IT is long since the Court of England, under the Authority of the late King and his Brother, was embarked in a design of subverting the Protestant Religion, and of introducing and establishing Popery. For the two Royal Brothers being in the time of their Exile seduced by the Caresles and importunities of their Mother, allured by the promises and favours of Popish Princes, and being wheedled by the Crafts and Arts of Priests and Jesuits, who are cunning to deceive, and knew how to prevail upon persons, that were but weakly established in the Doctrine, and wholly strangers to the practice and power of the Religion they were tempted from; they not only abjured the Re­formed Religion, and became reconciled to the Church of Rome, but by their exam­ple, and the influence which they had over those that depended upon them both for present subsistence and future hopes, they drew many that accompanied them in their Banishment, to renounce the Doctrine, Worship, and Communion of the Church of England, though in the War between Charles I. and the Parliament, they had pre­tended to fight for them in equal conjunction with the Prerogatives of the Crown. So that upon the Restoration in the year 1660. they were not only moulded and pre­pared themselves for promoting the desires of the Pope and his Emissaries, but they were furnished with a stock of Gentlemen out of whom they might have a supply of Instruments both in Parliament and elsewhere, to cooperate with, and under them, in the methods that should be judged most proper and subservient to the extirpation of Protestancy, and the bringing the Nation again into a servitude to the Triple Crown. And besides the Obligations, that the Principles of the Religion to which they had re­volted, laid them under for eradicating the Established Doctrine and Worship, they had bound themselves unto it, by all the promises and Oaths, which persons are capa­ble of having proscribed unto and exacted of them.

Nor can any Now disbelieve his late Majesties having lived and died a Papist, who hath either heard what he both said and did, when under the prospect of approaching death, and past hope of Acting a Part any longer on the present Stage, or who have seen and read the two Papers left in his Closet, which have been since published to the World, and attested for Authentick by the present King. And had we been so just to our selves, as to have examined the whole course of his Reign, both in his Alliances abroad, and his most important Counsels and Actions at home, or had we hearkned to the reports of those who knew him at Collen and in Flanders, we had been long ago convinced of what Religion he was. Nor were his many repeated protestations of his Zeal for Protestancy, but in order to delude the Nation, till insensibly as to us, and with safety to himself, he had overturned the Religion which he pretended to own, and had introduced that which he inveighed against. And while with the highest as­severations he disclaimed the being what he really was, and with most sacred and tre­mendous Oaths professed the being what he was not, his Religion might in the mean time have been traced through all the signal occurrences of his Government, and have been discerned written in Capital Letters, through all the material affairs wherein he was engaged from the day he ascended the Throne, till the hour he left the World. His entring into two Wars against the Dutch, without any provocation on their part, or ground on his, save their being a Protestant State; his being not only conscious un­to, but enterposing his commands, as well as encouragements, for the burning of London; his concurrence in all the parts of the Popish Plot, except that which the Jesuits, with a few others, were involved in against himself; his stifling that Conspi­racy, and delivering the Roman Catholicks from the dangers into which it had cast them; his being the Author of so many forged Plots, which he caused to be charged [Page 4] upon Protestants; his constant Confederacies with France, to the dissobliging his peo­ple, the betraying of Europe, the neglect of the Reformed in that Kingdom, and the encouraging the design carried on against them for their extirpation; his entail­ing the Duke of York upon the Nation, contrary to the desires and endeavours of three several Parliaments, and that not out of love to his Person, but affection to Po­pery, which he knew that Gentleman would introduce and establish: all these, besides many other things which might be named, were sufficient evidences of the late Kings Religion, and of the design he was ingaged in for the Subversion of ours. So that it would fill a sober person with amazement, to think that after all this there should be so many sincere Protestants and true Englishmen, who not only believed the late King to be of the Reformed Religion, but with an insatiableness thirsted after the blood of those that durst otherwise represent him. And had it not been for his receiving Ab­solution and Extreme Unction from a Popish Priest at his death, and for what he left in Writing in the two Papers found in his Strong Box, he would have still passed for a Prince who had lived and died a Cordial and Zealous Protestant, and whosoever had muttered any thing to the contrary, would have been branded for a Villian and an execrable person. But with what a scent and odour must it recommend his memory to them, to consider his having not only lived and died in the Communion of the Church of Rome, in contradiction to all his publick Speeches, solemn Declarations and high­est Asserverations to his people in Parliament, but his participating from time to time of the Sacrament, as Administred in the Church of England, while in the interim he had Abjured our Religion, stood reconciled to the Church of Rome, and had obliged himself by most sacred Vows and was endeavouring by all the Frauds and Arts imagi­nable to subvert the Established Doctrine and Worship, and set up Heresie and Idolatry in their room. And it must needs give them an abhorrent Idea and Character of Po­pery, and a loathsom representation of those trusted with the Conduct and Guidance of the Consciences of Men in the Roman Communion, that they should not only Dispence with, and indulge such Crimes and Villanies, but proclaim them sanctified and meritorious from the end which they are calculated for, and levelled at.

