season, when he wanted not Enemies. Nor can it proceed from any thing but a violent and furious Bigottry, that he should not only disoblige and disgust the two Universities, of whose Zeal to his service, he hath received so many seasonable and effectual Testimonies, but to the violation both of the Laws of God and the Kingdom, offer force to their Consciences, as well as to their Rights and Franchises, and all this in favour of Father Francis, whom he would illegally thrust into a Fellowship in Cambridg, and of Mr. Farmer, whom he would arbitrarily obtrude into the Headship of a Colledg in Oxford, who as they are too despicable to be owned, and stood for, in competition against two famous Universities, whose greatest crime, hath been an excess of zeal for his person, and interest, when he was Duke of York, and a measure of Loyalty, and Obedience, unto him, since he came to the Crown, beyond what either the Rules of Christianity, or the Laws of the Kingdom, exact from them; so he hath way's enough of expressing kindness, and bounty, to those two little contemptable Creatures, and that in methods as beneficial to them, as the places into which he would thrust them, can be supposed to amount unto, and I am sure with less scandal to himself, and less offence to all Protestants, as well as without offering inj [...] to the Rights of the University, or of co [...] pelling those learned, grave, and vene [...] ble men, to perjure themselves, and act [...] gainst their Duties and Consciences. T [...] late proceedings towards Dr. Burnet, a [...] not only contrary to all the measures of J [...] stice, Law, and Honor, but argue a stran [...] and furious Bigottry in His Majesty for Po [...] ry, there being nothing else into which [...] man can resolve the whole tenor of his pr [...] sent Actings against Him. Seeing setting [...] side the Doctor's being a Protestant, and a M [...] nister of the Church of England, and his havin [...] vindicated the Reformation in England, fro [...] the Calumnies, and slanders, wherewith [...] was aspersed by Sanders, & others, of the Roman Communion, and the approving himself in some other Writings, worthy of th [...] Character of a Reformed Divine, and of tha [...] esteem which the World entertains of him for knowledg in History, and all other part [...] of good learning; there hath nothing occurred in the whole tenor and trace of hi [...] Life, but what instead of Rebuke and Censure, hath merited acknowledgments, and the Retributions of Favour and Prefermen [...] from the Court. Whosoever considers, his constant Preaching up passive Obedience to such a degree and height, as he hath done, May very well be surprised at the whole method of their present actings towards him, and at the same time that they find cause to justify the Righteousness of God, i [...] making them the Instruments of his persecution, whom in so many way's he had sought to oblige, they may justly conclude that none save a Bigotted Papist could be the Author of so infutable, as well an illegal, and unrighteous returns. For as to all whereof he is accused, in the Criminal Letters against him, bearing date the 19. of April 1687. I my self am both able to assert his innocence, and dare assure the World, that none of the persons whom he is charged to have conspired with against the King, would have been so far void of discretion, (knowing his principles) as to have transacted with [Page] [...] in matters of that kind; but whether [...] Letters since that, to the Earl of Midle [...], with the Paper, inclosed in one of [...]m, have administred any Legal ground [...] their Second Citation, I shall not take up [...] me to determine, and will only say, that [...] I heartily wish, he had not in those Letters [...]orded them, any probable pretence, for [...]oceeding against him, so there are excesses [...] Loyalty in them, to attone for the utmost [...]discretions, his words are capable of being [...]rested unto, nor can any thing but Papal Malice, and Romish Chicanerie, construe, and [...]ervert them, so far contrary to his inten [...]ons, as to make crimes, and much less to [...]ake Treasons of them. Now as nothing, [...]n be of more portentous Omen to British [...]nd Irish Protestants, than to have a Popish [...]igott exalted to Rule over them; so thro [...] concurrence of ill nature, and a deficien [...]y in intellectuals, met in him with his fu [...]ious Zeal and Bigottry, they are the more [...]o expect, whatsoever his Power inables him [...]o inflict, that is severe and dreadful. 'Tis possible, that a Ruler may be possessed with a [...]ondness, and Valuation of Popery, as the only Religion, wherein Salvation is to be obtained, and thereupon in his private Judgment and Opinion, sentence all to eternal Flames, who cannot herd with him in [...]he same Society; and yet he may thro a great measure of Humanity, and from an extraordinary proportion of compassion, and meekness, woven into his nature, hate the imbrucing his hands in their Blood, or treating those with any harshness, whose supposed misbelief is their only Crime; and that finding them in all other respects, vertuous, peaceable and industrious, He may leave them to the decretive Sentence of the Soveraign and infallible Judg, without disturbing, or medling with them himself. Nor is it impossible, but that there may be a Prince so far Bigotted in Popery, as to have inclination, and propensity, to force all under his Authority, to be of his Religion, or else to destroy and extirpate them, yet thro being of that largeness of Understanding and Political Wisdom, as to be able to penetrate into the hazards of attempting it, and to foresee the Consequences that may ensue upon it, in reference to the Peace and Safety of his Government, as well as the Wealth and power of his Dominions, he may come to check and stiffle his furious Inclinations, and chuse rather, to leave his Subjects at quiet, than to impoverish, weaken, and dispeople his Countrey, either by destroying them, or by driving them to abandon his Territories, in order to find a Shelter, and Sanctuary, in other places. But where (as in the King of England) a small measure of Understanding, accompanied with a large share of a Morose, Fierce, and ill Nature, and these attended with Insolency and pride, as they usually are in weak and froward people, come to have a Bigottry in such a Religion as Popery, superadded to them, whose Doctrines and Principles instigate, and oblige, to Cruelty, towards all of other perswasions, there Protestants, do find nothing, that may incourage to hope for security, and protection, under a Prince of that temper and complexion; but all that does affect and impress their minds, bidds them prepare for persecution, and to look for the utmost rigours and severities, that pride, malice, brutal zeal, backt and supported with force and power, can execute and inflict. And how much such a Princes Religion, proves too weak to restrain him from uncleannesses, and other immoralities, by so much the more, is he to be dreaded, in that he thinks to compound for and expiate Crimes of that nature, by his cruelty to Hereticks, and his offering them up in Sacrifices of Attonement to the Triple Crown. Nor are the Priests either displeased with, or careful to diswade Princes, from Offences of that kind, tho they know them to be great provocations to God, and of mischievous example to Subjects, seeing they are Masters of the Art of improving them, to the Service of Holy Church, and the Advantage of the Catholik Faith. For instead of imposing, upon those Royal Transgressors, [Page] [Page] [Page] the little and Slavish Pennances, of Pilgrimages, whippings, and going barefoot; they require them to make satisfactions for those and the like Crimes, by the pious and meritorious Acts of murdering Protestants, and of extirpating the Northern Heresie. And as one of the French Whore's of State is reported to have been a person that hath principally instigated to all the Cruelties against the Reformed in France; so no doubt but as she did it under the influence and conduct of her Confessors to compensate for her Adulteries, so she advised and perswaded Louis to it upon motives of the same nature. Nor do they who have the guidance of Consciences at Whitchal want matter of the same kind, to improve and work upon, and as there are of the licentious Femal's that will be glad of attoning for their filthy pollutions by Acts so agreeable to the Articles of their Religion; so there are some who as they have influence enough upon the King to councel Him to the like Method's, so they will find Him sufficiently disposed to compound for his Loathsome and Promiscuous scatterings at a rate so sutable to his temper, as well as to the Doctrines of the Papal Faith.

If any be deluded into a good Opinion of His Majesty, and brought to flatter themselves with expectations of their being protected in the profession of the Protestant Religion, they may be easily undeceived and prevailed upon to change their Sentiments, if they will but consider his behaviour towards Protestants in the post wherein he formerly stood, and what his carriage was to them, while he was fixed in a meanner and more subordinate station than now he is. Tho there have been many whose behaviour in their private condition, would have rendred them thought worthy to Rule, if their actions after their advancement to Governing power had not confuted the Opinion entertained concerning them; yet there have been very few that have approved themselves [...] just and merciful after their attaining to Soveraignty, whose carriage in an inferior station, had been to th [...] dammage, and general hurt of mankind, [...] far as their narrow power and intere [...] would extend. It ought therefore to lay u [...] under a conviction, what we are to expec [...] from His Majesty on the Throne, when w [...] find the whole thread and series of his conduct while a Subject, to have been a continued design against our Religion, and an uninterrupted plot for the subversion of our Laws and Liberties. 'Tis sufficiently known how active he alway's was to keep up and inflame the differences among Protestants, and how he was both a great Promoter of all the severe Laws made against Dissenters, and a continual instigator to the rigorou [...] Execution of them: So that his affirming it to have been ever his judgment that none ought to be oppressed and persecuted for matters of Religion, nor to be hindred in Worshipping God according to their several perswasions; serves only to inform us, either with what little Honesty, Honor, and Conscience H [...] acted, in concurring to the making of the foresaid Laws, or what small faith and credit is now to be given to his Declaration, and to what he hath since the Emission of it repeated both in his Speech to Mr. Penn, and in his Letter to Mr. Alsop. And to omit many other Instances of his kindness and Benignity to the Fanaticks, whom he now so much huggs and caresseth; it may not be amiss to remember them, and all other Protestants, of that Barbarous and illegal Commission issued forth by the Council of Scotland, while He, as the late Kings High Commissioner, had the management of the affaires of that Kingdom; by which every Military Officer that had command over twelve men was impower'd to impannel Juries, try, condemn, and cause to be put to death, not only those who should be found to disclaim the Kings Authority, but such as should refuse to acknowledg the Kings new modelled Supremacy over that Church; in the pursuance and execution of which Commission, some were shot to death, others were hang'd or drowned, and this not only during the [Page] conti [...] [...] o [...] the Reign of his late Majesty, [...]ut [...] [...]e a year and a half after the pre [...]nt King came to the Crown. But what [...]eed is there of insisting upon such little par [...]culars, wherein he was at all times ready [...] express his malice to Protestants, seeing [...]e have not only Dr. Oates's Testimony, [...]d that of divers others, but most authen [...]ck proofs from Mr. Coleman's Letters, of [...]s having been in a Conspiracy several years [...]r the subversion of our Religion, upon the [...]eritorious and sanctified Motive of extir [...]ating the Northern Heresie. Of which be [...]de all the Evidence that four Successive [...]arliaments arrived at, I know several who [...]nce the Duke of York ascended the Throne have had it confirmed unto them by [...]ivers forraign Papists, that were less re [...]rved, or more ingenuous than many of [...]hat Communion use to be. To question [...]he Existence of that Plot, and his present Majesties having been accessory unto, and in [...]he head of it, argues a strange effrontery and [...]mpudence thro casting an aspersion of weakness, folly and injustice not only upon those three Parliaments that seem'd to have re [...]ained some zeal for English Liberties, but by fastning the same imputations upon the [...]ong Parliament, which had shew'd it self at all times more obsequious to the will of the Court, than was either for their own Honor, or the safety and Interest of the Kingdom, and who had expressed a Veneration for the Royal Family, that approached too much unto a degree of Idolatry. Whosoever considers that Train of Councels wherein the King was many years engaged, and whereof we felt the woful effects in the burning of London; the frequent Prorogation and Dissolution of Parliaments; the widening and exasperating Differences among Protestants; the [...]irring up and provoking Civil Magistrates and Ecclesiastical Courts, to persecute Dissenters; and the maintaining Correspondencies with the Pope and Catholick Princes abroad, to the dishonor of the Nation and danger of our Laws and Religion, cannot avoid being apprehensive what we are now to look for at his hands, nor can he escape, thinking that he esteems his Advancement to the Crown, both a reward from heaven for what he hath done and plotted against these three Kingdoms, and an opportunity and advantage administred unto him for the perfecting and accomplishment of all those Designes with which he hath been so long bigg and in travel for the destruction of our Religion, the subversion of our Laws, and the reestablishment of Popery in these Dominions.

The conduct and guidance under which His Majesty hath put himself, and the fiery temper of that Order to whose Government he hath resigned his Conscience, may greatly add to our fears, and give us all the jealousie and dread that we are capable of being impressed with in reference to matters to come, that there is nothing which can be fatal to our Religion or persons, that we may not expect the being called to conflict with and suffer. For tho most of the Popish Ecclesiasticks, especially the Regulars, bear an inveterate malice to Protestants, and hold themselves under indispensable Obligations of eradicating whatsoever their Church stiles Heresie, and have accordingly been alway's forward to stirr up and provoke Rulers, to the use and application of force for the destruction of Protestants, as a Company of perverse and obstinate Hereticks, adjuged and condemned to the Stake and Gibbet by the infallible Chaire; yet of all men in the Communion of the Romish Church, and of their Religious Orders, the Jesuites are they who do most hate us, and whose Councels have been most sanguinary, and alway's tending to influence those Monarchs, whose Consciences they have had the guiding and conducting of, to the utmost Cruelties and Barbarities towards us. What our Brethern have had measured out to them in France thro Father de la Chaise's influence upon that King', and thro the bewitching power and domination he hath over him in the quality of his Confessor, and as having the direction of his Conscience, may very well allarm and inform us what we ought to expect from His [Page] Majesty of Great Brittain, who hath surrendred his Conscience to the guidance of Father Peters, a person of the same Order, and of the like mischievous and bloody disposition that the former is. 'Tis well observed by the Author of the Reasons against repealing the Acts of Parliament concerning the Test, that Cardinal Howard's being of such a meek and gentle temper that is able to withstand the Malignity of his Religion, and to preserve him from concurring in those mischievous Councels, which his purple might seem to oblige him unto, is the reason of his being shut out from acquaintance with, and interest in the English affaires transacted at Rome, and that whatsoever his Majesty hath to do in that Court is managed by his Ambassador under the sole direction of the Jesuites. So that it is not without cause, that the Jesuite of Leige in his intercepted and lately printed Letter, tells a Brother of the Order what a wonderful veneration the King hath for the Society, and with what profound submission he receives those Reverend Fathers and hearkens to whatsoever they represent. Nor is His Majesties being under the influence of the Iesuites thro having one of them for his Confessor, and several of them for his Chief Councellors and principal Confidents, the only thing in this matter that awakens our fear in what we are to expect from his armed power, excited and stirred by that fiery Tribe; but there is another ground why we ought more especially to dread him, and that is his being entred and enrolled into the Order and become a Member of the Society, whereby he is brought into a greater subjection and dependence upon them, and stands bound by ties and engagements of being obedient to the Commands of the General of the Iesuites, and that not only in Spirituals, but in whatsoever they shall pretend to be subservient to the exaltation of the Church, and for upholding the glory of the Triple Crown. This is a Mystery which few are yet acquainted with, and which both His Majesty, and the Order judgd it their interest to have industriously concealed, but whereof the World may ere long receive that convictive intelligence, that there will be no room left for suspecting the truth of it, and whereof a Jesuite in the late printed Letter from Liege hath given us already sufficient intimation, both in telling us, That the King of England stiles himself a Son of the Society, and how that he wrote to Father de la Chaise, that he would account every injury done to the Jesuites to be a wrong committed against himself. Neither is it so surprising as it may seem at first view, that the King should list himself a Member of the Order, seeing there have been four other Crowned Heads of whose Entrance and matriculation into the Society, there is all the evidence and assurance imaginable. And tho one of them is acknowledged to have been in the Classis of the Directors, while the other three are generally believed to have been in the Form of the Directed, yet such was the power of the Society over them all, that a great part of the Cruelty exercised towards Protestants both in the last age and in this, is to be ascribed to that implicite and blind Obedience which they were bound to yield to the injunctions of the Order, and to the Commands of the General. Philip the Second of Spain, who was the first King that entred into the Order, and who did it upon motives of Policy in hopes by their means to have compassed the Universal Monarchy which he was aspiring after, and who thro being in the Classis of Directors, had advantages of using and improving, and not of being in that degree of servitude unto them which the others have been; yet to what barbarous Cruelties did they overrule and instigate him, not only to the destruction of unconceivable numbers of his Subjects, whose only Crime was that they could not believe as the Church of Rome doth, which issued in the depopulating some of his Dominions, and his being deposed from the Soveraignty in others but to the sacrificing his Son and Heir Prince Charles, whom to gratify the Society, he caused upon an Accusation of his favouring the Low Countrey Hereticks, and the being himself tainted with Lutheranism to be murdered in [Page] is own Court and Palace. Sigismond of Po [...]d, who was the second crowned Head admitted into the Order, thro complying with he Councels, and serving the wrath, rage [...]nd passions of the Jesuites, in endeavouring [...]o suppress Religion in Swedland to which he was Heir, and in striving to subvert their Civil Rights, drew upon himself the resentment and wrath of that Nation to such a degree, that they abdicated him and his Heirs from the Government, and advanced another to the Throne. Casimire who was also King of Poland is reckoned to be the [...]hird Soveraign Prince that entred into the Society, and he thro coming under the Domination of the Iesuites, and being bound to follow their directions, and to execute whatsoever the General of the Order thought fit to enjoin for the promotion and benefit of the Church, became not only an Instrument of a severe persecution against all sort of Dissenters from the Romish Faith, so that many were put to death, and more driven to abandon their Countrey, but through committing many things in the course of his Government that were prejudicial to the Rights, and thereupon disgustful to the Polish Nobility, they conceived such an aversion and hatred for him, that to avoid the effects of their resentment and indignation, he was forced to lay down his Crown, and to chuse to end his day's in France in no higher a Post, and under no more glorious a Character, than that of Abbot of Saint German. There is a fourth Prince, and who is yet in being, that is generally believed to be enrolled into the Order, and the persecution he hath carried on in Hungary, contrary to his natural temper, and to all the: Rules of Interest and Policy, and to the violation of his Promises and Oaths for continuing unto them the Liberty of their Religion, is both too probable an evidence of it, and a strong confirmation of the cruelties which the Iesuites instigate Princes unto over whom they have influence, and whom they have wheedled into engagments of obeying their commands and pursuing their injunctions. And as the desolating of Hungary thro a long and bloody War, and the tempting the Turks to invade the Austrian Territories, are some of the effects that have ensued upon the Emperor's complying with the fierce and heady Councels of the Iesuites; so we have not seen all the mischiefs that the persecution, which they have engaged him in against Protestants is like to issue in, tho beside the disgusting several Electoral Princes and States in Germany, and the furnishing the Ottoman Potentate with Encouragements of continuing the War, there are wonderful advantages afforded by it, to embolden the French King in his encroachments upon the Empire, which otherway's he would not have dared to attempt, and whereof the result at last may prove fatal to the Imperial Dignity and to the whole House of Austria. Now what the Protestants in Great Brittain and Ireland ought to dread from the King, upon his being entred into a Society that hath breathed nothing but fire and blood since its first Institution, I leave to the serious consideration of all men who value their Lives, Liberties and Estates, and that do not think of renouncing their Religion, and turning Papists. Nor is it to be imagined that the King, before he can be supposed well setled on the Throne, and while under a declining state of Body, as well as in an advanced age, having the weight of four and fifty upon his shoulders, beside something else that he is obliged to the Earl of Southesk for, which I shall not mention, would have taken so many bold, wide, and illegal stepps for the supplanting our Religion and Laws, and for the introduction and establishment of Popery and Tyranny, and this not only to the losing and disobliging his former Votaries and Partizans, but to the strange allarming and disgusting most persons of honor, quality, and interest in the three Kingdoms, were he not beside the being under the sway of his own Bigottry, and the strong ballance of a large measure of ill nature, bound by ties of implicite obedience to the Commands of that extravagant [Page] and furious Society, to the promoting of whose passions and malice, rather than his own safety and glory, or the lasting benefit of the Roman Catholicks themselves, the whole course of his Government hitherto seems to have been shapen and adapted. The occasion and subject of the late contest between him and the Pope, which hath made so great a noise not only at Rome, but thro all Europe, may serve to convince us both of the Extraordinary zeal he hath for the Society, and of the transcendent power they have over him, and that 'tis no wonder he should exact an obedience without reserve from his Subjects in Scotland, seeing he himself yields an obedience without reserve to the Iesuites. 'Tis known, how that by the Rules of their Institution no Iesuite is capable of the Myter, and that if the Ambition of any of them should tempt him to seek or accept the dignity of a Prelate, he must for being capacitated thereunto, renounce his Membership in the Order. Yet so great is His Majesties passion for the Honor and Grandure of the Society, and such is their domination and absolute power over him, that no less will serve him, neither would they allow him to insist upon less, than that the Pope should dispense with Father Peters being made a Bishop, without his ceasing to be a Iesuite, or the being transplanted into another Order. And this the old Gentleman at Rome hath been forced at last to comply with, and to grant a Dispensation whereby Father Peters shall be capable of the Prelature, notwithstanding his remaining in the Ignatian Order, the Iesuites thro their Authority over the King not suffering him to recede from his demand, and His Majesties zeal for the Society not permitting him to comply either with the prayers, or the Conscience and Honour of the Supream Pontiff.

Not only the Kings unthankfulness unto, but his illegal proceedings against, and his arbitrary invading the Rights of those who stood by him in all his dangers and difficulties, and who were the Instruments o [...] preventing his exclusion from the Crown, and the Chief means, both of his advanc [...] ment to the Throne, and his being kept in are so many new evidences of the ill w [...] he bears to all Protestants, and what they a to dread from him as occasions are admin [...] stred of injuring and oppressing them: a [...] may serve to convince all impartial a [...] thinking people, that his Popish malice to o [...] Religion is too strong for all principles of H [...] nor and Gratitude, and able to cancel t [...] Obligations, which Friendship for his pers [...] and service to his interest, may be suppos [...] to have laid him under to any heretofor Had it not been for many of the Church [...] England, who stood up with a zeal and v [...] gour for preserving the succession in t [...] right line, beyond what Religion, co [...] science, Reason, or Interest could co [...] duct them unto, he had never been able [...] have out-wrestled the endeavours of thr [...] Parliaments for excluding him from the I [...] perial Crown of England: and had it n [...] been for their abetting and standing by [...] with their swords in their hands upon th [...] Duke of Monmouth's descent into the Kingdom anno 1685. he could nothave avoid [...] the being driven from the Throne, and th [...] having the Scepter wrested out of his han [...] Whosoever had the advantage of knowin [...] the temper and genius of the late King, an [...] how affray'd he was of embarking into an [...] thing that might import a visible hazard t [...] the peace of his Government, and dra [...] after it a general disgust of his person; wi [...] be soon satisfied that if all his Protestant Subjects had united in their desires, and co [...] curred in their endeavoures, to have ha [...] the Duke of York debarred from the Crow [...] that his late Majesty would not have on [...] scrupled the complying with it, and th [...] his Love to his dear Brother, would hav [...] given way to the apprehension and fear [...] forfeiting a love for himself in the hear [...] of his people, especially when what wa [...] required of him, was not an invasion upo [...] the fundamentals of the constitution of th [...] English Monarchy nor dissonant from th [...] practice of the Nation in many repeated i [...] [Page] stances. Nor can there be a greater evidence [...] the present Kings ill nature, Romish Bi [...]ry, and prodigious ingratitude, as well [...] of the design he is carrying on against our [...]ligion and Laws, than his carriage and be [...]viour towards the Church of England; tho [...] cannot but acknowledg it a righteous [...]gment upon them from God, and a just [...]nishment for their being not only so un [...]ncerned for the preservation of our Reli [...]n and liberties in avoiding to close with [...]e only methods that were adapted there [...]to, but for being so passionate and indu [...]ious to hasten the loss of them thro put [...]g the Government into ones hands, who [...]s they might have foreseen) would be [...]e to make a sacrifice of them to his belo [...]d Popery, and to his inordinate lust after [...]spotical and arbitrary power. And as the [...]ly example bearing any affinity to it, is [...]t of Louis the 14th, who in recompence to [...] Protestant Subjects for maintaining him [...] the Throne, when the late Prince of Con [...] assisted by Papists would have wrested the [...]own from him, hath treated them with Barbarity, whereof that of A [...]iochus to [...]ards the Jews, and that of Diocletian and [...]aximian towards the primitive Christians [...]ere but scanty and impersect draughts; so [...]ere wants nothing for compleating the pa [...]lel between England and France but a little [...]ore time and a fortunate opportunity, and [...]en the deluded Church men will find that [...]er Peters is no less skilful at Whitehall for [...]nsforming their acts of loyalty and merit [...]wards the King into crimes and motives [...] their ruin, than Pere de là Chaise hath shewn [...]mself at Versailles, where by an Art peculiar [...] the Iesuites, he hath improved the loyalty [...]zeal of the Reformed in France for the house [...] Bourbon, into a reason of alienating that [...]onarch from them, and into a ground of [...] destroying that dutiful and obedient peo [...]. It will not be amiss to call over some [...] his Majesties proceedings towards the [...]urch of England, that from what hath [...]en already seen and felt, both they and all [...]glish Protestants may the better know what they are to expect and look for hereafter. Tho it be a method very unbecoming a Prince, yet it shews a great deal of spleen, to turn the former persecution of Dissenters so maliciously upon the Prelatical and conforming Clergy, as his Majesty doth in his letter to Mr. Atsop in stiling them a party of Protestants, who think the only way to advance their Church, is by undoing those Churches of Christians that differ from them in smaller matters. Whereas the severity that the Fanaticks met with, had much of its Original at Court, where it was formed and designed upon motives of Popery and Arbitrariness; and the resentment and revengful humour of some of the old Prelates and other Church men that had suffered in the late times was only laid hold of, the better to justify and improve it. And tho it be too true that many of the dignified Rank, as well as of the little Levites were both extreamly fond of it, and contentiously pleaded for it; yet it is as true that most of them did it not upon principles of judgment and conscience, but upon inducements of retaliation for conceived injuries, and upon a belief of its being the most compendious method to the next preferment and benefice, and the fairest way of standing recommended to the favour of the two Royal Brothers. Nor is it unworthy of observation, that some of the most virulent writers against liberty of conscience, and others of the most fierce Instigators to the persecuting Dissenters, among whom we may reckon Parker Bishop of Oxford and Cartwright Bishop of Chester, are since Adressing for the Declaration of Indulgence became the means of being gracioully lookt upon at Whitthall, turned foreward promoters of it, tho their success in their Diocesses with their Clergy hath not answered their expectations and endeavoures. For as these two Mytred Gentlemen will fall in with and justify whatsoever the King hath a mind to do, if they may but keep their Seas and enjoy their Revenues, which I dare say that rather than lose they will subscribe not only to the Tridentine Faith but to the Alcoran; so it is [Page] most certain that they two as well as the Bishop of Durham have promised to turn Roman Catholicks; and that as Crew hath been several times seen assisting at the celebration of the Mass, and that as Cartwright payd a particular respect to the Nuncio at his solemn Entrance at Windsor, which some Temporal Lords had so much conscience and honor as to scorn to do, so the Author of the leige Letter tells us that Parker not only extreamly favours Popery, but that he brands in a manner all such for Atheists who continue to plead for the Protestant Religion. 'Tis an Act of the same candor and good nature in the King with the former, and another Royal effect of his Princely breeding as well as of his Gratitude, when he endeavours to cast a farther odium upon the Church of England, and to exasperate the Dissenters against her, by saying in the forementioned letter to Mr. Alsop that the reason why the Dissenters enjoyed not liberty sooner, is wholly owing to the sollicitation of the Conforming Clergy; whereas many of the learned and sober men of the Church of England, could have been contented that the Nonconforming Protestants should have had liberty long ago, provided it had been granted in a legal way; and the chief executioners of severity upon them were such of all ranks, orders, and stations as the Court both set on and rewarded for it. 'Tis not their Brethrens having liberty that displeaseth modest & good men of the Church of England; but 'tis the having it in the virtu' of an usurped prerogative over the Laws of the Land, and to the shaking all the legal foundations of the Protestant Religion it self in the Kingdom. And had the Declaration of Indulgence imported only an exemption of Dissenters and Papists from rigours and penalties, I know very few that would have been displeased at it; but the extending it to the removing all the Fences about the Reformed Doctrine and worship, and laying us open both to the tyranny of papists, and the being overflowed with a deluge of their superstitions and Idolatries, as well as the designing it for a means to overthrow the established Chur [...] is that which no wise Dissenter no more t [...] a conformable man knows how to digest. [...] I am not of Sr. Roger l'Estranges mind, w [...] after he hath been writing for many yea [...] against Dissenters with all the venom and m [...] lice imaginable, and to disprove the wisdo [...] justice, and convenience of granting th [...] liberty, hath now the impudence [...] publi [...] that whatsoever he formerly wrote; bears an exact conformity Proef. to h [...] Hist. of th [...] Times. p. [...] to the present Resolutions of State, in that the liberty now vouchsased is an Act of Grace issuing from the supream Magistrate, an [...] not a claim of Right in the people. And as to r [...] cited expressions of the King, they are onl [...] a papal trick whereby to keep up heats an [...] animosities among Protestants, when both th [...] inward heats of men are much allay'd, and th [...] external Provocations to them are wholly removed, and they are meerly Iesuitick method's by which our hatred of one another may b [...] maintained, tho the Laws inabling one part [...] to persecure the other, which was the chie [...] spring of all our mutual rancour and bitterness, be suspended. It would be the sport and glory of the Ignatian Order, to be able to make the disabling of penal Laws as effectual to the supporting differences among Protestants, a [...] the Enacting and rigorous execution of them, was to the first raising, and the continuing them afterwards for many years. And if the foregoing Topicks can furnish the King arguments whereby to reproach the Church of England, when he thinks it seasonable and for the interest of Rome to be angry with them; I dare affirm he will never want pretences of being discontented with & of aspersing Fanaticks, when he finds the doing so, to be for the service of the papal cause. And if the forementioned instances of his Majesties behaviour to the Church of England to which he stands so superlatively obliged, be neither Testimonies of his ingenuity, evidences of his Gratitude, nor effects of common, much less Royal justice; yet what remains to be intimated, do's carry more visible marks of [Page] [...]malice and design both against the le [...] established Church and our Religion. For [...]ing satisfied with the suspension of all [...] Laws, by which Protestants and they [...] the national Communion might seem to be [...]urious to Papists in their persons and E [...]tes, such as the Laws which make those, [...]ho shall be found to have taken Orders in [...]e Church of Rome, obnoxious to death, or [...]ose other Statutes by which the King hath [...]ower & Authority for levying two thirds of [...]eir Estates that shall be convicted of Recu [...]cy; but by an usurped prerogative and an Absolute power he is pleased to suspend all [...]e Laws by which they were only disabled [...]rom hurting us, thro standing precluded [...]rom places of power and trust in the Government. So that the whole security we have in time to come for our Religion, depends upon the temperate disposition and good nature of those Roman Catholicks that shall be advanced to Offices and Employments, and does no longer bear upon the protection and support of the Law; and I think we have not had that experience of grace and favour from Papists, as may give us [...]just confidence of fair and candid treatment from them for the future. Now that we may be the better convinced, how little security we have from his Majesties promise in his Declaration, of his protecting the Arch Bishops, Bishops and Clergy, and all other his subjects of the Church of England, in the free exercise of their Religion as by Law established, and in the quiet and full enjoyment of their possessions, without any molestation or disturbance whatsoever, which is all the Tenour that is left us; 'tis not unworthy of observation how that beside the suspending the Bishop of London ab Officio, and the Vice Chanceller of Cambridg both ab Officio and Beneficio, and this not only for Actions which the Laws of God and the Kingdom make their duty, but thro a sentence inflicted upon them by no legal Court of Judicature, but by five or six mercinary persons supported by a Tyrannous and Arbitrary Commission, his Majesty in his Proclamation for Toleration in Scotland, [...]earing date the 12. of February, doth among many other Laws, cass, disable and dispense with the Law enjoining the Scots Test, tho it was not only enacted by himself while he represented his Brother as his high Commissioner; but hath been confirmed by him in Parliament since he came to the Crown. Surely it is as easie to depart from a promise made in a Declaration, as 'tis to absolve and discharge himself from the obligation of a Law which he first concurred to the enacting of, and gave the creating Fiat unto as the late Kings Commissioner, and hath since ratified in Parliament after he was come to the Throne. As there is no more infidelity, dishonor and injustice, so there is less of absolute power and illegality, in doing the one than the other. Nor is it possible for a rational man to place a confidence in his Majesties Royal word for the protection of our Religion, and the Church of England men's enjoying their possessions; seeing he hath not only departed from his promise made to the Council immediately after his Brothers death, but hath violated his Faith given to the Parliament of England at their first Session, which we might have thought would have been the more sacred and binding, by reason of the grandure, state and quality of the Assembly to which it was pledged.

If we consider how much protestants suffered, what number of them was burnt at the stake as well as murderd in Goals, beside the vast multitudes, who to avoid the rage and power of their Enemies, were forced to abandon their Countrey and seek for shelter in forraign parts, and what endeavoures of all kinds were used for the Extirpation of our Religion under QueenMary; we may gather and learn from thence what is to be dreaded from James the II. who is the next popish Prince to her that since the Reformation hath sat on the Throne of England. For tho there be many things that administer grounds of hope, that the Papists will not find it so easie a matter to bring us in shoals to the stake, nor of that quick and easie dispatch to suppress the protestant Religion, and set up Popery, at this time as they found it then; yer every thing [Page] that occurs to our thoughts, or that can affect our understandings, serves not only to persuade us into a belief that they will set upon and endeavour it, but to work us up to an assurance that his Majesty would take it for a di [...]ution of his glory, as well as reflection upon his zeal for the Church of Rome, not to attempt what a woman had both the courage to undertake, and the fortune to go thro with. And there is withal a concurrence of so many things both abroad and at home at this juncture, which if laid in the ballance with the motives to our hope of the papists miscarrying, may justly raise our fears of their prospering to a very sad and uncomfortable height. Whosoever shall compare these two Princes together, will find that there was less danger to be apprehended from Mary, and that not only upon the score of her Sex, but by reason of a certain gentleness and goodness of nature which all Historians of judgment and credit ascribe unto her; than is to be expected from the present King, in whom a sourness of temper, fierceness of disposition, and pride joined with a peevishness of humour not to bear the having his will disputed or controlled, are the principal ingredients into his Constitution, and which are all strangely heightned and enflamed by contracted distempers of Body, and thro furious principles of mind which he hath imbib'd from the Iesuites, who of all men carry the obligations arising from the Doctrines of the popish Religion to the most outragious and inhumane excesses. Nor can I forbear to add, that whereas the cruelty which that Princess was hurried into, even to the making her Cities common shambles, and her streets Theatres of murder for innocent persons, for which she became hated while she lived, and her memory is rendred infamous to all Generations that come after, was wholly and entirely owing to her Religion, which not only proclaims it lawful, but a necessary duty of Christianity, and an act meriting a peculiar Crown of Glory in heaven, to destroy Hereticks; 'tis to be feared there will be found in the present King a spice of revenge against us as we are Englishmen, as well as a measu [...] heap't up and running over of furious [...] zeal against us as we are Protestants. [...] the wrath he bears unto us for our depar [...] from the Communion of the Romish Chu [...] and our rebellion against the triple Crow [...] the war wherein many of the Kingdom wer [...] engaged against his Father, and the issue of it in the execution of that Monarch, is what he hath been heard to say, that he hopes to revenge upon the Nation. And all that the City of London underwent thro that dreadful conflagration 1666. of which he was the great Author and Promoter, as well as the Rescuer and Protector of the Varlets that were apprehended in their spreading and carrying on the fire, is but earnest in respect of what is designed farther to be payd them, for the having been the great supporters of that war, both by continued Recruites of men, and repeated Supplies of treasure. Tho it was Queen Mary's misfortune, and proved the misery of Protestants, that she was under the influence of popish Bishops, and of Religious of several Orders, by whom she was whetted on and provoked to those barbarities where-with her Reign is stained and reproached; yet she had no Iesuites about her, to whom all the other Orders are but punies in the arts of wheedling and frighting Princes forward to cruelty. The Society being then but in its infancy, and the distance between its Institution, which wasin the year 1540. and the time of her coming to the Crown, which was anno 1553. not affording season enough for their spreading so far abroad as they have since done, nor for the perfecting themselves to that degree in the methods of butchery, and in the Topicks whereby to delude Monarchs, to serve and promote their sanguinary passions, as they have in process of time attained unto. Nor have the Protestants now any security for their Religion, whereby it or themselves may be preserved from the attempts of his Majesty for the extirpation of both, but what our Predecessors in the same faith had in the like kind, tho not to the same measure and degree, when Queen Mary arrived at the Throne. For tho our Religion was of late [Page] Fenced about with more Laws, and we had Royal promises oftner repeated for the having [...] preserved, and our selves protected in the Profession of it; yet it is certain that it had not only received a legal establishment under, King Edward the VI, but had the Royal Faith of Queen Mary laid to pledg in a promise made to the men of Suffolk, that nothing should be done towards its subversion, or whereby they might be hindred in the free exercise of it. But as neither Law nor promise could prove restraints upon Mary, to hinder her from subverting Religion, and burning Protestants; so the obligation of gratitude that she was under to the men of Suffolk for their coming in so seasonably to her assistance against the Duke of Northumberland, who was in the field with an Army in the name of the lady Jean Gray, whom the Council had proclaimed Queen, could not excuse them from sharing in the severity that others met with, it being observed that more of that County were burnt for Religion, than of any other Shire in England. And 'tis greatly to be feared, that this piece of her example, will not escape being conformed unto by the King in his carriage towards those that eminently served him, as well as all the rest of it in his behaviour towards Protestants in general. Nor is it possible to conceive that the Papists living at that ease and quietness which they did under his late Majesty, of whose being of their Religion they were not ignorant, as appears by the proofs they have wouchsav'd the world of it since his death, would have been in so many plots for destroying him, and at last have hastned him to his Fathers, as can be demonstrated whensoever it is seasonable, had they not been assured of more to be attempted by his Successor for the extirpation of Protestants, than Charles could be wrought up unto, or prevailed upon to expose his person and Crown to the danger and hazard of. For as 't is not meerly a Princes being a Papist, and mild, gentle, and favorable to Catholicks, that will content the fiery zealots of the Roman Clergy and the Regular Orders, but he must both gratify their ambition in exalting them to a condition above all others, and serve their inhuman lusts and brutal passions, in not suffering any to live in his Dominions that will not renounce the Northern Heresie; so it is not more i [...]edible that they should dispatch a Prince by an infusion in a cup of Tea or Chocolate, whom tho they knew to be a Papist yet they found too cold & slow in promoting their designs; than that they should have murder'd another by a consecrated dagger in the hand of Ravailac, the one being both more easie to be detected, and likelier to derive an universal hatred and revenge upon them than the other. And as the Kings being conscious of that parrici [...] committed upon his Brother, plainly tells us that there is nothing so abominable and Barbarous, which he hath not a conscience that will swallow and digest, so the promotion of the Catholick cause being the motive to that horrid crime, we may be sure that what is hitherto done in favour of Papists, falls much short of what is intended, there being something more meritorious than all this amounts unto, needful to attone for so barbarous a villany, which can be nothing else but the extripating the protestant Religion out of the three Kingdoms. Nor is it probable that the present King, who is represented for a person ambitious of Glory, would lose the opportunities, wherewith the present posture of affaires in the world presents him, of being the Umpire and Arbiter of Christendom, and of giving check to the grandure and usurpations of a neighbouring Monarch, to whom all Europe is in danger of becoming enslaved; if he were not swallowed up in the thoughts of a conquest over the Consciences, Laws, and liberties of his own people, and of subjugating his Dominions to the Sea of Rome, and had he not hopes and assurances of aid and assistance therein from that Monarch, as he is emboldned and encouraged thereunto by his pattern and example.