And for his dear Brother, and renowned Successor, who now possesseth the Throne, I suppose his most partial Admirers, who took him for a Prince, not only merci­ful in his Temper, and imbued with all gracious inclinations to our Laws, and the Rights of the Subject, but for one Orthodox in his Religion, and who would prove a Zealous Defender of the Doctrine, Worship, and Discipline of the Church as Esta­blished by Law; are by this time both undeceived, and filled with resentments for his having abused their credulity, deceived their exspectations, and reproached all their gloryings and boastings of him. For as it would be now the greatest affront they could put upon the King, to question his being of the Roman Communion, or to detract from his Zeal for the introduction of Popery, notwithstanding his own antecedent protestations, as well as the many Statutes in force for the preservation of the Reformed Religion; so I must take the liberty to tell them, that his A­postacy is not of so late a Date, as the World is made commonly to believe. For though it was many years concealed, and the contrary pretended and dis­sembled; yet it is most certain that he Abjured the Protestant Religion, soon after the Exilement of the Royal Family, and was reconciled to the Romish Church at St. Germains in France. Nor were several of the then suffering Bishops and Clergy ignorant of this, though they had neither the Integrity nor Courage to give the Nation and Church warning of it. And within these five years there was in the custody of a very worthy and honest Gentleman, a Letter written to the late Bishop of D [...]by a Dr. of Divinity, then attending upon the Royal Brothers, wherein [Page 5] the Apostacy of the then▪ Duke of York to the Sea of Rome is particularly related, and an account given how much the Duchess of Tremoville (who without being her self observed) had heard the Queen Mother glorying of it, bewailed it as a dishonor to the Royal Family, and as that which might prove of pernicious conse­quence to the Protestant Interest. But tho the old Queen privately rejoiced and tri­umphed in it, yet she knew too well what disadvantage it might be both to her Son, and to the Papal Cause in Great Britain, to have it at that season communicated and divulged. Thereupon it remained a Secret for many years, and by vertue of a Dispensa­tion, he sometimes joyned in all Ordinances with those of the Protestant Communion. But for allthe art, hypocrisie and sacrilege, by which it was endeavoured to be con­cealed, it might have been easily discerned, as manifesting it self in the whole course of his Actions. And at last his own zeal, the importunity of the Priests, and the cunning of the late King, prevailing over Reasons of State, he withdrew from all Acts of Fellowship with the Church of England. But neither that, nor his refusing the Test enjoyned by Law for distinguishing Papists from Protestants, tho thereupon he was forced both to resign his Office of Lord High Admiral, and to stand exclu­ded from the House of Lords; nor his declining the Oath which the Laws of Scot­land for the securing a Protestant Governor, enjoyn to be taken by the High Com­missioner; nor yet so many Parliaments having endeavoured to get him excluded from Succession to the Crown, upon the account of having revolted to the Sea of Rome, and thereby become dangerous to the established Religion, could make impression upon a willfully deluded and obstinate sort of Protestants, but in defiance of all means of Conviction, they would persuade themselves, that he was still a zealot for our Religion, and a grand Patriot of the Church of England. Nor could any thing undeceive them, till upon his Brothers death he had openly declared himself a Roman Ca­tholick, and afterwards in the fumes and raptures of his victory over the late Duke of Monmouth, had discovered and proclaimed his intentions of overthrowing both our Re­ligion and our Laws. Yea, so closely had some sealed up their Eyes against all Beams of Light, and hardened themselves against all evidences from Reason and Fact, that had it pleased the Almighty God to have prospered the Duke of Monmouth's Arms in the Summer 85. the present King would have gone off the State, with the reputation among them of a Prince tender of the Laws of the Kingdom, and who notwith­standing his own being a Papist, would have preserved the Reformed Religion, and have maintained the Church of England in all her Grandeur and Rights. And tho his whole life had been but one continued Conspiracy against our Civil Liberties and Privileges, he had left the Throne with the Character and under the Esteem of a Gentleman, that in the whole course of his Government would have regulated him­self by the Rules of the Constitution, and the Statutes of the Realm.