What the Papists have all along been endeavouring for the subversion of our Religion during and under the Reigns of Protestans [Page]Princes, may yet farther inform and confirm us, what they will infallibly attempt upon their having gotten one into the Throne, who is not only in all things of the [...] [...]n faith, but of an humour agreeable unto their desires, and of a temper every way suited and adapted to their designes. Tho the protestant Religion had obtained some entrance into several States and Kingdoms, and had made some considerable spread in Europe, before it came to be generally received, and established upon foundations of Law in England; yet they of other Countries, were little able to defend themselves from the power and malice of the Church of Rome, and of Popish Princes, and many of them were very unsucceful in endeavours of that nature, till England, in Queen Elizabeths time by espousing their cause and undertaking their Quarrel, not only wrought out their safety but made them flourish. This the Court of Rome and the Priests grew immediately sensible of, and have therefore moulded all their Counsels ever since against England, as being both the Bulwark of the protestant Religion, and the Ballance of Europe. All the late attempts for the extirpation of the protestant Religion in France and elsewhere, are much to be ascribed to the confidence the Papists had in the late King and his Brother of their giving no discouragement nor obstruction to so holy a design; and thereupon as the first Edicts for infringing the liberty, and weakning and oppressing Protestants in France, and the persecution in Hungary, commenced and bore date with the Restoration of the Royal Family, and multiplied, and encreased from year to year as they grew into farther assurance of the Royal Brothers approving as well as conniving at what was done; so that for the abolition of the Edict of Nant's and the total suppression of the Reformed Religion in France, was emitted upon his present Majesties being exalted to the Throne, and the encouragement he gave them to a procedure, which as he now justifies he will hereafter imitate. It were to suppose English Protestants exceedingly unacquainted with the History of their own Nation, to give a long deduction of what the Papists have attempted fo [...] the extirpation of our Religion, while we had Princes on the Throne whose belief and principles in Christianity, led them to assert and defend the Reformation, and who had courage as well as integrity to punish those that conspired against it. Their many Conjurations against Queen Elizabeth's person, and their repeated endeavours of bringing in Forraigners, and of betraying the Nation to the Spaniards, who were to convert the Kingdom as they had done the West-Indies by killing the Inhabitants, are sufficiently known to all who have allowed themselves leasure to read, or who have been careful to remember what they have been often told by those that have inspected the Memoires of those times. The Gunpowder plot with the motives unto it, and the extent of the mischief it was shapen for, together with the insurrection they were prepared for in case it had succeeded, and the forraign aid they had been solliciting and were promised, and all for the extirpation of English Hereticks, are things so modern, and which we have had so many times related to us by our Fathers, that it is enough barely to intimate them. The Irish Massacre in which above two hundred thousand were murderd in cold blood, and to which there was no provocation but that of hatred to our Religion, and furious zeal to extirpate Hereticks, ought at this time to be more particularly reflected upon, as that which gives us a truè scheme of the manner of the Church of Rome's converting Protestant Kingdoms, and being the Copy they have a mind to write after, and that in such Characters and lines of blood as may be sure to answer the Original. At the season when they both entred upon and executed that hellish conjuration, they were in a quiet and peaceable enjoyment of the private exercise of their Religion, yea had many publick meeting-places, thro the means of the Queen and many great friends which they had at Court, and were neither disturbed for not coming to Church, nor suffered any severities upon [Page] the account of their profession; but that [...]ould not satisfie, nor will any thing else [...]less they may be allowed to cut the [...]roats, or make bonefires, of all that will [...]ot join with them in a blind obedience to [...]e Sea of Rome, and of worshipping St. Pa [...]ick. The little harsh usarges which the Papists at any time met with there or in England, they derived them upon themselves [...]y their Crimes against the State, and for their Conspiracies against our Princes and their Protestant Subjects. For till the Pope had [...]aken upon him to depose Queen Elizabeth, and absolve her Subjects from their Allegiance, and till the Papists had so far approved that Act of his holiness as to raise Rebellions at home and enter into treasonable confedaracies abroad, there were no Laws that could be stiled severe enacted in England against Papists, and the making of them was the result of necessity in order to preserve our selves, and not from an Inclination to hurt any for matters of meer Religion. Such hath always been the moderation of our Ru [...]ers, and so powerful are the incitements to lenity which the generality of Protestants through the influence and impression of their Religion, especially they of a more generous education, have been under towards those of the Roman Communion, that nothing but their unwearied restlessness to disturb the Government and destroy Protestants, hath been the cause either of enacting those Laws against them that are stiled rigorous, or of their having been at any time put into execution. And notwithstanding that some such Laws were enacted as might appear to savour of severity, yet could they have but submitted to have dwelt peaceably in the land, they would have found that their meer belief and the private practice of their worship, would not have much prejudiced or endangered them, and that tho the Laws had been continued unrepealed, yet it was only as a Hedg about us for our protection, and as Bonds of obligation upon them to their good behaviour. To which may be added, that more Protestants have suffered in one year, by the Laws made against Dissenters, and to the utmost height of the penalties which the violation of them imported, and that by the instigation of Papis [...] and their influence over the late King and his present Majesty, than there have Papists from the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's Reign to this very day, tho there was a difference in the punishments they underwent. However we may from their many and repeated attemps against us, while we had Princes that both would and could chasten their insolencies, and inflict upon them what the Law made them obnoxious unto for their outrages, gather and conclude what we are now to expect, upon their having obtained a King imbu'd with all the persecuting and bloody principles of Popery, and perfectly baptised into all the Doctrines of the Councils of Lateran and Constance. And it may strengthen our faith as well as increase our fear, of what is purposed against and impends over us, in that they cannot but think that the suffering our Religion to remain in a condition to be at any time hereafter the Religion of the State, and of the universality of the people, may not only prove a means of retrieving Protestancy in France, and of assisting to revenge the barbarities perpetrated there upon a great and innocent people, but may leave the Roman Catholiks in England exposed to the resentment of the Kingdom, for what they have so foolishy and impudently acted both against our Civil Rights, and Established Religion, since James the II. came to the Crown; and may also upon the Government's falling into good hands, and Magistrates coming to understand their true Interest, which is for an English Prince to make himself the Head of the Protestant cause and to espouse their quarrel in all places, give such a Revolution in Europe as will not only check the present Career of Rome, but cause them repent the method's in which they have been ingaged. These things we may be sure the Papists are aware of, and that having proceeded so far, they have [Page] nothing left for their security from punishments because of crimes committed, but to put us out of all capacity of doing our selves Right and them justice; and he must be [...]ll who do's not know into what that must necessarily hurry them.

It being then as evident as a matter of this nature is capable of, what we are to expect and dread from the King both as to our Religion and Laws; we may do more than presume that the late Declaration for liberty of conscience, and the Proclamation for a Toleration, are not intended and designed for the benefit and advantage of the Reformed Religion, and that whatsoever motives have influenced to the granting and emitting of them, they do not in the least flow or proceed from any kindness and goodwill to Protestant Dissenters. And tho many of those weak and easie people may flatter themselves with a belief of an interest in the Kings favour, and suffer others to delude them into a perswasion of his bearing a gracious respect towards them; yet it is certain, that they are people in the world whom he most hates, and who when things are ripe for it, and that he hath abused their credulity into a serving his Ends as far as they can be prevailed upon, and as long as the present Juggle can be of any advantage for promoting the papal cause, will be sure not only to have an equal share in his displeasure with their Brethren of the Church of England, but will be made to drink deepest in the cup of fury and wrath that is mingling and preparing for all Protestants. No provocation from their present behaviour, tho it is such as might warm a person of very cool temper, much less offences of another complexion administred by any of them, shall ever tempt me to say they deserve it, or cause me to ravel into their former and past carriages, so as to fasten a blott or imputation upon the party or body of them, whatsoever I may be forced to do as to particular persons among them. For as to the generality, I do believe them to be as honest, industrious, useful, and vertuous a people (tho many of them be none of the wisest nor of the greatest pr [...] spect) as any party of men in the Kingdo [...] and that wherein soever their carriage (eve [...] abstracting from their differences with thei [...] fellow Protestants in matters of Religion hath varied from that of other Subjects they have been in the Right, and have acte [...] most agreeably to the interest & safety of th [...] Kingdom. But it can be no reflection upo [...] them, to recall into their memories, tha [...] the whole tenor of the Kings actings towards them both when Duke of York and since he came to the Crown, hath been such [...] might render it beyond dispute, that the [...] are so far from having any singular room i [...] his favour, that he bears them neither pit [...] nor compassion, but that they are the objects of his unchangeable indignation. Fo [...] not to mention how the persecutions, tha [...] were observed alway's to relent both upon his being at any distance from the late King [...] and upon the abatement of his influence [...] any time into Counsels, were constantl [...] revived upon his return to Court, and wer [...] carried on in degrees of severity proportionable to the figure he made at Whitehall an [...] his Brothers disposedness and inclination t [...] hearken to him; surely their memories can not be so weak and untenacious, but the [...] must remember how their sufferings wer [...] never greater, nor the Laws executed wit [...] more severity upon them, than since hi [...] Majesty came to ascend the Throne. As it is no [...] many years since he said publickly in Scotland, that it were well if all that part of th [...] Kingdom, (which is above half of the Nation) where the Dissenters were known t [...] be most numerous, were turned into a hunti [...] field, so none were favoured and promote [...] either there or in England, but such as wer [...] taken to be the most fierce and violent of a [...] others against Fanaticks. Nor were me preferred either in Church or State for the learning, vertu' or merit, but for the passionate heats and brutal rigours to Dissenters. And whereas the Papists from the ve [...] first day of his arrival at the Governmen [...] had beside many other marks of his Grac [...] [Page] [...]s special Testimony of it, of not having [...]e penal Statutes to which they stood liable [...]t in execution against them; all the Laws [...] which the Dissenters were obnoxious, [...]ere by his Majesties Orders to the Judges, [...]stices of the peace, and all other Officers [...]vil and Ecclesiastical most unmercifully exe [...]ted. Nor was there the least talk of lenity Dissenters, till the King found that he [...]uld not compass his Ends by the Church of [...]gland, and prevail upon the Parliament [...]r Repealing the Tests, and cancelling the [...]her Laws in force against Papists, which if [...]ey could have been wrought over unto, [...]e Fanaticks would not only have been left [...]ttiless, and continued in the hands of the [...]rious Church-men to exercise their spleen [...]pon, but would have been surrendred as a [...]crifice to new flames of wrath, if they of [...]e prelatical Communion had retained [...]eir wonted animosity, and thought it for [...]eir interest to exert it, either in the old or [...] fresh method's. But that project not suc [...]eeding, his Majesty is forced to shift hands, [...]d to use the pretence of extending com [...]assion to Dissenting Protestants, that he may [...]he more plausibly and with the less hazard, [...]spend and disable the Laws against Papists, [...]nd make way for their admission into all [...]ffices Civil and Military, which is the first [...]ep, and all that he is yet in a condition to [...]ke, for the subversion of our Religion. And [...]ll the celebrated kindness to Fanaticks, is [...]nly to use them as the Catt's paw, for [...]ulling the Chesnut out of the fire to the Monkey, and to make them stales under whose [...]hroud and covert, the Church of Rome may undermine and subvert all the legal foundations of our Religion, which to suffer themselves to be instrumental in, will not in the issue turn to the commendation of the Dissenters wisdom or their honesty. Nor is there more truth in the Kings declaring it to have been his constant opinion, that conscience ought not to be constrained, nor people forced in matters of meer Religion, than there is of justice in that malicious insinuation, (in his Letter to Mr. Alsop) against the Church of England, that should he see cause to change his Religion, he should never be of that party of Protestants, who think the only way to advance their Church, is by undoing those Churches of Christians that differ from them in smaller matters: forasmuch as he is in [...]e mean time a member of the most persecuting and bloody Society, that ever was cloathed with the name of a Church, and whose cruelty towards Protestants he is careful not to arraign, by fastning his offence at severity upon differences in smaller matters, which he knows that those between Rome and us are not, nor so accounted of by any of the papal Fellowship. It were to be wished that the Dissenters would reflect and consider, how when the late King had emitted a Declaration of Indulgence anno 1672. upon pretended motives of tenderness and compassion to his Protestant Subjects, but in truth to keep all quiet at home, when in conjunction with France he was engaging in an unjust war against a Reformed State abroad, and in order to steal a liberty for the Papists to practice their Idolatries, without incurring a suspition himself of being of the Romish Religion, and in hope to wind up the prerogative to a paramount power over the law; and how when the Parliament condemned the illegality of it, and would have the Declaration recalled, all his Kindness to Dissenters not only immediately vanished, but turned into that Rage and fury, that tho both that Parliament addressed for some favour to be shew'd them, and another voted it a betraying of the Pretestant Religion to continue the execution of the penal laws upon them, yet instead of their having any mercy or moderation exercised towards them, they were thrown into a Furnace made seven times hotter, than that wherein they had been scorched before. And without pretending to be a Prophet, I dare prognosticate and foretel, that whensoever the present King hath compassed the Ends, unto which this Declaration is designed to be subservient, namely the placing the Papists both in the open exercise of their Religion, and in all publick Offices and Trusts, and the getting a power to be acknowledged vested in him [Page] over the Laws; that then instead of the still voice calmly whispered from Whitehall, they will both hear and feel the blasts of a mighty rushing wind, and that upon pretended occasions arising from the abuse of this Indulgence, or for some alledged crimes wherein they and all other Protestants are to be involved, (tho their supiness and excess of Loyalty continue to be their greatest offences) this liberty will not only be withdrawn and the old Church of England severities revived, but some of the new à là mode à France treatments come upon the stage, and be pursued against them, and all other perverse and obstinate British Hereticks.