Now among all the Methods fallen upon by the Royal Brothers, for the under­mining and subverting our Religion and Laws, there is none that they have pursued with more ardor, and wherein they have been more succesful to the compassing of their designs, than in their dividing Protestants, and alienating their Affections, and imbittering their Minds from and against one another. And had not this lain under their prospect, and the means of effecting it appeared easie, they might have been Papists themselves, while in the mean time they had been dispensed with to pro­test and swear their being of the Reformed Religion, and they might have envied our Liberties, and bewailed their Restriction from Arbitrary and Despotical Power; but they never durst have entertained a thought of subverting the established Religion, or of altering the Civil Government, nor would they ever have had the bold­ness to have attempted the introducing and erecting Popery and Tyranny in their room. [Page 6] And whosoever should have put them upon reducing the Nation to the Church of Rome, or upon rendring the Monarchy unlimited and iudependent on the Law, would have been thought to have laid a snare for exposing the Papists to greater severities, than they were obnoxious unto before, and to have projected the robbing the Crown of the Prerogatives which belong unto it by the Rules of the Constitution, and to which it was so lately restored. And the despair of succeeding, would have rendred the Royal Brothers deaf to all importunities from Romish Emissaries, and Court Mini­ons. Neither the promises and Oaths which they had made and taken beyond Sea to introduce Popery, nor their ambition to advance themselves beyond the restraint of Laws, and the Controll of Parliaments, would have prevailed upon them to have en­countred the hazards and difficulties, which in case of the Union of English Prote­stants, must have attended and ensued upon attempts and endeavours of the one kind and of the other. Or should their beloved Popery, and their own be biggottedness in the Romish Superstition, have so far transported them beyond the bounds of wisdom and discretion, as to have appeared possessed with an intention of Subverting the Prote­stant Religion, and of enslaving the Nation to the Superstition and Idolatry of Rome, they would have been made soon to understand. That the Laws which make it Trea­son to own the jurisdiction of the Pope, or to seduce the meanest subject to the Church of Rome, were not enacted in vain, and that those as well as many more made for the security of the Protestant Religion, and to prevent the growth and introducti­on of Popery, were not to be dallied and plaid withal. Or should they have been so far infatuated and abandoned of all understanding, as out of a foolish and haughty affectation of being Absolute, to have attempted the alteration of the Civil Govern­ment, they would have been immediately and unanimously told, that the people have the same Right to their Liberties, that the King hath to the Prerogatives of the Crown. And if they would not have been contented with what belongs unto the Prince by the Common and Statute Laws of the Realm, but had invaded the Priviledges re­served unto the Subject: they would have been made to know, that they might not only be withstood in what they strove to Usurp contrary to Magna Charta, Petiti­on of Right, and other Laws of the Kingdom, but that thereby they forfeited, and might be disseized of what either appertained unto the Crown by fundamental A­greements, or hath been since settled upon the Monarch by Statute Laws. Nor could any thing have emboldned his late Majesty and the present King, to enterprises of the one kind or the other, but the prospect of begetting a misunderstanding, jealousie, and rancour among Protestants, and thereby both of making them instrumental to the ruin of one another, and contributary to the loss of English Liberty and the Reformed Religion, which they equally value and esteem, and to the setting up Popery and Tyranny, which the one detesteth and abhorreth no less than the other.

Though all English Protestants have ever been at an accord in all the Essentials and Vitals of Religion, yet from the very beginning of the Reformation, there have been differences among them concerning Ecclesiastical Government and Discipline, and about Forms, Rites, and Ceremonies of Worship. And had they consulted ei­ther their Duty to God, or the common interest of Religion, they might have found ways either for removing the occasions of them, or they ought to have lived together as Brethren, notwithstanding the differences which were among them in those things. But how much wiser are the Children of this World, than those of the Kingdom of God and of Jesus Christ. For though the differences amon the Pa­pists do far exceed ours, both in their number and in the importancy of those things wherein they disagree, yet they do mutually tolerate and bear with one another. The [Page 7] matters wherein they differ, are neither made the Terms of their Church Communi­on, nor the grounds of mutual Excommunications and Persecutions.