The Declaration for liberty of Conscience, being injurious to the Church of England, and not proceeding from any inward and real good will to the Dissenters; it will be worth our pains to inquire into and make a more ample deduction of the Reasons upon which it was granted, that the grounds of emitting it being laid under every man's view, they who have Addressed may come to be asham'd of their simplicity and folly, they who have not may be farther confirmed both of the unlawfulness and inconveniency of doing it, and that all who preserve any regard to the protestant Religion and the Laws of England, may be quickned to the use of all legal and due means for preventing the mischievous effects, which it is shapen for, and which the Papists do promise themselves from it. The motives upon which his Majesty published the Declaration may be reduced to three, of which as I have already made some mention, so I shall now place every one of them in its several and proper light, and give such proofs and evidence of their being the great and sole inducements for the Emitting of it, that no rational man shall be able henceforth to make a doubt of it. The first, is the Kings winding himself into a Supremacy and Absoluteness over the Law, and the getting it acknowledged, and calmly submitted unto and acquiesced in by the Subjects. The Monarchies being legal and not Despotical, bounded and regulat [...] by Laws, and not to be exercised acco [...] ding to meer will and pleasure, was th [...] which he could not digest the though [...] of when a Subject, and had been hea [...] to say that he had rather Reign a day in th [...] absoluteness that the French King doth, th [...] an Age tied up and restrained by Rules as [...] Brother did. And therefore to persuade t [...] Prince of Orange to approve what He h [...] done in dispensing with the Laws, and [...] obtain Him and the Princess to join wi [...] his Majesty and to employ their inter [...] in the Kingdom for the Repealing the T [...] Acts, and the many other Statutes ma [...] against Roman Catholicks, he used this Arg [...] ment in a Message he sent to their Roy [...] Highnesses upon that errand, that the ge [...] ting it done would be greatly to the a [...] vantage and for the increase of the prorog [...] tive; but this these two noble Prince [...] of whose ascent to the Throne all Pr [...] testants have so near and comfortable prospect, were too generous as well [...] wise to be wheedled with, as knowin [...] that the Authority of the Kings and Quee [...] of England is great enough by the Rul [...] of the Constitution, without grasping at new prerogative power, which as the La [...] have not vested in them, so it would b [...] of no use but to inable them to do hur [...] And indeed it is more necessary both fo [...] the honor and safety of the Monarch, an [...] for the freedom and security of the peopl [...] that the prerogative should be confined withi [...] its ancient and legal Channels, than be left t [...] that illimited and unbounded latitude, whic [...] the late King and his present Majesty have e [...] deavoured to advance and screw it up unto [...] That both the Declaration for liberty of Co [...] science in England, and the Proclamation for Toleration in Scotland, are calculated for ra [...] sing the Soveraign Authority to a transce [...] dent Power over the Laws of the two Kingdoms, may be demonstrated from the Papers themselves, which lay the Dispensin [...] Power before us in terms that import n [...] less than his Majesties standing free an [...] [Page] solved from all ties and restraints, and [...] being cloathed with a Right of doing [...]hatsoever he will. For if the Stile of [...]yal Pleasure to suspend the execution of [...]ch and such Laws, and to forbid such [...]d such Oaths to be required to be taken, [...]d this in the virtu' of no Authority decla [...]d by the Laws, to be resident in his Ma [...]sty, but in the virtu' of a certain vagrant [...]d indeterminate thing called Royal prero [...]tive, as the power exercised in the English [...]eclaration is worded and expressed, be not [...]ough to enlighten us sufficiently in the [...]atter before us; the Stile of Absolute Power [...]hich all the Subjects are to obey without re [...]rve, whereby the King is pleased to chalk [...]efore us the Authority exerted in the Scots [...]roclamation, for the stopping, disabling, and [...]spensing with such and such Laws as are [...]ere referred unto, and for the granting [...]e toleration with the other liberties, immu [...]ties, and Rights there mentioned, is more [...]an sufficient to set the point we are dis [...]oursing beyond all possibility of rational [...]ontrol. As 'tis one and the same Kind [...]f Authority that is claimed over the Laws [...]nd Subjects of both Kingdoms, tho for some [...]ertain reasons it be more modestly desig [...]ed and expressed in the Declaration for a [...]iberty in England, than it is in the Proclama [...]ion for a Toleration in Scotland; so the utmost that the Czar of Mosco, the great Mo [...]ull, or the Turkish Sultan ever challenged over their respective Dominions, amounts only to an Absolute Power, which the King both owns the Exertion of, and makes it the fountain of all the Royal Acts exercised in the forementioned Papers. And as the improving this challenged Absolute Power into an obligation upon the Subjects to obey his Majesty without reserve, is a paraphrase upon Despotical Dominion, and an advancing it to [...] pitch, above what any of the ancient or modern Tyrants ever dream't of, and beyond what the most servile part of Mankind was ever acquainted with till the present French King gave an instance of it, in making his [...]eer will and pleasure to be the ground and argument upon which his Reformed Subjects were to renounce their Religion, and to turn Roman Catholicks; so it is worth considering whether His Maj. who glories to imitate that forraign Monarch, may not in a little time make the like application of this Absolute power, which his Subjects are bound to obey without Reserve; and whether in that case, they who have Addressed to thank him for his Declaration, and thereby justified the Claim of this Absolute power, being that upon which the Declaration is superstructed, and from which it emergeth, can avoid paying the Obedience that is demanded as a Duty in the Subject inseparably annexed thereunto. That which more confirms us, that the English Declaration and the Scotts Proclamation, are not only designed for the obtaining from the Subjects an acknowledgment of an Absolute power vested in the King, but that no less than the Usurpation and exercise of such a power, can warrant and support them, are the many Laws and Rights, which a jurisdiction is challenged over and exerted in reference unto in the Papers stiled by the forementioned Names. All confess a Royal prerogative setled on the Crown, and appertaining to the Royal Office; nor can the Supream Magistrature be executed and discharged to the advantage and Safety of the Community, without a power affixed unto it of superceding the Execution of some Laws at certain junctures, nor without having an Authority over the Rights of particular men in some incident cases; but then the received Customes of the respective Nations, and the universal good, preservation and safety of the People in general, are the measures by which this prerogative in the Crown is to be regulated, and beyond which to apply or exert it, is an Usurpation and Tyranny in the Ruler. All the Power belonging to the Kings and Queens of England and Scotland, ariseth from an agreement and concession of the People, wherein it is stipulated what Rights, Liberties and Priviledges they Reserved unto themselves, and what Authority and Jurisdiction they delegated [Page] and made over unto the Soveraign, in order to his being in a condition to protect and defend them, and that they may the better live in Peace, Freedom, and Safety, which are the Ends for which they have chosen Kings to be over them, and for the compassing whereof they originally submitted unto, and pitched upon such a Form of Civil Administration. Nor are the Opinions of particular men of what Rank or Order soever they be, to be admitted as an exposition of the extent of this Prerogative, seeing they thro their dependencies upon the King, and their obnoxiousness to be influenced by selfish and personal Ends, may enlarge it beyond what is for the benefit of the Community; but the immemorial course of Administration, with the sense of the whole Society signified by their Representatives in Parliament upon emerging occasions, are to be taken for the sense, paraphrase, and declaration of the Limits of this Royal and prerogative Power; and for any to determine the bounds of it from the Testimonies of Mercinary Lawyers, or Sycophant Clergymen, in cases wherein the Parliament have by their Votes and Resolutions setled its boundaries, is a crime that deserves the severest animadversion, and which it is to be hop'd a true English Parliament will not let pass unpunished. Now a Power arising from Royal prerogative to suspend, and disable a great number of Laws at once, and they of such a nature and tendency, as the great security of the people consists in their being maintained, and which the whole Community represented in Parliaments have often disallowed and made void Princes medling with, so as to interrupt their execution and course, is so far from being a Right inherent in the Crown, that the very pretending unto it, is a changing of the Government, and an overthrowing of the Constitution. Fortescue say's, that Rex Angliae populum De Laudib. Leg. Angl. c. 9. Gubernat non merâ potestate Regiâ, sed politicâ; quia populus iis legibus gubernatur quas ipse fert; the King of England doth not so properly Govern by a power that is Regal, at by a power that is p [...] litical, in that he is bound to Rule by the Laws [...] which the people themselves chuse and Enact. An [...] both Bracton and Fleta tell us, that Rex Angliae habet superiores, Bract. lib. [...] cap. 16. Fle [...] lib. 1. c. 17. viz. legem per quam factus est Rex, ac Comites & Barones qui debent [...]i fraenum ponere; the King of England hath for Superiors, both the Law by whi [...] he is constituted King, and which is the measur [...] of his Governing Power, and the Parliament whic [...] is to restrain him, if he do amiss. And thereupon we have not only that Lib. 3 [...] cap. 9 [...] other saying of Bracton, that nihil aliud potest Rex, nisi id solum quod jure potest; the King can do nothing, but wha [...] he can do by law: but we have that famous passage in our Parlament Rolls, non est ulla Regis prerogativa, quae ex Rol. Parl. 7. Hist. 4▪ Num. 59. justitiâ & aequitate quicquam derogat; that there is no prerogative belongs to the King by which he can decline from acting according to Law and justice▪ So careful were our Ancestors both in England and Scotland to preserve their Laws from being invaded and superceded by their Kings; that they have not only by divers Parliamentary Votes and Resolutions, and by several St [...] tutes, declared all dispensations by the King▪ from Laws and enjoined Oaths, to be null and void, and not admittable by the Iudges or other Executors of Law and Justice; but they have often impeached, arraigned, and condemned those to one penalty or another, that have been found to have counselled and advised Kings to an usurpation of Power over, the Laws, and to a violation of established and enacted Rules. It would draw this Discourse to a length beyond what is intended, should I mention the several Laws against Papists as well as against Dissenters, that are suspended, stopt, disabled, and dispensed with, in the two fore-mentioned Royal Papers, and it would be an extending it much more, should I make the several Reflections that the matter is capable of, and which a person of a very ordinary understanding cannot be greatly to seek for; I shall therefore only take notice of two [Page] [...]r three Efforts which occur there of this [...]oyal prerogative and Absolute power, which [...]s they are very bold and ample exertions [...]f them for the first time; so should the [...]ext exercises of them be proportionable, [...]ere will be nothing left us of the Protestant [...]eligion, or of English Liberties, and we must [...]e contented to be Papists and Slaves, or else [...] stand adjudged to Tyburn and Smithfield. One is the suspending the Laws which en [...]in the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy, [...]nd the prohibiting that these Oaths be at any [...]me hereafter required to be taken; by which [...]ngle Exercise of Royal prerogative and Absolute [...]ower, the two Kingdoms are not only a [...]ain subjected to a forraign Iurisdiction, the miseries whereof they groaned under for several Ages; but as the King is hereby deprived of the greatest security, he had from [...]is Subjects both to himself and the Government, [...]o the Crown is robb'd of one of its chiefest [...]ewels, namely an Authority over all the Sub [...]ects, which was thought so essential to Sove [...]aignty & Royal Dignity, that it was annexed to the Imperial Crown of England, & adjudged inherent in the Monarch, before the Reformed Religion came to be received & established. And it concerns their Royal Highnesses of Orange, to whom the Right of succeeding to the Crown [...] of Great Brittain unquestionably belongs, to consider whether his Majesty may not by the same Authority, whereby he alienates and gives away so considerable and inherent a Branch of the Royal Iurisdiction, transferr the Succession it self, and dispose the Inheritance of the Crown to whom he pleaseth. Nor will they about him, who thrust the last King out of the Throne to make room for his present Majesty, much scruple to put a Protestant Successor by it, if they can find another Papist as Bigotted as this to advance unto it. However were they on the Throne to morrow, here is both a Forraign Iurisdiction brought in and set up to Rivall and controll theirs, and they are deprived of all means of being secured of the Loyalty and Fealty of a great number of their Subjects. Nor will His Majesties certain knowledg and long experience (whereof he boasts in the Scots Proclamation) that the Catholicks, as it is their principle, to be good Christians, so it is to be dutiful Subjects, be enough for their Royal Highnesses to rely upon, their Religion obliging them to the contrary towards Princes, whom the Church of Rome hath adjudged to be Hereticks. A second Instance wherein this pretended Royal Prerogative is exercised paramount to all Laws, and which nothing but a claim of Absolute Power in his Majesty can support, and an acknowledgment of it by the Subj [...]st [...] make them approve the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, and the Proclamation for Toleration; is the stopping, disabling and suspending the Statutes whereby the Tests were enacted, and thereby letting the Papists in to all Benefices, Offices, and Places of Trust, whether Civil, Military, or Ecclesiastick. I do not speak of Suspending the Execution of those Laws, whereby the being Priests, or taking Orders in the Church of Rome, or the being Reconciled to that Church, or the Papists meeting to celebrate Mass, were in one degree, or another made punishable, (tho the Kings dispensing with them by a challenged claim in the Crown be altogether illegal) for as diverss of these Laws were never approved by many Protestants, so nothing would have justified the making of them, but the many Treasons and Conspiracies that they were from time to time found guilty of against the State. And as the Papists of all men have the least cause to complain of the injustice, rigour, and severity of them, considering the many Laws more cruel and sanguinary that are in Force in most Popish Countries against Protestants, and these enacted and executed meerly for their Opinions and Practices in the matters of God, without their being chargeable with crimes and offences against the Civil Government under which they live, so were it necessary from principles of Religion and Policy to relieve the Roman Catholicks from the forementioned Laws, yet it ought not to be done but by the Legislative Authority of the Kingdoms, and [...]or the [Page] King to assume a power of doing it in the vertue of a pretended prerogative, is both a high Usurpation over the Laws, and a Violation of of his Coronation Oath. Nor is it any commendation either of the humanity of the Papists, or of the meekness and Truth of their Religion, that while they elsewhere treat those who differ from them in Faith and Worship with that Barbarity, they should so clamorously inveigh against the severities which in some Reformed States they are liable unto, and which their Treasons gave the rise and provocation unto at first, and have been at all times the motives to the infliction of. But they alone would have the allowance to be cruel wherein they act consonantly to their own Tenets; and I wish that some provision might be made for the future, for the security of our Religion, and our safety in the profession of it, without the doing any thing that may unbecome the merciful principles of Christianity, or be unsutable to the meek and generous temper of the English Nation, and that the property of being Sanguinary may be left to the Church of Rome as its peculiar Priviledg and Glory, and as a more distinguisting Character than all the other Marks which she pretends unto. That which I am speaking of, is the suspending the Execution of those Laws, by which the Government was secured of the Fidelity of its Subjecte, and by which they in whom it could not confide were meerly shut out from places of power and trust, and were made liable to very small damages themselves, and only hindred from getting into a condition of doing mischief to us. All Governments have a Right to use means for their own preservation, provided they be not such as are inconsistent with the Ends of Government, and repugnant to the will and pleasure of the Supream Soveraign of mankind, and it is in the power of every Legislative Assembly to declare who of the Community shall be capable or incapable of publick Imploys, and of possessing Offices, upon which the Peace, Welfare, and Security of the whole Politick Body does depend. Without this n [...] Government could subsist, nor the People b [...] in safety under it; but the Constitution woul [...] be in constant danger of being subverted [...] and the Priviledges, Liberties, and Religion of the Subjects laid open to be overthrown. And should such a power in Legislators, be upon weak suspitions and il [...] grounded jealousies, carried at any tim [...] too far, and some prove to be debarre [...] from Trusts, whose being imployed woul [...] import no hazard; yet the worst of that would be only a disrepect shewn to individual persons, who might deserve more favour and esteem, but could be of no prejudice to the Society, there being alway's [...] sufficient number of others, fit for the discharge of all Offices, in whom an entire confidence may be reposed. And 'tis remarkable, that the States General of the Unite [...] Provinces, who afford the greatest Liberty to all Religions, that any known State i [...] Europe giveth; yet they suffer no Papists to come into places of Authority and Iudicature▪ nor to bear any Office in the Republick tha [...] may either put them into a condition, o [...] lay them under a temptation of attempting any thing to the prejudice of Religion, o [...] for the betraying the Liberty of the Provinces▪ And as 'tis lawful for any Government to preclude all such persons from publick Trusts, of whose enmity, and ill will to the Establishment in Church or State, they have either a moral certainty, or just grounds of suspition; so 'tis no less lawful to provide Tests for their discovery and detection, tha [...] they may not be able to mask and vizo [...] themselves in order to getting into Offices, and thereupon of promoting and accomplishing their mischievous and malicious intentions. Nor is it possible in such a case, but that the Tests they are to be tried by, must relate to some of those principles by which they are most eminently distinguished from them of the National Settlement, and in reference whereunto they think it most piacular to dissemble their Opinion▪ Nor have the Papists cause to be offended, [Page] that the Renouncing the Belief of Transubstantia [...]on should be required as the distinguishing [...]ark whereby upon their refusal, they may [...]e discerned, when all the penalty upon their [...]eing known, is only to be excluded from a [...]are in the Legislation, and not to be admitted [...]o Employments of Trust and profit; seeing it [...]ath been and still is their custome, to require [...]he; belief of the Corporal presence in the Sacra [...]ent, as that upon the not acknowledgment whereof we are to be accounted Hereticks, [...]nd to stand condemned to be burnt, which is [...]omewhat worse than the not being allowed [...]o sit in the two Houses of Parliament, or [...]o be shut out from a Civil or Military [...]ffice. Neither are they required to Declare [...]uch less to Swear, that the Doctrine of Transubstantiation is false, or that there is no [...]ch thing as Transubstantiation, (as is affirmed [...]n a scurrilous Paper written against the Loyalty of the Church of England) but all [...]hat is enjoined in the Test Acts, is that, [...] A. B. do declare, that I do believe that there [...] not any Transubstantiation in the Sacrament [...] the Lords Supper, or in the Elements of Bread [...]nd Wine, at or after the Consecration thereof by [...]ny Person whatsoever. Tho the Parliament [...]as willing to use all the care they could, for [...]he discovering Papists, that the provision for [...]ur security, unto which those Acts were de [...]igned, might be the more effectual; yet [...]hey were not so void of understanding, as [...]o prescribe a Method for it, which would [...]ave exposed them to the world for their [...]olly, 'Tis much different to say, swear, or [...]eclare, that I do believe there is not any Transub [...]antiation, and the saying or declaring that [...]here is not a Transubstantiation; the former [...]eing only expressive of what my sentiment or opinion is, and not at all affecting the Doctrine it self, to make, or unmake it, other [...]han what it is, independently upon my judgment of it; whereas the latter does prima [...]ily Affect the Object and the determination of its existence to such a mode as I conceive [...]t; and there are a thousand things which I can say that I do not believe, but I dare not say that they are not. Now as 'tis the dispensing with these Laws that argues the Kings assuming an Absolute Power; so the Addressing by way of thanks for the Declaration wherein this Power is exerted, is no less than an owning and acknowledging of it, and that it rightfully belongs to him. There is a third thing which shame or fear would not suffer them to put into the Declaration for liberty of Conscience in England, but which they have had the impudence to insert into the Proclamation for a Toleration in Scotland, which as it carries Absolute Power written in forehead of it, so it is such an unpresidented exercise of Despoticalness, as hardly any of the Oriental Tyrants or even the French Leviathan would have ventured upon. For having stop't, disabled, and suspended all Laws enjoining any Oaths, whereby our Religion was secured, and the preservation of it to us and our posterity was provided for; he imposeth a new Oath upon his Scots Subjects, whereby they are to be bound to defend and mantain Him, his Heirs and Lawful Successors in the Exercise of their Absolute Power and Authority against all deadly, The imposing an Oath upon Subjects hath been always look't upon as the highest Act of legislative Authority, in that it affects their Consciences, and requires the approbation, or disapprobation of their Minds and Judgments, in reference to whatsoever it is enjoined for; whereas a Law that affects only mens Estates may be submitted unto, tho in the mean time they think that which is exacted of them to be unreasonable and unjust. And as it concerns both the wisdom and justice of Law-givers to be very tender in Ordaining Oaths that are to be taken by Subjects, and that not only from a care that they may not prostitute the name of God to prophanation when the matter about which they are imposed, is either light and trival, or dubious and uncertain; but because it is an exercise of Jurisdiction over the Souls of men, which is more than if it were only exercised over their Goods, Bodies, and Priviledges; so never any of our Kings pretended to a Right of enjoining and requiring an Oath that was not first Enacted and specified in some Law; and it would have [Page] been heretofore accounted a good plea for refusing such or such an Oath, to say there was no Statute that had required it. It was one of the Articles of high Treason (and the most material) charged upon the Earl of Strafford, that being Lord Deputy of Ireland, he required an Oath of the Scotts who inhabited there, which no Law had ordained or prescribed; which may make those Councellors who have advised the King to impose this new Oath, as well as all others that shal require it to be taken upon his Majesties bare Authority, to be a little apprehensive, whether it may not at some time rise in judgment against them, and prove a forefeiture of their lives to justice. And as the imposing an Oath not warranted by Law is a high Act of Absolute Power, and in the King an altering of the Constitution; so if we look into the Oath it self, we shall find this Absolute Power strangly manifested and displayed in all the parts and branches of it, and the people required to swear themselves his Majesties most obedient Slaves and Vassalls. By one Paragraph of it, they are required to swear that it is unlawful for Subjects on any pretence or for any Cause whatsoever to rise in Arms against him, or any Commissioned by him; and that they shall never resist his power or Authority; which as it may be intended for a foundation and means of keeping men quiet when he shall break in upon their Estates and overthrow their Religion, so it may be designed as an encouragement to his Catholick Subjects, to set upon the cutting Protestants throats, when by this Oath their hands are tied up from hindring them. It is but for the Papists to come Authorised with his Majesties Commission, which will not be denied them for so meritorious a work, and then there is no help nor remedy, but we must stretch out our necks, and open our breasts, to their consecrated swords, and sanctified daggers. Nay if the King should transfer the Succession to the Crown from the Rightful Heir to some zealous Romanist, or Alienat and dispose his Kingdoms in way of donation and gift to the Pope, or to the Society of the Iesuites, and for the better securing them in the possessio [...] hereafter, should invest and place them i [...] the enjoyment of them while he lives; th [...] Scotts are bound in the virtue of this Oat [...] tamely to look on, and calmly to acquiesc [...] in it. Or should his Physitians advise him to [...] nightly variety of Matron's and Maids, as th [...] best remedy against his malignant and venemous heats; all of that Kingdom are boun [...] to surrender their Wives and daughters to him with a du'tiful silence and a profound veneration. And if by this Oath he can secur [...] himself from the opposition of his dissenting Subjects in case thro recovery of their Reason a fit of ancient zeal should surprise them▪ he is otherway's secured of an Asiatick tameness in his prelatical people, by a principl [...] which they have lately imbib'd, but neithe [...] learned from their Bibles nor the Statutes o [...] the Land. For the Clergy upon thinking that the wind would alway's blow out of one quarter, and being resolved to make that a duty by their learning, which their interest at that season made convenient; have preached up the Doctrine of passive Obedience to such a boundless height, that they have done what in them lyes, to give up themselves and all that had the weakness to believe them, fettered and bound for sacrifices to popish rage and Despotical Tyranny. But for my self (and I hope the like of many others) I thank God I am not tainted with that slavish and adulatory doctrine, as having alway's thought that the first duty of every member of a Body politick, is to the Community, for whose safety, and good, Governours are instituted, and that it is only to Rulers as they are found to answer the main ends they are appointed for, and to Act by the legal Rules that are Chalcks out unto them. Whether it be from my dulness, or that my understanding is of a perverser make than other mens, I cannot tell; but I could never yet be otherway's minded, than that the Rules of the Constitution and the Laws of the Republick or Kingdom, are to be the measures both of the Soveraigns Commands, and of the Subjects obedience; and that as we are not to invade what by concessions and stipulations [Page] belongs unto the Ruler, so we may not only lawfully, but we ought to defend what is reserved to our selves, if it be invaded and broken in upon. And as without such a Right in the Subjects, all legal Governments, and mixt Monarchies, were but emptie names, and ridiculous things; so wheresoever the Constitution of a Nation is such, there the Prince who strives to subvert the Laws of the Society is the Traitor and Rebel; and not the people who endeavour to preserve and defend them. There is yet another branch of the foresaid Oath, that is of a much more unreasonable strain than the former, which is, that they shall to the utmost of their Power assist, defend, and maintain him in [...]he exercise of this Absolute Power and Authority; which being tack't to our Obeying without reserve, make us the greatest Slaves, that either are, or ever were in the universe. Our Kings were heretofore bound to Govern according to law (and so is his present Majesty, if a Coronation Oath, and faith to Hereticks, were not weaker than Sampson's cords proved to be) but instead of that, here is a new Oath imposed upon the Subjects by which they are bound to protect and defend the King in his Ruling Arbitrarily. It had been more than enough to have required only a calm submitting to the exercise of Absolute Power; but to be injoined to swear to assist and defend his Majesty and Successors in all things wherein they shall exert it, is a plain destroying of all natural as well as Civil Liberty, and a robbing us of that freedom that belongs unto us both as we are men, and as we are born under a free and legal Government. For by this we become bound to dragg our Brethren to the Stake, to cutt their Throats, plunder their Houses, embrew our hands in the Blood of our Wives and Children, if his Majesty please to make these the Instances wherein he will exert his Absolute Power, and require us to assist him in the exercise of it. As it was necessary to Cancell all other Oaths and Tests, as being directly inconsistent with this; so the requiring the Scotts to swear this Oath, is the highest reveng he could take for their Solemn league and Covenant and for all other Oaths, that lust after Arbitrariness, and Popish Bigottry, will pronounce to have been injurious to the Crown. But no words are sufficient to express the mischiefs wrapt up in that new Oath, or to declare the abhorrency that all who value the Rights and liberties of mankind ought to entertain for it, nor to proclaim the villany of those who shall by Addresses give thanks for the Proclamation. There may a fourth thing be added, whereby it will appear that his Majesties assuming Absolute Power, stands recorded in Capital Letters in his Declaration for liberty of Conscience. For not being contented to omit the requiring the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy and the Test Oaths to be taken, nor being satisfied to suspend for a season the enjoining any to be demanded to take them; he tells us that it is his Royal will and pleasure that the foresaid Oaths shall not at any time hereafter be required to be taken, which is a full and direct Repealing of the Laws in which they are Enacted. It hath hitherto passed for an undoubted Maxim, that eorum est tollere, quorum est condere, they can only abrogate Laws, who have Power and Authority to make them, and we have heretofore been made believe, that the Legislative power was not in the King alone, but that the two Houses of Parliament had at least a share in it; whereas here by the disabling and suspending Laws for ever, the whole legislative Power is challenged to be vested in the King, and at one dash the Government of England is subverted and changed. Tho it hath been much disputed whether the King had a liberty of Refusing to Assent to Bills relating to the benefit of the publick that had passed the two Houses, and if there be any sense in those words of the Coronation Oath of his being bound to Govern according to the Laws quas vulgus Elegerit, he had not; yet none till now, that his Majesty doth it, had the impudence to affirm that he might abrogate Laws without the concurrence and assent of the Lords and Commons. For to say that Oaths enjoined by Laws to be required to be taken, shall not at any time hereafter be required[Page]to be taken, is a plain Cancelling and repealing of these Laws, or nothing of this World ever was or is, nor can the wisdom of the Nation in Parliament assembled, find words more emphatical to declare their Abrogation, without saying so, which at this time it was necessary to forbear, for fear of allarming the Kingdom too far, before his Majesty be sufficiently provided against it. For admitting them to continue still in being and force, tho the King may promise for the nonexecution of them, during his own time, (which is even a pretty bold undertaking) yet he cannot assure us that the Oaths shall not be required to be taken at any time hereafter, unless he have provided for an eternal Line of popish Successors, which God will not be so unmerciful as to plague us with, or have gotten a lease of a longer life than Methusalah's, which is much more than the full Century of years wished him in a late Dedication by one that stiles himself an Irishman, a thing he might have foreborn telling us, because the Size of his understanding fully declares it. However here is such a stroke and exercise of Absolute Power as dissolves the Government, and brings us all into a State of Nature, by discharging us from the ties, which by vertue of fundamental Stipulations, and Statute Laws we formerly lay under; forasmuch as we know no King but a King by Law, nor no Power he has but a legal Power. Which thro disclaiming by a challenge that the whole legislative Authority does reside in himself, he hath thrown the Gantles to three Kingdoms, and provokes them to a trial, whether he be ablest to maintain his Absoluteness or they to justify their being a free People. And by virtu' of the same Royal will and pleasure, that he annulls (which he calls Suspending) the Laws enjoining the Tests and the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy, and commands that none of these Oaths and Declarations shall at any time hereafter be required to be taken; he may in some following Royal Papers, give us whitehall, or Hampton Court Edicts, conformable to those at Versailles, which at all times hereafter we shall be bound to submitt unto, and stand obliged to be Ruled by instead of the Common Law and Statut [...] Book Nor is the taking upon him to stamp us new Laws, exclusively of Parliamentary concurrence, in the virtu' of his Royal prerogative, any thing more uncouth' in it self, or more dissagreeable to the Rules of the Constitution and what we have been constantly accustomed unto, than the cassing, disabling and abrogating so many old ones, which that absolute, out of date, as well as ill favoured thing upon Monarchs, called a Parliament, had a share in the Enacting of. I will not say that our Addressers were conscious, that the getting an Absolute Power in his Majesty, to be owned and acknowledged, was one of the Ends for which the late Declaration was calculated and emitted, but I think I have sufficiently demonstrated both that such a power it issueth and flows from, and that such a power is plainly exercised in it. Which whether there coming now to be told and made acquainted with it, may make them repent what they have done, or at least prevent their being accessory to the support of this Power in other mischievous effects that are to be dreaded from it, I must leave to time to make the discovery, it being impossible to foretel what a People fallen into a phrenzie may do in their paroxism's of distraction and madness.

Nor was the Seruing himself into the possession of an Absolute power, and the getting it to be owned by at least a part of the people, the only Motive to the publishing the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience in England, and the Proclamation for a Toleration in Scotland; but a second inducement, tha [...] sway'd unto it, was the undermining an subverting the Protestant Religion, and the opening a door for the introduction and establ [...]hment of Popery. Nor was it from any compassion to Dissenters, that these two Roya [...] Papers were emitted, but from his Majestie [...] tender love to Papists, to whom as there arise many advantages for the present, so the whole Benefit will be found to redound to them in the issue. We are told (a [...] [Page] [...]ave already mentioned) that the King is [...]esolved to convert England, or to die a Martyr; [...]nd we may be sure that if he did not think [...]he suspending the penal Laws, and the dis [...]ensing with requiring of the Tests, and the [...]ranting Liberty and Toleration, to be means admirably adapted thereunto, he would not have acted so inconsistently with himself, nor in that opposition to his own designes, as to have disabled these Laws, and vouch sav'd the Freedom that results thereupon. Especially when we are told by the Leige Iesuite, that the King being sensible of his growing old, finds himself thereby obliged [...]o make the greater hast, and to take the larger steps, lest thro not living long enough to effect what he intends, he should not only lose the glory of converting three Kingdoms, but should leave the Papists in a worse condition than he found them. His Highness the Prince of Orange very justly concludes this [...]o be the thing aim'd at by the present Indulgence, and therefore being desired to approve the Suspension of the Test Acts, and to cooperate with his Majesty for the obtaining their being Repealed; was pleased to Answer, [...]hat while he was, as well as prosesseth himself a Protestant, he would not Act so unworthily as [...]o betray the Protestant Religion, which he necessarily must, if he should do as he was desired. Her Royal Highness the Princess of Orange, has likewise the same apprehension of the tendency of the Toleration and Indulgence, and therefore was pleased to say to some Scotts Ministers that did themselves the honor, and performed the duty that became them, in going to wait upon her, that She greatly commended their having [...]o accession to the betraying of the Protestant Religion, by their returning home to take the benefit of the Toleration. What an indelible Reproach will it be to a Company of men, that pretend to be set for the defence of the Gospel, and who stile themselves Ministers of Iesus Christ, to be found betraying Religion, thro justifying the Suspension of so many Laws whereby it was established and supported, and whereby the Kingdoms were Fenced about, and guarded against Popery; while these two Noble Princes to the neglect of their own Interest in His Majesties Favour, and to the provoking him to do them all the prejudice he can in their Right of Succession to the Imperial Crowns of Great Brittain, do signify their open dislike of that Act of the King, and that not only upon the account of its illegality and Arbitrariness, but by reason of its tendency to supplant and undermine the Reformed Religion. And they are strangely blind that do not see how it powerfully operates, and conduceth to the effecting of this, and that in more way's and method's than are easie to be recounted. For thereby our divisions, are not only kept up at a time, when the united Councels and strength of all Protestants is too little against the craft and power of Rome; but they who have Addressed to thank the King for his Royal Papers, are become a listed and enrolled Faction, to abet and stand by the King in all that naturally follows to be done for the maintaining his Declaration, and justifying of the usurped Authority from which it issues. 'Tis matter of a melancholy consideration, and turns little to the credit of Dissenters, that when they of the Church of England, who had with so great indiscretion promoted things to that pass, which an easie improvement of would produce what hath since ensued, are thro being at last enlightned in the designes of the Court, come so far to recover their witts, as that they can no longer do the service they were wont, and which was still expected from them; there should be a new Tribe of men muster'd up to stand in their room, and who by their vows and Promises made to the King in their Addresses, have undertaken to perform, what others have the Conscience, and Honesty, as well as the Wisdom, to refuse and decline. Nor are the Divisions among Protestants only hereby upheld and maintained; but our Animosities and rancours are both continued and enflamed. For while they of the Established way are provoked and exasperated to see all the legal [Page] Foundations both of the Protestant Religion and their Church subverted; the Addressing-Dissenters are emboldned, to revenge themselves upon the National Clergy, in Terms of the utmost opprobry, virulence, and reproach, for their accession to the sufferings which they had endured. Surely it would have been not only more generous, but much more Christian, and becoming good as well as wise men, to have made no other Retaliations but those of forgiveness and pardon for the injuries they had met with, and to have offered all the assistances, they could give, to their conformable Brethren, for the stemming and withstanding the deluge of Popery and Tyranny that is impetuously breaking in upon the Kingdoms. And as this would have united all Protestants in bonds of forbearance and love not to be dissolved thro petty differences about Discipline, Forms of Worship, and a few Rites, and Ceremonies; so it would in the sense and judgment of all men, have given them a more triumphant victory over those that had been their imprudent and peevish Enemies, than if they were to enjoy the spoiles of the conformable Clergy, by being put into possession of their Cures and Benefices. The Relation I have stood in to the Dissenting party, and the Kindness I retain for them above all other, make me heartily bewail, their losing the happiest opportunity, that was ever put into their hands, not only of improving the compassion, which their calamities had raised for them in the hearts of the generality, into friendship and kindness, but of acquiring such a merit upon the Nation, that the utmost favoures which a true English Protestant Parliament could hereafter have shewed them, would have been accounted but slender as wel as just Recompences. Nor can I forbear to say, that I had rather have seen the Furnace of afflictions made hotter for them, tho it should have been my own lot to be thrown into the most scorching flames, than to have beheld them guilty of those excesses of folly towards themselves, and of treachery to Religion, and the Laws of their Countrey, which their present ease, and a shor [...] opportunity afforded them of acquiring gain, have hurried and transported so many of them into. It plainly appears with what aspect upon our Religion the Declaration for liberty of Conscience was emitted, if we do but observe the advantages the Papists have already reapt by it. How is the whole nation thereupon, not only overflow'd with swarms of Lo [...]sts, and all places filled with Priests and Iesuites, but the whole executive Power of the Government, and all preferments of honor, interest, and profit are put into Roman Catholick hands? So that we are not only exposed to the unwearied and restless importunities of Seducers, but through the advancement of Papists to all Offices Civil, and Military, if not Ecclesiastick; the covetous become brib'd, the timorous threatned, and the prophane are baited with temptations sutable to their lusts, and they that stand resolved to continue honest are laid open not only to the bold affronts of Priests and Fryers, the insolencies of petulant Popish Justices, the chicaneries and oppressions of the Arbitrary Commission Court, but to the rage of his Majesty, and the danger of being attaqu'd by his Armed Squadrons. To which may be added, that by the same Prerogative and Absolute Power that his Majesty hath suspended the Laws made for the Protection of our Religion; he may disable and dispense with all the Laws by which it is set up and established. And as it will not be more illegal and Arbitrary to make void the Laws for Protestancy, than to have suspended those against Popery; so I do not see how the Adressers that have approved the one, can disallow or condemn the other. For the King having obtained an acknowledgment of his Absolute Power, and of his Royal prerogative paramount to Laws on his exercising it in one Instance; it now depends meerly upon his own will (for any thing these Thanks-giving Gentlemen have to say against it) whether he may not exert it in another, wherein they are not likely to find so much of their ease and gain.

There is a third Inducement to the Emitting [Page] those Royal Papers, which tho at the first [...]iew, it may seem wholly to regard Forraig [...]ers, yet it ultimately terminates in the sub [...]ersion of our Religion at home, and in the Kings putting himself into a condition of [...]xercising his Absolute Power in whatsoever Acts he pleaseth over his own Subjects, whe [...]her after the French fashion in commanding them to turn Catholicks because he will [...]ave it so, or after the manner of the Grand [...]eignior to require them to submit their Necks to the Bow string; because he is jea [...]ous of them, or wants their Estates to pay [...]is Janizaries. The united Provinces are they whom he bore a particular spleen and indignation unto, when he was a subject, and upon whom he is now in the Throne, he resolves not only to wreak all his old malice, but by conquering and subduing them (if he can) to strengthen his Absoluteness over his own People, and to pave his way for overthrowing the protestant Religion in great Brittain, without lying open to the hazards that may otherwise attend and ensue upon the attempting of it. And instead of expecting nothing from him, but what may become a brave and generous Enemy, they ought to remember the encouragement that he gave heretofore to two varlets, to burn that part of their Fleet which belong'd to Amsterdam, an action as ignominious as fraudulent, and that might have been fatal to all the Provinces, if thro a happy and seasonable detection and the apprehension of one of the miscreants, it had not been prevented. He knows that the States General are not only zealous assertors of the protestant Religion, but alway's ready to afford a Sanctuary and a place of Refuge to those, who being oppressed for the profession of it elsewhere, are forced to forsake their own Countries, and to seek for shelter and relief in other parts. And as he is not unsensible, how easie the withdrawment and flight is into these Provinces, for such as are persecuted in his Dominions; so he is aware, that if multitudes, and especially men of condition and Estates, should for the avoiding his cruelty betake themselves thither, that they would not be unthoughtful of all ways and means, whereby they might Redeem their Country from Tyranny, and restore themselves to the quiet enjoyment of their Estates and liberties at home. But that which most enrages him is the Figure which the two Princes do make in that State (of whose Succession to the Crown the Protestants in Brittain have so near a prospect) and the Post which the Prince filleth in that Government, so that he dare neither venture to difinherit Them, nor impose upon, them such Terms, and Conditions, as their Consciences will not suffer them to comply with, while either these States remain Free, or while such English and Scotts as retain a zeal for Religion and the ancient Laws and Rights of their respective Countries, can retreat thither under hopes of Admission and Protection. And so closely are the interests of all Protestants in England and Scotland, woven and inlaid with the interest of the united Netherlands, and such is the singular regard that both the one and the other bear to the Reformed Religion, the liberty of Mankind and their several Civil Rights; that it is impossible for his Majesty to embarque in a design against the One, without resolving at the same time upon the ruin of the Other. Neither will the One be able to subsist, when once the Other is subdu'd and enslaved. As Philip the II. of Spain, saw no way so compendious for the restoring himself to the Soveraignty and Tyrannous Rule over the Dutch, as the subjugating of England that hel'p to support and assist them, which was the ground of rigging out his formidable Armado, and of his design against England in 1588. so his Brittish Majesty, thinks no method so expeditious for the enslaving his own People, as the endeavouring first to subdue the Dutch. And as upon the one hand it would be of a threatning consequence to Holland, could the King subjugate his own People, extirpate the protestant Religion out of his Dominions, and advance himself to a Despotical Power; so upon the other hand, could he conquer [Page] the Dutch, we might with the greatest certainty Date the woful Fate of great Brittain, and the loss of all that is valuable to them as men and Christians, from the same moment and Period of time. They are like the Twins we read of, whose Destiny was to live and die together; and which soever of the two is destroyed first, all the hope and comfort that the other can pretend unto, is to be last devoured. Now after the advances which his Majesty hath made towards the enslaving his Subjects, and the subverting the Reformed Religion in his Kingdoms, he finds it necessary before he venture to give the last and fatal stroke at home, and to enter upon the plenary exercise of his Absolute Power, in laying Parliaments wholly aside, in cancelling all Laws to make way for Royal Edicts or Declarations of the complexion of the former, and in commanding us to turn Roman Catholicks, or to be dragoon'd; I say he thinks it needful before he proceed to these, to try whether he can subdue and conquer the Dutch, and thereby remove all hopes of shelter, relief, comfort, and assistance from his own People, when he shall afterwards fall upon them. And how much soever the Court endeavoures to conceal its design, and strives to compliment the States General into a confidence that all Alliances between them and the Crown of England shall be maintained and preserved; yet they not only speak their intentions by several open and visible actions, but some of them cannot forbear to tell it, when their blood is heated and their heads warm'd with a liberal glass and a lusty proportion of wine. Thence it was that a Governing Papist lately told a Gentleman after they two had drunk hard together, that they had some Work in England that would employ them a little time, but when that was over they would make the Dutch fly to the end of the World, to find a resting place. Delenda est Carthago is engraven upon their hearts, as being that without which Rome cannot arrive at the universal Monarchy that it aspires after. It was upon a formed design of a war against the united Provinces, that the King hath for these two years stirr [...] up and incited, as well as countenanced a [...] protected the Algerines in their Piracies, th [...] thro their weakning and spoiling the Du [...] before hand, it may be the more easie a ma [...] ter for him to subdue them, when he sh [...] think fit to begin his hostilities. 'Tis in o [...] der to this, that he hath entred into ne [...] and secret Alliances with other Princes, th [...] purport of which is boldly talk't of in Lo [...] don, but whether believed at the Hague I ca [...] not tell. For as Monsr. Barrillion and Mons [...] Bonrepos present Transactions at Whitehal relate to something else than meerly to the a [...] fair of Hudsons Bay; so Prince Georges erran [...] to Denmark, is of more importance than bare visite, or a naked compliment to hi [...] Brother. 'Tis upon this design that all tha [...] great Marine preparation hath been so lon [...] making in the several ports of England; bu [...] to the hindring the execution whereof som [...] unexpected and not foreseen accidents hav [...] interposed. And it is in subserviency not to be disquieted at home, while he is carrying on this holy war abroad, that the Declaratio [...] for liberty of Conscience in England, and the Proclamation for a Toleration in Scotland, are granted and published. 'Tis well enough known how that after the French King had, among many other severities exercised against Protestants, made them uncapable of Employments and commands; yet to avoid the consequences that might have ensued thereupon, while he was engaged in war against the Emperor, the King of Spain, and the States of Holland, and to have the aid' of his Reformed Subjects; he not only intermitted and abated in many other rigours towards them, but in Anno 1674. restored them to a capacity of being employed and preferred. And that this did not flow from any compassion, tendernes or good will, towards them, his carriage since the issue of that war, and the miserable condition he hath reduced them unto, do's sufficiently testify and declare. Nor can we forget, how that the late King, after a rigorous execution of the penal Laws for several years against Dissenters; yet being to enter into an unjust [Page] [...]ar against the united Provinces Anno 1672. [...]ot only forbore all proceedings of that kind, [...]ut published a Declaration for suspending the [...]xecution of all those Laws, and for the al [...]owing them liberty of Assembling to wor [...]hip God in their separate meetings, with [...]ut being hindred or disturbed. What [...]rinciple that proceeded from, and to what [...]nd it was calculated, appeared in his beha [...]iour to them afterwards, when neither the [...]anger the Nation was in from the Papists, [...]or the application of several Parliaments [...]ould prevail for lenity towards them, much less for a legal Repeal of those impo [...]itick and unreasonable Statutes. Nor does [...]he present Indulgence flow from any kindness to Fanaticks, but it is only an artifice to stiffe their discontents, and to procure their assistance for the destroying of a Forraign Protestant State. And it may not be unworthy of observation, that as the Declaration of Indulgenct Anno 1672. bore date much about the same time with the Declaration of war against the Dutch; so at the very season that his present Majesty emitted his Declaration for liberty of Conscience, there were Commissions of Reprisal prepared and ready to be grantrd to the English East India Company against the Hollanders, but which were suppressed upon the Courts finding that they whom the suspending the Execution of so many Laws, and the granting such liberties, Rights and immunities to the Papists, had disgusted and provoked, were far more numerous and their resentments more to be apprehended, than they were, whose murmurings and discontents they had silenced and allay'd by the liberty that was granted. Now as it will be at this juncture, when the Protestant Interest is so low in the World, and the Reformed Religion in so great danger of being destroyed, a most wicked as well as an imprudent Act, to contribute help and aid to the subjugating a people, that are the chief Protectors of the protestant Religion that are left, and almost the only Asserters of the Rights and liberties of Mankind, so it may, fill the Addressers with confusion and shame that they should have not only justified an Act of his Majestys that is plainly designed to such a mischievous End, but that they should by the promises and vows that they have made him, have emboldned his Majesty to continue his purposes and Resolutions of a war against the Dutch. Which as it must be funestous and fatal to the Protestant Cause, in case he should prosper and succeed; so howsoever it should issue, yet the Addressers, who have done what in them lyes to give encouragement unto it, will be held betrayers of the Protestant Religion, both abroad and at home, and judged guilty of all the blood of those of the same Faith with them, that shall be shed in this Quarrel.