But alas! one party among us hath been always endeavouring to cut or stretch o­thers to their own size, and have made those things which themselves stile indiffe­rent, both the Qualifications for admission to the Pastoral Office, and the conditions of Fellowship in the Ordinances of the Gospel. Nor is it to be expressed, what ad­vantages were hereby administred all along to the Common Enemy, and what Suffer­ings Peaceable and Orthodox Christians were exposed unto from their peevish and an­gry Brethren. And tho these things, with the heats begotten among all, and the Ca­lamities undergone by one side, were not the cause of that funestous War betwixt Charles the First, and the Parliament, yet they were an occasion of diverting thousands from the side which the persecuting Church Men espoused, and of engaging them in the behalf of the two Houses, in the Quarrel which they begun and carried on against that Prince, for Defence of the Civil Liberties, Privileges, and Rights of the People. But some of the Mitred Clergy were so far from being made wise by their own and the Nations Sufferings, as upon their Restoration to hearken to moderate Counsels, and to decline their former Rigors and Severities, that they became the Tools and Instruments of the Court, not only far reviving, but for heightning and enflaming all the Differences, which had formerly been among English Protestants. For the Royal Brothers finding nothing more adapted and subservient than this, to their design of altering the Government, and subverting Religion, they animated those waspish and impolitick Ecclesiasticks, not only to pursue the Restoration of all those things which had given rise and occasion to former Dissentions and Persecu­tions, but to lay new snares for alienating many persons of unspotted lives and tender consciences from the Church, and of rendring them obnoxious to suffer in their Names, Persons, and Estates. And what a satisfaction was it to the late King and his Brother, to find the old Episcopal Clergy prepared through principles of revenge, as well as from love of domination, ambition, and covetousness to fall in with the de­sign not only of increasing Divisions among Protestants, both by making the con­ditions of entring upon the Pastoral Function narrower and for screwing conformity with the Church in her Forms and Ceremonies of Worship, into Tests for admis­sion to Magistracy and Civil Trusts, but of obtaining severer Laws against Dissenters, whereby the penalties to which they foresaw that people would become liable, were rendered greater than they had been before, and their Sufferings made more merciless, inhuman and barbarous.

For tho his late Majesty had by a Declaration dated at Breda, promised Indulgence to all Protestants that would live peaceably under the Civil Government; yet it was never in his thoughts to perform it, and the previous obligations which he was under to the Church of Rome, had a vertue to supercede and cancel his Engagements to English Hereticks. And all he intended by that Declaration was only to wheedle and Iull those into a tameness of admitting his Return into his Dominions, whom a jealousie of being afterwards persecuted for their Consciences, might have awa­kened to withstand and dispute it. And to give him his due, he never judged himself longer bound to the observation of Promises and Oaths made to his People, than until without hazard to his Person and Government he could violate and break them. Accordingly he was no sooner seated in the Throne of his Ancestors, and those whom he had been apprehensive of resistance and disturbance from, put out of capacity and condition of attempting any thing against him, but he thought himself discharged from every thing, that the Royal Word and Faith of a Prince [Page 8] had been pledged and laid to stake for in that Declaration, and from that day for­ward acted in direct opposition to all the parts and branches of it. For having soon after his return obtained a Parliament moulded and adapted both to his Arbitrary and Papish Ends, he immediately set all his Instruments at work for the procuring such Laws to be enacted, as might divide and weaken Protestants, and thereby make us not only the more easie a Prey to the Papists, but afford them an advantage through our Scuffles, of undermining our Religion with the less notice and observation. How such persons came to be chosen and to constitute the majority of the House of Com­mons, who by their actings have made themselves infamous and execrable to all ages, were a matter too large to penetrate at present into the reasons of: but that which my Theme conducts me to observe, is, that as they sacrificed the Treasure of the Nation to the profuseness and prodigality of the Prince, and our Rights and Liberties to his Ambition and arbitrary Will, so they both reintroduced and established those things which have been a means of dividing us, and by many severe and repeated Laws, they subjected a great number of industrious English Men and true Protestants, to Excommunications, Imprisonments, rigorous and multiplied Fines, and all this for matters only relating to their Consciences, and for their Obedience to God in the Or­dinances of his Worship and House. And notwithstanding the late Kings often pre­tended compassions to the Fanaticks, it will be hard to discern them, unless in ef­fects which proceed from very different and opposite principles. The distance which hekept them from his Person and favor; the influencing these members of both Houses that depended upon him, to be the Authors and Promoters of Severities against them; the enjoyning so often the Judges and Justices of Peace to execute the Laws upon them in their utmost Rigor; the instigating the Bishops and Ecclesiastical Courts, if at any time they relented in their prosecutions, to pursue them with fresh Citations and Censures; the arraigning them not only upon the Statutes made in­tentionally against Dissenters, but upon those that were originally and solely enacted against the Papists; these and other procedures of that nature are the only proofs and evidences which we can find, of the late Kings Bowels, Pity, and Tenderness to the Fanaticks. And whereas the weak Church-Men were imposed upon to believe, that all the Severity against the Nonconformists, was the Fruit of his Zeal for the Protestant Religion, and for the Security of the Worship and Discipline established by Law; they might have easily discovered, if passion, prejudice, wealth and honor, had not blinded them, that all this was calculated for ends perfectly de­structive to the Church, and inconsistent with the safety and happiness of all Pro­testants. For as his seeking oftner than once to have wriggled himself into a power of superceding and dispensing with those Laws, and suspending their Execution, plainly shews that he never intended the support and preservation of the Church by them; so his non-execution of the Laws against Papists, his con­niving at their encrease; his persuading those nearest unto him to reconcile them­selves to the Sea of Rome, as he did among others the late Duke of Monmouth; his countenancing the Roman Catholicks in their open and intolerable Insolencies, and his advancing them to the most gainful and important Places and Trusts, sufficiently de­clare that he never had any love to Protestants, or care of the Reformed Religion; but that all his designs were of a contrary tendency, and his fairest pretences for the pro­tection and grandeur of the Church of England adapted to other ends. Thus the Royal Brothers having obtained such Laws to be enacted whereby one party of Protestants was armed with means of oppressing and persecuting all others, neither the necessity of their affairs at any time since, nor the application and interposure of several Parlia­ments for removing the grounds of our Differences and Animosities by an indul­gence [Page 9] to be past into a Law, could prevail either upon his late Majesty or the present King to forego the advantage they had gotten of keeping us in mutual enmity & there­by of ministring to their projection of supplanting our religion, & of reestablishing the Faith, & Worship of the Church of Rome. Hereupon the last King not only refused to consent to such Bills as diverse late Parliaments had prepared for indulging Dissenters, & of bringing them into an union of Counsels, & conjunction of interest, with those of the Church of England, for resisting the conspiracies of the Papists against our legal Government & established Religion; but he rejected an address for suspending the exe­cution of the penal Laws against Fanaticks, which was offered & presented unto him by that very Parliament which had framed & enacted those cruel & villanous Laws.

And as the Royal Brothers have made it their constant business to Cherish a divi­sion & rancour among Protestants, and to provoke one party to persecute & ruine an other, so nothing could more naturally fall in with the design of Arbitrariness, or be more subservient to the betraying the Nation to Papal Idolatry & Jurisdiction. For severe penal Laws against a considerable Body of the people, do either expose them against whom they are enacted, to be destroyed by the Prince with whom the execu­tive power of the Law is trusted and deposited, or they prove a temptation to such as are obnoxious, of resigning themselves in such a manner to the will and pleasure of the Monarch, for the obtaining his connivency at their violation of the Laws, as is unsafe and dangerous for the common liberty, and good of the Kingdom. For in case the Su­pream Magistrate pursue an interest distinct from and destructive to that of his peo­ple, they who the Law hath made liable to be oppressed, are brought under induce­ments of becoming so many Partisans for abetting him in his designes, in hopes of be­ing thereupon protected from the penal Statutes, the execution whereof is committed to him. And as it is not agreeable to the wisdom & prudence which ought to be a­mong men, nor to the mercy & compassion which should be among Christians, for one party to surrender an other into the hands & power of the Soveraign to be im­poverished & ruined by him at his pleasure, especially when those whom they give up to be thus treated & entertained, are at agreement with them in all the Essentials of Religion, equally zealous as themselves for the Liberties of their Country, & who for sobriety in their lives, industry in their callings, & usefulness in the Common­wealth, are inferior to none of their Fellow Subjects: so it is obvious to any who give themselves leave to think, that the King would long ere this have been stated in the absoluteness that is aspired after, & both Church and State reduced to ly at the discretion of the Monarch, provided the Nonconformists, for procuring his favour in non-execution of the Laws, had suffered themselves to be prevailed upon, and drawn over to stand by and assist him in his Popish and Despotical Designs.