That Liberty ought to be allowed to men in matters of Religion, is no Plea whereby the Kings giving it in an illegal and Arbitrary manner, can be maintained and justified. Since ever I was capable of Exercising any distinct and coherent Acts of Reason, I have been alway's of that Mind, that none ought to be persecuted for their Consciences towards God in matters of Faith and Worship. Nor is it one of those things that lye under the power of the Soveraign and Legislative Authority, to grant or not to grant; but it is a Right setled upon mankind antecedent to all Civil Constitutions and Humane Laws, having its foundation in the Law of Nature, which no Prince or State can legitimately violate and infringe. The Magistrate as a Civil Officer can pretend or claim no power over a people, but what he either derives from the Divine Charter, wherein God, the Supream Instituter of Magistracy has chalk't out the duty of Rulers in general, or what the people upon the first and original Stipulation, are supposed to have given him in order to the protection, peace and prosperity of the Society. But as it does no where appear that God hath given any such power to Governors, seeing all the Revelations in the Scripture, as well as all the Dictates of Nature, speak a contrary language, so neither can the People upon their chusing such a one to be their Ruler, be imagined [Page] to transferr and vest such a power in him, for as much as they cannot divest themselves of a power, no more than of a Right, of believing things, as they arrive with a credibility to their several and respective Understandings. As it is in no mans power to believe as he will, but only as he sees cause; so it is the most irrational imagination in the world, to think they should transferr a Right to him whom they have chosen to Govern them, of punishing them for what it is not in their power to help. Nor can any thing be plainer, than that God has reserved the Empire over Conscience to himself, and that he hath circumscribed the power of all humane Governore to things of a civil and inferior nature. And had God convey'd a Right unto Magistrates of commanding men to be of this or that Religion, and that because they are so, and will have others to be of their mind; it would follow that the People may conform to whatsoever they require, tho by all the lights of sense▪, Reason and Revelation, they are convinced of the falsehood of it: seeing whatsoever the Soveraign rightfully Commands, the Subjects may lawfully obey. But tho the persecuting people for matters of meer Religion, be repugnant to the light of Nature, inconsistent with the fundamental Maximes of Reason, directly contrary to the temper and genious, as well as to the Rules of the Gospel, and not only against the safety and interest of Civil Societies, but of a tendency to fill them with confusion, and to arm Subjects to the cutting of one anothers throats; yet Governors may both deny Liberty to those whose principles oblige them to destroy those that are not of their mind, and may in some measure Regulate the Liberty which they vouch save to others, whose opinions tho they do not think dangerous to the peace of the Community, yet thro judging them erroneous and false, they conceive them dangerous to the Soules of men. As there is a vast difference betwixt Tolerating a Religion, and approving the Religion that is Tolerated; so what a Government doth not approve, but barely permitts and suffers, may [...] brought under Restrictions as to time, plac [...] and number of those professing it, that sha [...] assemble in one meeting; which it wer [...] an undecency, to extend to those of th [...] justified and established way. Now wha [...] soever Restrictions, or Regulations, are E [...] acted, and ordained by the Legislative A [...] thority, in reference to Religions or Religio [...] Assemblies; they are not to be stop't, disable [...] or suspended, but by the same Authority th [...] Enacted and ordained them. The King say [...] very truely, that Conscience ought not to [...] constrained, nor people forced in matters of me [...] Religion; but it does not from thence follo [...] (unless by the Logick of Whitehal) th [...] without the concurrence of a Parliamen [...] he should suspend and dispense with the Law [...] and by a pretended preroragtive, relieve an [...] from what they are obnoxious unto by th [...] Statutes of the Realm. His saying, that th [...] forcing people in matters of Religio [...] spoils Trade, depopulates Countries, discour [...] geth Strangers, and answers not the End [...] beinging all to an Uniformity, for which it [...] employ'd; would do well in a Speech to th [...] Houses of Parliament, to perswade them t [...] Repeal some certain Laws, or might do we [...] to determine his Majesty to assent to suc [...] Bills as a Parliament may prepare and offe [...] for relieving persons in matters of Co [...] science; But does not serve for what it [...] alledged, nor can it warrant his suspending th [...] Laws by his single Authority. And by th [...] way, I know when these very Argument [...] were not only despised by His Majesty, an [...] ridiculed by those who took their Cue fro [...] Court, and had wit to do it, as by the pr [...] sent Bishop of Oxford in a very ill natur [...] Book, called Ecclesiastical Polity; but whe [...] the daring to have mentioned them, woul [...] have provok'd the then Duke of York's i [...] dignation, and have exposed the party th [...] did it to discountenance and disgrace. T [...] question is not, what is convenient to [...] done in some measure and degree, and [...] reference to those whose Religion does n [...] oblige them to destroy all that differ fro [...] [Page] [...]om, when they have opportunity for it; [...]t the point in debate is, who hath the le [...]l power of doing it, and of fixing its bounds [...]d limits. It was never pretended that the [...]ing ought to be shut out from a share in spending and Repealing Laws; but that the [...]le Right of doing it belongs to him, is [...]hat cannot be allowed, without changing [...]e Constitution, and placing the whole Le [...]slative Authority in His Majesty. And as it is [...] Usurpation in the King to challenge it, and [...] treachery in English Subjects to acknowledg [...]; so the inconveniences, that this, or that [...]arty, are in the mean time exposed unto, [...]ro the Laws remaining in force, are ra [...]er to be endured, than that a power of [...]ving case and relief (farther than by con [...]vance) should be confessed to reside in [...]y one, in whom the Laws of the Com [...]unity have not placed it. 'Tis better to [...]dergo hardships under the Execution of [...]just Laws; than be released from our [...]roubles, by a power Usurped over all Laws. [...]or by the one, the measures of Government, [...] well as the Rights and Priviledges of a Na [...]on, are destroy'd; whereas by the other, [...]ly a part of the people are afflicted and [...]duly dealt with. While we are Govern'd [...] Laws, tho several of them may be in [...]st and inconvenient, yet we are under a [...]curity as to all other things which those [...]aws have not made liable; but when we [...]ll under an illimited prerogative and Abso [...]e Power, we have no longer a Title [...], or a hedg about any thing, but all lies [...]en to the lust and pleasure of him, in [...]hom we have owned that power to be [...]ated. A Liberty is what Dissenters have [...] Right to Claim, and which the Legislative [...]uthority is bound by the Rules of Justice [...]d Duty as well as by Principles of Wisdom [...]d Discretion to grant. And I am sorry [...]at while they stood so fair to obtain it [...] a Legal and Parliamentary way, any of [...]em by acknowledging a Right in another [...] give it, and that in a manner so subver [...]e of the Authority of Parliaments, should [...]ve rendred themselves unworthy to receive it from them, to whom the power of bestowing it does belong. Not but that a Toleration will be alway's due to their Principles, but I know not whether the particular men of those Principles, who have by their Addresses betray'd the Kingdom, may not come to be judged to have forfeited all share in it, for their crime committed against the Constitution, and the whole Politick Society. Nor is there any thing more just and equal, than that they who surrender and give away the Rights both of Legislators and Subjects; should lose all grace and favour from the former, and all portion among the latter.

And how much soever some Protestant Dissenters, may please themselves with the Liberty, that at present they enjoy in the vertue of the two Royal Papers; yet this may serve to moderate them in their transports of gladness, that they have no solid Security for the continuance of it. For should a Parliament null and make voide the Declaration for Liberty, and impeath the judges for declaring a power vested in the King to suspend so many Laws, and for forbearing upon the Kings Mandat to execute them; the freedom that the Dissenters possess, would immediately vanish, and have much the same destiny that the Liberty had, which was granted unto them by the Declaration of Indulgence anno 1672. Or should the Parliament be willing to grant ease and Indulgence to all Protestants, by a Bill prepared for Repealing of all the Laws formerly made against them, and should only be desirous to preserve in force the Laws relating to the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and the Statutes which enjoin the Tests, of whose Execution we never more wanted the benefit in order to our preservation from Popery, and which an English Parliament cannot be supposed willing to part with, at a time when our Lives, Estates, and Religion, are so visibly threatned to be swallowed up, and destroyed by the Papists; in that case we may confidently believe, that the King instead either of Assenting to such [Page] a Bill for separate favour to Protestants, or persevering in his Compassion and Kindness of continuing the Suspension of the Laws against Dissenters, he would from an inveterate enmity as well as from a new contracted resentment, be stirred up and enraged to the putting the Laws in execution with greater rigor and severity, than hath been seen, or felt heretofore. And all that the Addressers would then reap by the Declaration; would be to undergo the furious effects of brutal rage in their Persecutors, and to be unpittyed by the Kingdom, and unlamented by their fellow Protestants. Or should His Majesty in favour to his good Catholicks, resolve against the meeting of a Parliament, or to adjourn and prorogue them whensoever he shall find, that instead of confirming what he hath done, they shall make null his Declaration, vote his pretended prerogative illegal and arbitrary, and fall upon those mercinary and perjured Villains, who have allowed him a power transcendent to Law; yet even upon that supposal, which is the best that can be made to support mens hopes in the continuance of the present Liberty, the Protestant Dissenters would have but slender Security, all the tenure they have for the duration of their Freedom being only precarious, and depending meerly upon the Kings Word and promise, which there is small ground to rely upon. Nor can he be true to them, without being false to his Religion, which not only gives him leave to break his Faith with Hereticks, but obligeth him to it, and to destroy them to boot, and that both under the pain of damnation, and of forfeiting his Crown and losing his Dominions. And how far the Promise and Royal Word of a Catholick Monarch is to be trusted unto, and depended upon, we have a modern proof and evidence in the behaviour of Louis de Grand towards his Reformed Subjects, not only in repealing the many Edicts made and confirmed by himself, as well as his Ancestors, for the free exercise of their Religion; but in the method's he hath alway's observed, namely to promise them protection in the profession of their Faith, and practi [...] of their Worship, when he was most ste [...] fastly resolved to subvert their Religion, a [...] was about making some fresh advan [...] and taking some new step for its extirpati [...] Thus when he had firmly purposed, not [...] suffer a Minister to continue a year in t [...] Kingdom, he at the same time, publish [...] an Edict, requiring Ministers, to serve b [...] three years in one place, and not to retur [...] to the Church, where they had first officiate [...] till after the expiration of twentie years. [...] the same manner, when he had resolve [...] to Repeal the Edict of Nantes, and had giv [...] injunction for the Draught, by which it w [...] to be done; he at the same season, gave th [...] Protestants, all assurances of Protection, an [...] of the said Edicts being kept inviolabl [...] To which may be added, that shameful an [...] detestable Chicanery, in passing his Sacre [...] and Royal Word, that no violence shoul [...] be offered any for their Religion, tho at th [...] very moment, the Dragoons were upo [...] their march, with orders of exercising a [...] manner of cruelties, and barbarities, upo [...] them. So that His Majesty of Great Brit [...] tain, hath a pattern lately set him, an [...] that by the Illustrious Monarch, whom h [...] so much admires, and whom he makes i [...] his ambition, and glory, to imitate. No [...] are we without proofs already, how insigni ficant the Kings promises are, (except to de lude) and what little confidence, ought t [...] be put in them. The disabling, and suspen ding, the 13th Statute of his late Parliame [...] in Scotland, wherein the Test was confirmed and his departing from all his Promises Registred in his Letter, as well as from those contained in the Speech made by the Lor [...] Commissioner, pursuant to the Instruction [...] which he had undoubtedly received, together with his having forgotten and recede [...] from all his Promises made to the Church o [...] England both when Duke of York, and since he came to the Crown, are undeniable evidences, that his Royal Word, is no more Sacred, nor binding, than that of some other Monarchs; and that whosoever of the [Page] [...]rotestants, shall be so foolish, as to rely [...]pon it, will find themselves as certainly [...]isappointed, and deceived, as they of the [...]ormed Religion elsewhere, have been. [...]d while they of the established way, find [...] small security by the Laws, which the [...]ing is bound by his Coronation Oath to ob [...]erve; the Dissenters cannot expect very [...]uch, from a naked Promise, which as it [...]ath not a solemn Oath to enforce it, so 'tis [...]oth illegal in the making, and contrary to [...]he principles of his Religion to keep. Nor is [...] unworthy of observation, that he hath [...]ot only departed from his promises, made [...]o the Church of England; but that we are told, [...] a late Popish Pamphlet, Entitled, A New Test [...] the Church of Englands Loyalty, published [...]as it self say's) by Authority, that they were [...]ll conditional (to wit by vertue of some [...]ntal Reservation in his Majesties breast) [...]nd that the Conformable Clergy, having fai [...]ed, in performing the Conditions, upon which they were made; the King, is ab [...]olved, and discharged, from all Obliga [...]ion, of observing them. The Church of England (say's he) must give his Majesty leave [...]ot to nourish a Snake in his bosom, but rather [...]o withdraw his Royal protection, which was pro [...]ised, upon the account, of her constant fidelity. Which as it is a plain threatning of all the Legal Clergy, and a denunciation of the un [...]ust and hard measure, thy are to look for; So it shakes the Foundation, upon which all credit unto, and relyance upon, his Majesties Word, can be any way's placed. For tho Threatnings may have tacit Reserves, because [...]he right of executing them, resides in the Threatner; yet Promises are incapable of all [...]atent conditions, because every Promise vests [...] Right in the Promise, and that in the vir [...]ue of the words in which it is made. But [...] is the less to be wondred at, if His Majesty [...]y to Equivocations and Mental Reserves, being [...]oth under the conduct of that Order, and a Member of the Society, that first taught and [...]racticed this treacherous piece of Chica [...]erie. However it may inform the Dissen [...]s, that if they be not able to answer the End, for which they are depended upon; or be not willing in the manner and degree, that is expected; or if it be not for the interest, of the Catholick cause, to have them indulged; in all these cases, and many more, the King may be pronounced, acquitted, and discharged, from all the Promises, he hath given them, as having been meerly stipulatory, and conditional. And as he will be sure then, finem facere ferendae alienae personae, to lay aside the disguise that he hath now put on; so if they would reflect either upon his temper or upon his Religion, they might now know, hand gratuitam in tanta superbia comitatem, that a person of his pride would not stoop to such flattery, (as his Letter to Mr. Alsop expresseth) but in order to some design. But what need other proof, of the fallaciousness of the two Royal Papers and that no Protestants can reasonably depend upon the Royal Word, there laid to pledg for the continuation of their Liberty; but to look into these two Papers themselves, where we shall meet expressions, that may both detract from our belief, of His Majesties sincerity, and awaken us to a just jealousie, that the Liberty, and Toleration, granted by them, are intended to be of no long standing and duration. For while He is pleased to tell us, that the granting His Subjects, the free use of their Religion for the time to come, is an addition to the perfect enjoyment of their property, which has never been invaded by His Majesty since his coming to the Crown; he doth in effect say, that His Fidelity, Truth, and Integrity, in what he grants in reference to Religion, is to be measured, and judged, by the verity that is in what He tells us, as to the never having invaded our property. And that I may borrow an expression from Mr. Alsop, and to no less a person than to the King himself, namely, that tho we pretend to no refined intellectualls, nor presume to philosophise upon Mysteries of Government, yet we make some pretence to the sense of feeling, and whatever our dulness be, can discern, between what is exacted of us according to Law, and what we are rob'd of by an exercise of Arbitrary Power. For not to [Page] sist upon the violent seisure of mens Goods, by Officers, as well as Souldiers, in all parts of England, which looks like an invasion upon the properties of the Subject; nor to dwell upon his keeping an Army on foot in time of peace, against the Authority, as well as without the countenance of Law, which our Ancestors would have stiled an Invasion upon the whole property of the Kingdom; I would sain know, by what name we are to call his levying the customs, and the Additional Excise, before they were granted unto him by the Parliament, all the legal establishment of them upon the nation, having been only, during the late Kings life, till the settlement of them upon the Crown was again renewed by Statute. It were also worth his Majesties telling us, what Titles are due to the suspending the vice Chancellor of Cambridg a beneficio, and the turning the President of Maudlins in Oxford out of his Headship, and the suspending Dr. Fairsax from his Fellowship, if they be not an Invasion upon our property; seeing every part of this, is against all the known Laws of the Kingdom, and hath been done by no legal Court, but by a Set of mercinary villains, armed with an Arbitrary Commission, and who do as Arbitrarily Exercise it. And as the End unto which that Inquisition Court was instituted, was to robb us of ours Rights and Priviledges at the meer pleasure of the King; so the very Institution of it, is an Invasion both upon all our Laws, and upon the whole property of the Nation, and is one of the highest Exercises of Despotical Power, that it is possible for the most Absolute and unlimited Monarch to exert. Among all the Rights reserved unto the Subjects by the Rules of the Constitution, and whereof they are secured by many repeated Laws and Statutes, there are none that have been hithero less disputed, and in reference to which our Kings have been farther from claiming any Power and Authority, than those of levying money without the grant as well as the consent of Parliament, and of Absolving and discharging Debtor; from paying their Creditors, and of acquitting [...] from being sued and imprisoned in case of no [...] payment; and yet in defiance of all Law and to the subverting the Rights of the peo [...] ple and the most essential Priviledg and I [...] risdiction of Parliaments, and to a plain chan [...] ging the ancient legal Constition into an Absolute and Despotical Governing Power, the King (they say) is assuming to himself a [...] Authority, both of imposing a Tax of five pound per annum upon every Hackney Coach, and of Releasing and discharging all Debtors, of whom their Creditors cannot claim and demand above ten pound Sterling; which as they will be signal Invasions upon property, and lea [...]ing Cases for the raising money in what other instances he pleaseth, by a Hamp [...]on Cour [...] or a Whitehall Edict, without standing in need of a Parliament, or being obliged to a dependance upon their Grant, for all Taxes to be levied upon the Subjects, as his Predecessors have heretofore been; so they may serve fully to instruct us what little security either the Dissenters have as to being long in the possession of their present liberty, or Protestants in general of having a freedom continued unto them of professing the Reformed Religion, if we have nothing more to rely upon for preventing our being abridged and denyed the liberty of our Religion, than we have had for preserving our Property from being Invaded and broken in upon. We may subjoin to the Clause already mentioned, that other Expression, which occurs in the foresaid Declaration, viz. that as he freely gives them leave to meet and serve God after their own may and manner, so they are to take special care, that nothing be preached or taught amongst them, which may any ways [...]end to alienate the hearts of the people from his Majesty, or his Government; which words as they import the price at which the Dissenters are to purchase their freedom (whereof we shall discourse anon) so they admirably serve to furnish the King with a pretence, of retrenching their liberty whensoever he pleaseth, nor are they inserted there for any other End, but th [...] [Page] [...]on a plea, of their having abused his Gra [...]us Indulgence to the alienating the hearts of [...] his people from him, they may be adjud [...]d to have thereby deservedly forfeited, [...]th all the benefits of it, and of his Royal [...]our. Nor is it possible for a Protestant [...]nister to preach one Sermon, which a [...]ish Critick, or a Romish Bigot, may not [...]ily misconstrue, and pervert, to be an [...]enation of the peoples hearts, from the Kings [...]son, and Government. And of which as we [...]ve heard many late Examples in France, so [...] will be easie to draw them into president, [...]d to imitate them in England. I might add, [...]e observation of the ingenious Author of [...]e Reflections on his Majesties Proclamation for [...] Toleration in Scotland; namely, that where [...]s the King gives all assurance to his Scotts [...]ubjects, that he will not use invincible necessity [...]gainst any man, on the account of his per [...]uasion, he does thereby leave himself at a li [...]erty, of Dragooning, torturing, burning, and [...]oing the utmost violences, all these being [...]incible to a person of an ardent love to God, [...]nd of a lively faith in Jesus Christ; and which accordingly many thousands have been [...]riumphantly victorious over. Nor is it likely that this new and uncouth phrase of [...]ot using an invincible nec [...], would have found room in a Paper of that nature, if it had not been first to counceal some malicious, and mischievous design, and then to justify the consistency of its execution, with what is promised in the Proclamation. Moreover, were there that security intended by these two Royal Papers, that protestant Dissenters might safely rely upon; or did the King act with that sincerity, which he would delude his people into a belief of, there would then be a greater agreeableness than there is, betwixt the Declaration for liberty of Conscience in England, and the Proclamation for a Toleration in Scotland. The principle his Majesty pretends to act from, that Conscience ought not to be constrained, and that none ought to be persecuted for meer matters of Religion, would obliege him to act uniformly, and with an equal extention of favour to all his Subjects, whose principles are the same; and against whom he hath no exception, but in matters meerly Religious. Whereas the disparity of grace, kindness, and freedom, that is exercised in the Declaration, from that which is exerted in the Proclamation, plainly shews, that the whole is but a Trick of State, and done in s [...]bserviency to an end, which it is not yet seasonable to discover and avow. For his circumscribing the Toleration in Scotland, to such Presbyterians as he stiles moderate; is not only a taking it off from its true bottom, matters of meer Religion, and a founding it upon an internal quality of the mind, that is not discernable, but it implyes the reserving a liberty to himself of withdrawing the benefits of it from all Scots Dissenters, thro fastning upon them a contrary Character, whensoever it shall be seasonable to revive persecution. And even as it is now exerted to these moderate ones, it is attended with Restrictions, that his Indulgence in England is no ways clog'd with. All that the Declaration requires from those that are indulged, is that their Assemblies, be peaceably, openly, and publickly held, that all Persons be freely admitted to them, that they signify and make known to some Justice of the peace, what places they set apart for these uses; and that nothing be preached or taught amongst them, which may any ways tend to alienate the bear [...]s of the people from the King or his Government; whereas the Proclamation, not only restrains the meetings, of the Scots Presbyterians to private Houses, without allowing them either to build meeting Houses, or to use out-houses or Barns; but it prohibits the hearing any Ministers, save such as shall be willing to swear, that they shall to the utmost of their Power, assist, defend, and maintain the King, in the exercise of his Absolute power against all deadly. Nor is it difficult to assign the reason, of the difformity that appears in His Majesties present Actings, towards his dissenting Protestan [...] Subjects in those two Kingdoms. For should there be no Restriction upon the Toleration in Scotland, to hinder the greatest part of [Page] the Presbyterians from taking the advantage of it; the Bishops and Conforming Clergy would be immediately forsaken by the generality if not all the people, and so an [...]ssue would not only be put to the division among Protestants in that Kingdom, but they would become an united, and thereupon a formidable, Body against Popery, which it is not for the interest of the Roman Catholicks to suffer, or give way unto. Whereas the more unbounded the Liberty is, that is granted to Dissenters in England, the more are our divisions not only kept up, but increased and promoted, (especially thro this Freedom's arriving with them in an illegal way, without both the Authority of the Legislative Power, and the approbation of a great part of the People) it being infallibly certain, that there is a vast number of all ranks and conditions, who do prefer the abiding in the Communion of the Church of England, before the joining in fellowship with those of the Separate and dissenting Societies. Upon the whole, this different method of proceeding towards Dissenting Protestants in matters meerly Religious, shews that all this Indulgence, and Toleration, is a Trick to serve a present juncture of Affairs; and to advance a Popish and Arbitrary design; and that the Dissenters have no security for the continuance of their Liberty, but that when the Court and Jesuitick end, is compassed and obtained, there is another course to be steered towards them; and instead of their hearing any longer, of Liberty and Toleration, they are to be told, that it is the interest of the Government, and the safety, and honor of his Majesty, to have but one Religion in his Dominions, and that all must be Members of the Catholick Church, and this because the King will have it so, which is the Argument that hath been made use of in the making so many Converts in France. They who now suffer themselves to be deluded into a confidence in the Royal word, will not only come to understand what Mr. Coleman meant, in his telling Pere de la Chaise, that the Catholicks in England had a great work upon their hand, being about the extirpation [...] that Heresie, which hath born sway so long [...] this Northern part of the world; but they wi [...] also see and feel, how much of the desig [...] of Rome was represented in that passage [...] the Popes Nuncio's Letter dated at Bruxel [...] Aug. 9. 1674. wherein upon the confidenc [...] which they placed in the Duke of York, whic [...] is not lessened since he came to the Crown he takes the confidence to write, that the [...] hop'd speedily to see the total and final ruin [...] the Protestant Party.

And as Protestant Dissenters, have no secu▪ rity by the Declaration, and Proclamation, fo [...] the continuance of their Liberty, so the [...] that have by way of thanksgiving Addresse [...] to the King for those Royal Papers, have no [...] only acted very ill in reference both to the Laws and Rights of the Kingdoms, and of Religion in general, but they have carried very unwisely in relation to their own interest, and the avoiding the effects of that resentment, which most men are justly possessed with, upon the illegal Emission of these Arbitrary and Prerogative Papers. I shall not enter upon any long Discourse, concerning this new practice of Addressing in general, it having been done elsewhere some years ago, but I shall only briefly intimate, that it was never in fashion, unless either under a weak and precarious Government, or under one that took illegal courses, and pu [...]sued a different interest from that of the People and Community. As he who Ruleth according to the standing Laws of a Countrey, over which he is set, needs not seek for an Approbation of his Actions from a part of his Subjects; the Legality of his proceedings being the best Justification of him that Governs, and giving the truest Satisfaction to them that are Ruled; so he who enjoy's the love of all his people, needs not look for promises of being assisted, stood by and defended, by any one Party or Faction among them; there being none from whom he can have the least apprehension of opposition and danger. It was the want of a Legal Title in Oliver Crom [...]el, and his Son Richard to the Government, that first begot this [Page] [...]vice of Addressing, and brought it upon [...]e stage in these Brittish Nations; and it was [...]e Arbitrary procedures of the late King, as [...]is of his present Majesty, and their acting [...]on a distinct bottom from that of the three [...]ingdoms, that hath revived, and does con [...]nue it. Nor is there any thing, that hath [...]ndred those two Princes more contempti [...]e abroad, and proclaimed them weaker [...] home, than their recurring unto, and [...]lliciting, the flatteries and aid, of the [...]ercinacy, timorous, servile, and for low [...]nd personal ends byass'd part of their [...]ubjects, and thereby telling the World, [...]at neither the generality nor the most ho [...]orable of their People have been united in [...]heir Interest, nor approvers of the Coun [...]els that have been taken and pursued. And [...]f any thing did ever cast a dishonor upon [...]he English Nation, it hath been that loath [...]ome flattery, and slavish Sycophancy, wherewith the Addressers, both now, and [...]or some years past, have stuff't their ap [...]lications to the two Royal Brothers. The Thr [...]n [...] that is sustained and upheld by the Pillars of Law and Justice, needs not to [...]hew out unto its self other Supporsers, nor [...]lean upon the crooked and weak s [...]lts, of the insignificant, and for the most part de [...]ceitful as well as b [...]ib'd Vows, of a sort of men, who will be as ready upon the least disgust, to cry cruci [...]y to morrow, as they were for being gratified, may be in their [...]usts, humours, and revenges, and at the best in some separate concern, to cry Hosanna to day. I shall decline prosecuting what concerns the honor, or dishonor, of him, to whom the Adresses are made, or how politick, or impolitick, the countenancing and encouraging them is; and shall apply my self to this new set of Addressers, and endeavour to shew how foolish as well as criminally they have acted. Nor is it an argument either of their prudence or honesty, or of their acting with any consistency to themselves, that having so severely inveighed against the Addresses, that were in fashion a few years ago, and having fastned all the imputations and reproaches upon those that were accessory to them, which that rank of Addressers could be supposed to have deserved, they now espouse the practice which they had condemned, and in reference to as Arbitrary and an unjustifiable an Act of His present Majesty, as the most illegal one the late King was guilty of, or the worst exercise of prerogative, for which any here [...]ofore either commended, or promised to stand by him. For tho the matter and subject of the A [...]bitrary Act of him now upon the Tbrone, be not as to every branch of it so publickly scandalous, as some of the Arbitrary proceedings of the late King were, (as relating to a favour which mankind hath a just claim unto) yet it is every way as illegal, being in reference to a priviledg, which His Majesty hath no Authori [...]y to grant and bestow. And were it not that there are many Dissenters, who preserve themselves innocent at this juncture, and upon whom the temptation that is administred makes▪ no impression; the world would have just ground to say, that the Phanaticks are not governed by Principles, but that the measures they walk by, are what conduceth to their private and personal benefit, or what lyes in a tendency to their loss and prejudice. And that it was not the late Kings usurping, and exerting, an Arbitrary and illegal power, that offended them; but that they were not the Objects in whose favour it was exercised. 'Tis also an aggravation of their Folly as well as their Offer [...]c [...], that they should revive a practice which the Nation was grown asham'd of, and whereof they who had been guilry begun to repent, thro having seen that all the former Declarations, Assurances, and Promises of the Royal Brothers, which tempted to applications of that kind, were but so many juggles, peculiar to the late Breed of the Family, for the deceiving of mankind; and that never one of them was performed and made good. But the transgression, as well as the imprudence, of the present Addressers, is yet the greater, and they are the more [Page] criminal and inexcusable before God and men, in that they might have enjoyed all the benefits of the Kings Declaration, without acknowledging the Justice of the Authority by which it was granted, or making themselves the scorn and contempt of all that are truely honest and wise, by their servile Adulations, and their gratulatory Scribles unbecoming Englishmen and Protestants. They had no more to do, but to continue their meetings, as they had sometimes heretofore used to do, without taking notice that the present Suspension of the Laws, made their Assembling together more safe, and freed them from apprehension of fines and imprisonments. Nor could the King, how much soever displeased with such a conduct, have at this time ventured upon the expressing displeasure against them; seeing as that would have been both to have proclaimed his hypocrisie, in saying, that Conscience ought not to be constrained, nor people forced in matters of meer Religion, and a discovering the villanous design in subserviency to which the Declaration had been emitted; so it were not possible for him, after what he hath published, to single out the Dissenters from amongst other Protestants; and to fall upon all, before matters are more ripe for it, might be a means of the abortion of all his Popish Projections, and of saving the whole Reformed interest in Great Brittain. Neither would the Church of England men, have envied their tranquillity, or have blamed their carriage; but would have been glad that their Brethren had been eased from oppressions, and themselves delivered from the grievous and dishonorable task of prosecuting them, which they had formerly been forced unto by Court injunctions and commands. And as they would have by a Conduct of this nature had all the Freedom which they now enjoy, without the guilt and reproach which they have derived upon themselves by Addr [...]ssing; so such a carriage, would have wonderfully recommended them to the Favour of a true English Parliam [...] which tho it will see cause to condem [...] the Kings usurping a power of suspending t [...] Laws, and to make void his Declaratio [...] yet in gratitude to Dissenters for such a behaviour, as well as in pitty and compassio [...] to them as English Protestants, such a Parliament would not fail to do all it could to give them relief in a legal way. Where as if any thing enflame and exasperate t [...] Nation, to revive their sufferings, it wi [...] arise from a resentment of the unworth [...] and treacherous carriage of so many [...] them, in this critical and dangerous ju [...] cture. But the Terms, which thro their A [...] dressing, they have owned the receivi [...] their Liberty and Indulgence upon, does in peculiar manner enhance their guilt again [...] God, and their Countrey, and strangely ad [...] to the disgust and anger, which lovers [...] Religion, and the Laws of the Nation hav [...] conceived against them. For it is Hot onl [...] upon the acknowledgment of a preroga [...] in the King over the Laws, that they hav [...] received and now hold their Liberty; b [...] it is upon the condition, that nothing be preach [...] or taught amongst them that may any ways tend [...] alienate the hearts of the People from his Majesti [...] person and Government. He must be of an u [...] derstanding▪ very near allied unto, and approaching to that of an Irish man, who do [...] not know what the Court sense of that clau [...] is; and that his Majesty thereby intends, th [...] they are not to preach against Popery, nor t [...] set forth the Doctrines of the Romish Church i [...] terms that may prevent the peoples being i [...] [...]ected by them, much less in colours th [...] may render them hated and abhorred. T [...] accuse the Kings Religion of Idolatry, or [...] affirm the Church of Rome to be the Apoc [...] lyptick Babylon, and to represent the Articl [...] of the Tridentine Faith, as faithful Ministers [...] Christ ought to do; would be accounted a [...] alienating the hearts of their hearers from t [...] King and his Government; which as they [...] in the foresaid Clause required no [...] to do, [...] they have by their Addressing confessed t [...] Iustice of the Terms, and have undertaken [...] [Page] [...]old their liberty by that Tenor. And to give [...]em their due, they have been very faithful [...]itherto, in conforming to what the King [...]xacts, and in observing what themselves have [...]ented to the equity of. For notwithstan [...]ing all the danger from popery, that the Na [...]on is exposed unto, and all the hazard that [...]e Souls of men are in, of being poysoned [...]ith Romish principles; yet instead of prea [...]ing or writing against any of the Doctrines of [...]e Church of Rome, they have agreed among [...]emselves, and with such of their Congre [...]ations as approve their procedure, not so [...]uch as to mention them; but to leave the [...]rovince of defending our Religion, and of [...]etecting the falshood of papal Tenets, to the [...]astors and Gentlemen of the Church of Eng [...]nd. And being ask'd (as I know some of [...]em that have been) why they do not preach [...]gainst Antichrist, and confuse the papal Do [...]rines; they very gravely reply, that by prea [...]ing Christ, they preach against Antichrist; [...]nd that by Teaching the Gospel, they Re [...]te Popery; which is such a piece of fraudu [...]ent and guilful sub [...]erfuge, that I want words [...]o express the knavery and criminalness of it. What a reserve and change have I lived to see [...]n England, from what I beheld a few years [...]go. It was but the other day, that the Con [...]rmable Clergy were represented by some of [...]he Dissenters, not only as favourers of [...]opery, but as endeavouring to hale it in upon [...]s by all the methods and ways that lay within [...]heir circle; and yet now the whole defence of [...]e Reformed Religion must be entirely de [...]olved into their hands; and when all the [...]ces are pulled up, that had been made to [...]inder Popery from overflowing the Nation, [...]ey must be left alone, to stemm the inun [...]ation, and prevent the deluge. They among [...]e Fanaticks that boasted to be the most avo [...]ed and irreconcilable Enemies of the Church [...]f Rome, are not only become altogether si [...]ent, when they see the Kingdom pesterd with [...] swarm of busie and seducing Emissaries; but [...]e both turned Advocats for that Arbitrary [...]aper whereby we are surrendred as a prey [...]nto them, and do make it their business to detract from the reputation, and discourage the laboures of the National Ministers, who with a zeal becoming their Office, and a learning which deserves to be admired, have set themselves in opposition to that croaking fry, and have done enough by their excellent, and unimitable Writings to save people from being deluded and perverted, if either unanswerable consutations of Popery, or demonstrative Defences of the Articles and Doctrines of the Reformed Religion, can have any efficacy upon the minds of men. Among other fulsom flatteries adorning a Speach made to his Majesty by an Addressing Dissenter, I find this hypocritical and shameful adulation, namely, that if there should remain any seeds of disloyalty in any of his Subjects, the transcendent goodness exerted in his Declaration would mor [...]isie and kill them; to which he might have added with more truth, that the same transcendent goodness had almost destroyed all the seeds of their honesty, and mortied their care and concernment for the interest of Iesus Christ, and for the Reformed Religion. Their old strain of zealous preaching against the Idola [...]ry of Rome, and concerning the coming out of Babylon my people, are grown out of fashion with them in England, and are only reserved, and said by, to recommend them to the kindness, and acceptation of forraign Protestants, when their occasions and conveniencies draw them over to Amsterdam. Whosoever comes into their Assemblies, would think for any thing that he there hears delivered from their pulpits, that She which was the Whore of Babylon a few years ago, were now become a chast Spouse; and that what were heretofore the damnable Doctrines of Popery, were of late turned innocent and Harmless opinions. The Kings Declaration, would seem to have brought some of them to a melius inquirendum, and as they are already arrived to believe a Roman Catholick the best King, that they may in a little time come to esteem Papists for the best Christians. The keeping back nothing that is profitable to save such as hear them, and the declaring the whole Counsel of God; that are the Terms upon which they receiyed their [Page] Commission from Iesus Christ, and wherein they have Pauls practice and example for a pattern, would seem to be things under the Power of the Royal prerogative, and that the King may supercede them by the same Authority, by which he dispenses with the penal Statutes. Which as it is very agreeable unto, and imported in his Majesties Claim of being obeyed without reserve; so the owning this Absolute Power with that annex of challenged obedience, does acquit them from all obligations to the Laws of Christ, when they are found to interfere with what is required by the King. But whether Gods Power, or the Kings, be superior, and which of the two can cassate the others Laws, and whose wrath is most terrible; the judgment day will be able and sure to instruct them, if all means in this world prove insufficient for it. The Addressers know upon what conditions they hold their Liberty; and they have not only observed how several of the National Clergy have been treated for preaching against Popery; but they have heard how divers of the Reformed Ministers in France (before the general suppression) were dealt with, for speaking against their Monarchs Religion; and therefore they must be pardoned, if they carry so, as not to provoke his Majesty, tho in the mean time thro their [...] lence, they both betray the Cause of their Lord and Master, and are unfaithful to the Soules of those, of whom they have taken upon them the spiritual guidance. As for the Papers themselves that are stiled by the name of Addresses, I shall not meddle with them, being as to the greatest part of them, fitter to be exposed and ridicul'd, either for their dulness and pedantry, or for the adulation and sycophancy with which they are fulsomly stuff [...]; than to deserve any serious consideration, or to merit reflections that may prove instructive to Mankind. Only as that Address wherein his Majesty is thanked for his restoring God to his Empire over Conscience, deserveth a rebuke for its blasphemy; so that other which commends him for promising, to force the Parliament to ra [...]i [...]y his Declaration, (tho by the way all he says is, that he does not doubt of their concurrence, which yet his ill succ [...] upon the closetting of so many Member [...] and his since Dissolving that Parliament shews that there was some cause for the doub [...] ting of it) I say that other Address, merits severe Censure for its insolency against th [...] legislative Authority. And the Authors of [...] ought to be punished, for their crime com [...] mitted against the Liberty and Freedom [...] the two Houses, and for encouraging th [...] King to invade and subvert their most essen [...] tial and fundamental Priviledges, and withou [...] which, they can neither be a Council, Judi [...] cature, nor Lawgivers.

After all, I hope the Nation will be so in [...] genuous, as not to impute the miscarriages [...] some of the nonconformists, to the whole part [...] much less to ascribe them to the principles o [...] Dissenters. For as the points wherein the [...] differ from the Church of England, are purel [...] of another Nature, and which have no re [...] lation to Politicks, so the influence, that the [...] are adapted to have, upon men as member [...] of Civil Societies, is to make them in a specia [...] manner regardful, of the Rights, and Fran [...] chises, of the Community. But if some nei [...] ther understand the tendency of their ow [...] principles, nor are true and faithful unto them these things are the personal faults of thos [...] men, and are to be attributed to their ig [...] norance, or to their dishonesty; nor are thei [...] carriages to be counted the effects of thei [...] Religious Tenets, much less are others of the party to be involved under the reproach an [...] guilt of their imprudent and ill conduct [...] Which there is the more cause to acknow [...] ledg, because tho the Church of England, ha [...] all the reason of the World, to decline Addressing, in that all her legal Foundation, a [...] well as Security, is shaken by the Declaration yet there are some of her Dignitaries and C [...] gy, as well as divers of the Members of he [...] Communion, who upon motives of Ambition Covetousness, Fear, or Courtship, hav [...] enrolled themselves into the Li [...] of Addre [...] sers; and under pretence of giving thanks [...] the King, for his promise of protecting [...] Arch-Bishops, Bishops, and Clergy, and a [...][Page] [...]erof the Church of England in the free Exer [...] of their Religion, as by Law established; [...]ve cut the throat of their Mother, at [...]ose breasts they have suckt till they are [...]own fat, both by acknowledging the usur [...] prerogative upon which the King assumes [...] Right and Authority of Emitting the De [...]ration; and by exchanging the legal stand [...]g, and Security of their Church, into that [...]ecarious one of the Royal word, which [...]ey fly unto as the bottom of her Subsistence, [...]d trust to as the wall of her defence. And [...] most of the Members of the Separate So [...]ties, are free from all accession to Ad [...]essing, and the few that concurred were [...]eerly drawn in by the wheedle and impor [...]nity of their Preachers; so they who are [...] the chiefest Character, and greatest repu [...]tion for Wisdom and Learning among [...]e Ministers, have preserved themselves [...]om all folly and treachery of that kind. The Apostle tells us, that not many wise, not [...]any noble are called; which as it is verified [...] many of the Dissenting Addressers, so it [...]ay serve for some kind of Apology, for their [...]ow and sneaking, as well as for their in [...]iscret and imprudent behaviour in this mat [...]er. And it is the more venial in some of [...]hem, as being not only a means of ingra [...]iating themselves (as they phansie) with [...]he King, who heretofore had no very good [...]pinion of them; but as being both an easie [...]nd compendious method of Attoning for Offences against the Crown, of which they were strongly suspected; and a cheap and expenceless way of purchasing the pardon of their Relations, that had stood actually [...]ccused of high Treason. Nor is it to be doubted, but that as the King will retain very little favour and mercy for Fanaticks when once he has served his Ends upon them; so they will preserve as little kindness for the Papists, if they can but obtain relief in a legal way. And as there is not a people in the Kingdom, that will be more [...]oyal to Princes, while they continue so to govern, as that fealty by the Laws of God [...]or man remains due to them; so there are none of what principles or communion soever, upon whom the Kingdom it its whole interest come to ly at stake, may more assuredly and with greater confidence depend, than upon the generality of Dissenting Protestants, and especially upon those that are not of the Pastoral Order. The severities that the Dissenters lay under before, and their deliverance from oppression and disturbance now, seconded with the Kings expectation and demands of thanksgiving Addresses, were strong temptations upon men void of generosity and greatness of spirit, and who are withall of no great Political Wisdom, nor of prospect into the Consequences of Councils and tricks of State, to act as illegally, in their thanks, as His Majesty had done in his bounty. So that whatsoever animadversion they may deserve, should they be proceeded against, according to their demerit; yet it is to be hoped, that both they, and the Addressers of the former stamp, may all find room in an Act of Indemnity, and that the Mercy of the Nation towards them, will triump over and get the better of its Iustice. As it would argue a strange and judicial infatuation, should they proceed to farther excesses, and think to escape the punishment due to one Crime, by comitting and taking Sanctuary in another, thro improving their compliments into actions of treachery; so all their hope of pardon, as well as of lenity and moderation, from a true Protestant and rightly constituted Authority, depends upon their conduct and behaviour henceforward, and their not suffering themselves to be hurried, and deluded, into a co-operation with the Court, for the obtaining of a Popish Parliament. All their endeavours of that kind would but more clearly detect, and manifest, their treachery to Religion and the Kingdom, it not being in their power to ontvote the honest English part of the People, so as to help the King to such a House of Commons as he desires; and were it possible, that thro their assistance, in conjunction with violence and tricks used in Elections and Returns by the Court, such a [Page] [...]ouse of Commons might be obtained, as would be serviceable to Arbitrary and papal Ends; yet neither the King nor they, would be the ne [...]rer the compassing what is aimd at; it being demonstrable that the Majority of the House of Lords, are never to be wrought over to justify this illegal Declaration; or to grant the King a Power of Suspending Laws, at his pleasure; nor to give their Assent to a Bill for Repealing the Test Acts, and the Statutes that enjoin and require the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy. And if they should be so far left of God, and betrayd by those among themselves whom the Court hath gained, as to become guilty of so enormous an Act of folly and villany; and should the Election of the next Parliament, be the happy juncture they wait for, and the improving their interest, as well as the giving their own votes, for the Choice of Papists into the House of Commons, be what they mean by an essential proof of their Loyalty and of the sincerity of their humble See Mr. Alsops Speech to the King. Addresses, and that whereby they intend to demonstrate, that the greatest thing they have promised, is the least thing they will perform for his Majesties service and satisfation: as in that case, they will deserve to forfeit all hopes of bei [...] forgiven; so it would be an infidelity to Go [...] and Men, and a cruelty to our selves [...] our Posterity, not to abandon them as betray [...] of Religion; expunge them out of the Roll [...] Protestants; strip them of all that where [...] free Subjects have a Legal Right; and not [...] condemn them to the utmost punishment [...] which the Laws of the Kingdom adjudg th [...] worst of Traitors and Malefactors unto▪ There are some, who thro hating of them do wish their miscarrying and offending t [...] so unpardouable a degree, that they ma [...] hereafter be furnished with an advantage both of ruining them, and the whole Di [...] senting party for their sakes. But as the lov [...] that I bear unto them, and the perswasio [...] and belief I have of the truth of their Religious principles, do make me exceeding solic [...] tous to have them kept and prevented, from being hurried and transported into so fata [...] and criminal a behaviour; so I desire [...] make no other excuse for my plain dealin [...] towards them, but that of Solomon, who tell us, that faithful are the wounds of a friend, whi [...] the kisses of an Enemy are deceitful; and that h [...] who rebukes a man, shall find more favour afterwards, than he who flattereth with the tongu [...]