But those people, tho hated and maligned by their Brethren, rather than be found aiding the King in his usurpations over the Kingdom, have chosen to undergoe the ut­most calamities they could be made subject unto, either through the execution of those Laws which had been made against them, or through our Princes & their Mi­nisters wrecking their malice upon them in arbitrary and illegal methods. But what the Royal Brothers could not work the afflicted and persecuted side unto, they found the art to engage the other side in, tho not only excepted from all obnoxiousness to those Laws, but strenthened & supported by them. For as soon as the Court begun to despaire of prevailing upon the Fanaticks, to become their Tools & Instruments of enslaving the Nation, and of exalting the Monarchy to despotical absoluteness, they applyed to Some of the Church of England, whom by gratifying with a vi­gorous [Page 10] execution of the Laws upon Dissenters, they brought to abett, applaud, and ju­stify them, in all those counsels and ways which have reduced us into that miserable condition wherein we now are. The Clergy being advanced to grandure and opulency, things which many of them are fonder of, and loather to forego, than Religion and the Rights of the Nation, the Court made it their business to possess them with a belief, that unless the Fanaticks were suppressed and ruined, they could not enjoy with security their dignities and wealth. Whereupon not only the lesser Levites, but the superior Clergy having their lesson and cue given them from Whitehall and St James, fell upon pursuing the Nonconformists with Ecclesiastical punishments, and upon exciting and animating the Civil Officers against them. And under pretence of preserving and de­fending the Church, they gave themselves over to an implicit serving of the Court, and became not only Advocates but Instruments for the robbing of Corporations of their Charters, for imposing Sheriffs upon the City of London who had not been legally elected, and of fining and punishing men Arbitrarily for no crime, save the having asserted their own and the Nations Rights in modest and lawful ways. Posterity will hardly believe that so many of the prelatical Clergy, and so great a number of members of the Church of England, should from an enmity unto, and pretended jealousie of the Panaticks, have become Tools under the late King for justifying the Dissolution of so many Parliaments, the invasion made upon their priviledges, the ridiculing and stifling of the Popish plot, the shamming of forged Conspiracies upon Protestants, the condemning several to death for high Treason who could be rendred guilty by the Transgression of no known Law, and finally for advancing a Gentleman to the Throne, who had been engaged in a conjuration against Religion and the legal Government, and whom three several Parliaments would have therefore excluded from the Right of Suc­cession. And being seduced into an espousal of the Interests of the Court against Re­ligion, Parliaments, and the Nation, it is doleful to consider what Doctrines both from pulpit and press, were thereupon belched forth and divulged. Such as Monarchy's being a Government by divine Right; that it is in the Princes power to Rule as he pleaseth; that it is a grace and condescention in the King to give an account of what he does; that for Parliaments to direct or regulate the Succession borders upon Treason, and is an of­fence against the Law of Nature; and that the only thing left to subjects in case the King will Tyrannise over their Consciences, Persons & Estates, is tamely to suffer, and as they absurdly express it, to exercise passive obedience. So that by corrupting the minds & con­sciences of men with those pestilent and slavish Notions, they betrayed the Nation both to the mischiefs which have already overtaken us, & to what further we are yet threat­ned with. Nor did these Doctrines tend meerly to the fettering & enfeebling the Spirits of men, but they were a temptation to the Royal Brothers to put in execution what they had been so long contriving and travelling with, and were a kind of reprimanding them for being ignorant of their own Right and power, and for not exerting it with that vigour and expedition which they might. I do acknowledge that there were many both of the sacred order, and of the laick Communion of the Church of England, who were far from being infected with those brutish sentiments and opinions, and who were as zealous as any for having the Monarchy kept within its ancient limits; Parlia­ments maintained in their wonted Reverence and Authority; the subjects preserved in the enjoyment of their immemorial priviledges; and who were far from sacrificing our Religion and Laws to Popery & Arbitrariness, and from lulling us into a tameness and lethargy, in case the Court should attempt the abolishing