POSTSCRIPT.

SInce the fore-going Sheets went to the press, and while they were Printing off, there is come to my hands a new Proclamation Dated at Windsor the 28. of Iune 1687. for granting further Liberty in Scotland, and which was published there by an Order of the privy Council of that Kingdom bearing Date at Edinburgh the 5. of Iuly. This Super [...]tation of one Proclamation after another in reference to the same thing, is so apportio [...]ed and parallel to the late French method of Emitting Edicts in relation to those of the Reformed Religion in that Kingdom, that they seem to proceed out of one mint, to be calculated for the same End, and to be designed for the compassing and obtaining the like effects. For as soon as an Alarm was taken at the publishing of some unreasonable and rigorous Edict, there used often to follow another of a milder strain, which was pretended to be either for the moderating the severities of the former, or to remove [Page] [...]d rectify what they were pleased to call [...]isconstructions unduly put upon it; but [...]e true End whereof was only to stiffle and [...]tinguish the jealousies and apprehensions [...]at the other had begotten and excited, and [...]hich had they not been calmed and allayd, [...]ight have awakened the Protestants there [...] provide for their safety by a timely with [...]rawing into other Countries, if they had [...]ot been provoked to generous endeavoures [...]f preventing the final suppression of their [...]eligion, and for obviating the ruin which [...]at Court had projected against them and [...]as hastning to involve them under. Nor [...]es my suspition of his Majesties pursuing [...]e same design against Protestants, which [...]e great Louis glories to have accompli [...]ed, proceed meerly from that conjun [...]ion of Counsels that all the world observes [...]etween Whitehall and Versailles; nor meer [...] from the Kings abandoning his Nephew [...]nd Son in Law the Prince of Orange, and not [...] much as interposing to obtain satisfaction [...] be given him, for the many injuries, dam [...]ages, spoiles, and robberies, as well as [...]fronts done him by that haughty Monarch; [...]hen one vigorous application could not [...]il to effect it; nor yet meerly from that [...]greeableness in their procedures, thro the [...]ing of Englands imitating that forraign Po [...]ntate, and making the whole course that [...]ath been taken in France the Pattern of [...]ll his actings in Great Brittain; but I am [...]uch confirmed in my fears and jealousies [...]y remembring a passage in one of Mr. Cole [...]ans Letters, who as he very well knew what [...]e then Duke of York, had been for many [...]ears ingaged in, against our Religion and [...]ivil Liberties, and under what Vows and [...]romises he was, not to desist from prose [...]ting what had been resolved upon and un [...]ertaken; so he had the confidence to say [...]at his Masters design and that of the King of [...]ance, was one and the same; and that this [...]as no less, as he farther informs us than [...]e ex [...]pating the Northern Heresie. Had the [...]ing of England acted with sincerity from [...]at noble principle, that conscience ought not to be constrained, nor people forced in matters of meer Religion, as he would delude weak and easie people to believe; and had not all his Arbitrary and illegal proceedings in granting Liberty to Dissenting Protestants, been to subserve and promote other designes, which it is not yet seasonable and convenient to discover and avow; he would have then acted with that conformity to the Principle he professeth to be under the influence and Government of, and with that consonancy and harmonious agreeableness, in all the degrees of Indulgence, vouchsased to those of the Reformed Religion in England and Scotland, that differ from them of the established way, that there would have needed no second Proclamation apporting new measures of Liberty and favour to Scotts Dissenters, seeing they would have had it granted them at first in the same latitude and illimitedness, that it was bestowed upon the English nonconformists. But when Princes carry on and pursue mischievous designes, under the palliations of Religion, publick good, and the Right of Mankind; it comes often to pass thro adapting their methods to what they mean and intend, and not to what they pretend and give out, that their crafty projections, by being not sufficiently accommodated to their purposes, prove ineffectual to the compassing what was aim'd at; and this forceth them to a new game of falsehood and subtilety, but still under the old varnish and gloss, and obligeth them to have recourse to means that may be more proportioned than the former were, for their reaching the End that they ubtimately drive at. Thence it is that those Rulers, who are engaged in the prosecution of wicked and unjustifiable designes, are necessitated not only to apply themselves to opposite Methods towards different parties, and those such as must be suited and apportioned to their discrepant interests, without the accommodating of which they can neither hope to mould them to that tame and servile compliance, nor work them up to that active and vigorous abetting of their malicious and crasty projections [Page] as is necessary for the rendring them succesful; but they are forced to vary their proceedings towards one and the same Party, and that as well when the ways they have acted in towards them are found inadequate to the End unto which they were calculated, as when the mischief hid under them comes to be too soon discovered. This weak and short-sighted people fancy to arise from an uncertainty in Princes councels, and from their being at no consistency with themselves; but they who can penetrate into affairs and that do consider things more narrowly, can easily discern, that all this variation, diversity, and shifting of methods in Rulers actings, proceed from other causes, and that it is their stability and perseverance in an illegal and wicked design, that compels them to those crooked and contrary Courses, either for the gaining the unwary and ill applyed concurrence of their Subjects, to the hastning distress and desolation upon themselves, or for the throwing them into that lethargy, and under that supiness, as may hinder them from all endeavours of obstructing and diverting the evils, that their Governours are seeking to bring upon them. Nor is there a more certain indication, of a Princes being engaged in a design, contrary to the good and happiness of the Society, over which he is set; than his betaking himself to illegal ways, upon pretence of promoting the ease and benefit of his people; or according as he finds his Subjects to differ in their particular interests, his applying himself to them in methods, whereof the contrariety of the one to the other, renders them the more proper and adapted to ensnare the divided factions, thro accosting each of them with something that they are severally fond of. Legal means are always sufficient to the pursuing and compassing legal Ends: and whatsoever is for the general good of the Community, may either be obtained by courses, wherein the generallity find their united interest and common felicity, or else by application to a Parliament freely and duly chosen, which as it represents the whole politick Society, so there may be expected most compassion and tenderness, as well as wisdom and prudence, for redressing the grievances, easing the troubles, and providing for the benefit and safety of all that are wrapt up in and represented by them. And as every Prince, who sincerely seeks and pursues the advantage of his People, will so adjust and attemper all his actions towards them, that his whole carriage shall be uniform, and all the exercises of his Governing power, meet in the benefit of the Community, as so many lines from a circumserence uniting in their Centre; so there needs no other proof that these two or three late Actions of His Majesty, which a foolish sort of men are apt to interpret for favours, and to account them effects of compassion and kindness; are but to conceal his malice, and to subserve as well as cover some fatal and pernicious design, that he is carrying on against his Protestant Subjects, than that while he is gratifying a few of them in one thing, he is at the same time robbing all of them of many; and that while he is indulging the Dissenters with a Freedom from the penal Laws for matters of Religion, he is invading the properties, and subverting the Civil Rights of the three Nations, and changing the whole Constitution of the Government. He that strips us of what belongs unto us as we are English and Scotts men: cannot mean honestly in the savours he pretends to vouchsafe us as we are Christians; nor can he that is endeavouring to enslave our persons, and to subject our Estates to his Arbitrary lust and pleasure, intend any thing else by this kindness granted to Fanaticks in matters of Religion, than the dividing them from the rest of the People, in what concerns the Civil Interest and external happiness of the Community, and to render them an engaged Faction to assist and abet him in enthralling the Kingdoms. Whosoever considers the whole Tenor of his Majesties other Actings, in proroguing and dissolving Parliaments, when he finds them uncompliant with his [Page] [...]pish and despotical Ends; his keeping on [...]ot a formidable Ar [...], against all the [...]aws of the Land, and upon no other in [...]ention, but to maintain him in his Usurpa [...]ons over our Rights, and to awe us into [...]tame and servile submission to his Preroga [...]ve will; His filling all places of Judicature, [...]ith weak as well as Treacherous persons, who instead of administring Justice may be [...]he Instruments of Tyranny; his robbing men of their Estates, by judicial forms, and under [...]retence that nullum tempus occurris R [...]gi, after they have been quietly enjoyed by the Subjects for several hundred years; his advan [...]ing none to Civil or Military Employs, but whom he hath some confidence in, as to the finding them ready to execute his despotical [...]njunctions; and his esteeming no persons Loyal and faithful to himself, save those who [...]re willing to be [...]y their Countrey, and be Rebells and Traitors against the Legal Constitution: I say whosoever considers all this, and a great deal more of the same Hue and complexion, cannot imagine (unless he be under a judicial blindness and a strange insatuation) that any thing arriving from the King, tho it may be a matter wherein they may find their present ease and advantage should proceed from compassion and good will to his Protestant Subjects, but that it must be only in order to promote a distinct interest from that of his people, and for the better and more easie accomplishing of some wicked and unjustifiable design. And tho his Majesty would have us believe, that the reasons moving him to the Emission of this 2 [...] Proclamation, were the s [...]istruous Interpretations which either have, or may be made, of some Restrictions in his former; yet it is not difficult even without being of his privy Council, to assign a truer motive, and a more real and effectual cause of it. For as that of the 12th of February, came forth attended with so many limitations, not casie to be digested by men of wisdom or honesty, lest if it had been more unconfined and extensive, and should have opened a Door for all Scotts Dissenters to have gone in and taken the benefit of it, the generality of Protestants in that Kingdom, abstracting from the Bishops, Cura [...]es, and a few others, should have joined in the separate interest, and thereby have become an united Body against popery; but upon finding that hardly any would purchase their freedom from the penal laws, at so dear a rate, as to do things so unbecoming Men and Christians, as the conforming to the Terms therein prescribed obliged them unto; and that as they of the National Communion were alarm'd and disgusted, so few or none of the Dissenting fellowships were pleased; and that both were not only angry at the many illegal favours, and threatning advantages, bestowed upon the Papists, but were grown so sensible of the design carrying on against the Protestant Religion, and the liberties and priviledges of the Subject, that tho they could not renounce their respective tenets in the matters wherein they differed, yet they were willing to stifle their heats and animosities, and to give that encouragement, aid, and assistance to one another, as was necessary for their common safety: upon these considerations, his Majesty (if he would have spoken sincerely) ought to have said, that he had published this new Proclamation, in order to hinder Scots Protestants from uniting, for their mutual defence, against Turkish Tyranny, and Romish Idolatry, and in hopes thereby to continue and exasperate their undue and passionate heats, and to keep them not only in divided and opposit interests, but to make them contribute to the suppressing and ruining each other, or at least to look on unconcernedly, till he have ripened his designes against them both, and be prepared for extirpating the Reformed Religion, and for subverting the fundamental as well as Statute Laws, and for bringing such to the stake and Gibbet, as shall have the integrity to assert the one, or the courage to plead for the other. And yet in this last Proclamation, wherein he grants a more illimited freedom, than in the former, and promiseth to Protect all [Page]in the exercise of Their Protestant Religion, as he disdainfully and ignominiously calls it; there is a clause that may discourage all honest men from owning their Liberty to the Authority that bestows it, and from which it is derived and conveyed to them. For not being satisfied to superstruct his pretended Right, of Suspending, S [...]pping, and Disabling Laws, upon his Soveraign Authority and Prerogative Royal, but as knowing that these give no such pre-eminence and Iurisdiction over the Laws of the Kingdom, he is pleased to challeng unto himself an Absolute Power, as the source and spring of that exorbitant and Paramount Claim, which he therein exerciseth and exerts. And forasmuch as Absolute Power, imports his Majesties being loose and free from all ties and restraints, either by fundamental Stipulations, or superadded Laws; it is very natural to observe, that he allows the Government under which we were born, and to which we were sworn and stood bound, to be hereby subverted and changed, and that thereupon we are not only absolved and acquitted, from the Allegiance and fealty, we were formerly under to his Majesty, but are indispensably obliged by the [...]ies and engagements that are upon us, of maintaining and defending the Constitution and Government, to apply our selves to the use of all means and endeavours against him, as an Enemy of the people, and a subverter of the legal Government, wherein all the interest he had, or could lawfully claim, was an official Trust, and no [...] an Absolute [...] or a despo [...]icat Dominion, the first whereof he hath deposed a [...]d abdicated himself from, by challenging and usurping the latter. And should any Scots dissenter, either in his entrance upon the Liberty granted by this Proclamation, or in addressing by way of thankfulness for it, take the least notice of this freedom's flowing from the King, which cannot be done, without Recognising this Absolute Power in his Majesty as the fountain of it, he is to be lookt upon as the worst of Traitors, and deserves to be proceeded against both for his aecession unto, a [...] justifying the subversion of the Laws, Libe [...] ties, and Government of his Country, an [...] for betraying the Rights of all free-bor [...] men. For those few Reflections in th [...] fore going Sheets, which this New Proclamation may not only seem to render useless and frustrate the end whereunto they wer [...] intended, but may make the publishing an [...] animadversions upon that, which the Kin [...] by departing from, does himself Censure an [...] condemn, be esteemed both a faileur i [...] in genuity and candor, and a want of rega [...] to those Measures of Justice, which ough [...] to be observed towards all men, and mor [...] especially towards Crowned Heads; I shal [...] only say that as the Proclamation arrived wi [...] me too late, to hinder and prevent the communication of them to the publick; so I have this farther to add in justification o [...] their being published, that it will thereby appear, that what his Majesty stiles sinistruo [...] Interpretations made of some Restrictions mentioned in his former, are no other than the just, natural, genuine, and obvious constructions, which they ly open unto, and are capable of, and which a man cannot avoid fastning upon them, without renouncing all Sense and Reason. And while the King continues to disparage and asperse all sober and judicious Reflections upon that Royal Paper, by charging upon them the unjust and reproachful Character of sinistruous Interpretations; it is necessary as well as equal, that the whole matter should be pl [...]i [...]ly and impartially represented to the World, and that the [...] [...]be re [...]tted and l [...]t to the understanding and [...] ass' [...] part of mankind who are the calumniators and Slanderers, they who accuse the Proclamation of importing such principles, consequences, and tendencies, or he and his Ministers, who think they have avoided and answered the imputations fastned upon it, when they have loaded them with hard and uncivil terms. For tho he be pleased to assume to himself an Absolute Power, which all are bound to obey without reserve, and in the virtue of which [Page] [...]e Suspends, Stops, and Disables what Laws he [...]leaseth, yet I do not know but that his [...]ntellectuals being of the size of other mens, [...]nd that seeing neither his Soveraignity, [...]or Catholicalness, have vested in him an [...]nerrability, why we may not enter our [...]lea and demurr to the dictates of his Judgment, tho we know not how to withstand the efforts of his Power. Nor shall I sub [...]oin any more, save that whereas his Ma [...]esty Declares so many Laws to be disabled to [...]ll Intents and purposes, he ought to have remembred, that beside other intents and purposes that several of them may hereafter serve unto as the Papists may possibly come to have experience; there is one thing in reference to which, he cannot even at present, hinder & prevent their usefulness and efficacy, and that is not only their raising and exciting all just resentments in the minds of free-born and generous men, for his challenging a Power to Suspend and Cassate them, but their remaining and continuing Monuments of his Infidelity to the Trust reposed in him, of his departure from all promises made at and since his entring upon the Government, and of his invading and subverting all the Rules of the Constitution.

FINIS.

§

Pag. 4 col. 2. lin. 3. after Court put. ibid. lin. 41. r. knew. P. 5. col. 1. l. 3. r. account. ibid. l. 30. r. inpemperate. ibid. col. 2. l. 35. r. in. P. 6. col. 2. l. 18. aite [...] Order put. P. 7. col. 2. l, 39. for an [...]. as. P. 11. col. 1. l. 32. r. stirred up. ibid. l. penult. 1. judg. P. 25. col. 2. in the margin r. Rot. Parl. 7. Hen. 4. P. 31. col. 2. l. 11. r. obsole [...]e. P. 40. col. 1. l. 38. r. Promisee. P. 47. col. 1. l. 27. r. reverse.

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Information about this book

Title statement

A representation of the threatning dangers, impending over Protestants in Great Brittain With an account of the arbitrary and popish ends, unto which the declaration for liberty of conscience in England, and the proclamation for a toleration in Scotland, are designed.

Ferguson, Robert, d. 1714.

Edition statement

1687

Publication

Publisher

Text Creation Partnership,

Place of publication

Ann Arbor, MI ; Oxford (UK) :

Date

2004-11 (EEBO-TCP Phase 1).

ID [DLPS]

A70105

ID [STC]

Wing F756A

ID [STC]

ESTC R201502

ID [EEBO-CITATION]

99825137

ID [PROQUEST]

99825137

ID [VID]

29511

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Early English books online.

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(EEBO-TCP ; phase 1, no. A70105)

Transcribed from: (Early English Books Online ; image set 29511)

Images scanned from microfilm: (Early English books, 1641-1700 ; 1793:6)

Source

— A representation of the threatning dangers, impending over Protestants in Great Brittain With an account of the arbitrary and popish ends, unto which the declaration for liberty of conscience in England, and the proclamation for a toleration in Scotland, are designed., Ferguson, Robert, d. 1714..

Extent

[2], 54 p.

s.n.,. [Edinburgh :: 1687]. (By Robert Ferguson.) (Place and date of publication from Wing.) (Reproduction of the original in the Harvard University Library.)

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