the established Doctrin and Worship, and the subverting and changing the Civil Government. But alas! be­sides [Page 11] their being immediately branded with the name of conformable Fanaticks, and registred in the Kalender with those that stood precluded the Kings favour & merited his animadversion; their modesty was soon drownd and silenced in the loud noise of their clamorous Brethren, and their retiredness from conversation, while the others, frequented all places of society and publick concourse, deprived the Nation of the be­nefit of their example, and the happiness of their instructions. Not have I mentioned the extravagancies of any of the Ecclesiasticks and members of the Church of England, with a design either of reproaching and upbraiding them, or of provoking and exas­perating the Fanaticks to resentments, but only to shew how fatal our divisions have been unto us, what excesses they have occasioned our being hurried and transported into, and what mischievous improvement our enemies have made of them to the sup­planting and almost subverting of all that is valuable unto us as we are Englishmen, Christians, and Protestants.

And as our animosities through our Divisions gave the Court an advantage of sub­orning that party, which they pretended to befriend and uphold, into a ministration to all their Counsels and projections against our Religion and Laws; so by reason of the unnatural heats wherewith Protestants have been enflamed and enraged against Protestants, many weak, ungrounded, and unstable Souls, have been tempted to que­stion the truth of our Religion, and to apostatise to the Church of Rome, and there­upon have become united in inclination, power, and endeavours with the Court and our old Enemies the Papists, for the exstirpation of protestancy and the alteration of the Government. As it hath been matter of offence and scandal to all Men, so it hath been ground of stumbling and falling unto many, to see those who are professedly of the same Religion, to be mutually embittered against one another, and so far tran­sported with malice and rage, as to seek and pursue each others destruction. For such a carriage and behaviour are so contrary to the spirit an principles of Christianity, and to the genius and temper of true Religion, that it is no mervaile, if persons igno­rant of the holy Scriptures, and strangers to the converting and comforting vertue of the Doctrine of the Gospel asserted in our Confessions, and insisted upon by our Di­vines; should suspect the Orthodoxy of that Religion which is accompanied with so bitter fruits, even in the Dispensers of the word as well as in others, and betake them­selves to the Communion of that Church, where how many and important soever their differences be one with an other, yet they do not break forth into those flames of excommunicating and persecuting each other; that ours have done. How have some among us through having their spirits fretted and exasperated by the craft and cun­ning of our Enemies, not only loaded and stigmatised their Bretheren and Fellow Pro­testants with crimes and Names, which were they true and deserved, would justly render us a loathing and an abomination to mankind, but have libelled and branded those whom God had honored to be instruments of the Reformation, with appella­tions and characters fit to beget a detestation of their Doctrine, as well as their Me­mory. The worst that the Papists have forged and vomited out against Luther Zwin­glius, Calvin &c. hath been raked up and repeated to the disparagment of the Refor­mation, and to the scandalising the minds of weak men against it. And as the Jesuites and Priests have improved those slanders and calumnies to the seduction of diverse from the Church of England, and to a working them over to a Reconciliation with the Church of Rome; so the Court hath there by had an increase of their Faction and party against our Religion aud Liberties, and have been inabled to muster Troops of Janisaries for their Despotical and unlimited claim.

[Page 12] Nor have our Divisions with the heats, animosities, revilings, & persecutions that have ensued thereupon, proved only an occasion of the seduction of several from our Religion, and of their Apostacy to Popery, but they have been a main spring & force of the debauchery, irreligion and Atheisme, which have overspread the Nation, & have brought so many both to an indifferency and unconcernedness for the Gospel and all that is vertuous and noble, and have disposed them to fall in with those that could countenance and protect them in their impiety and prophaneness, & feed their luxury and pride with honor and gain. What a woful scheme of Religion have we afforded the world, and how shamefully have we painted forth and represented the holy Do­ctrin of the blessed Jesus, while we have not only lived in a direct opposition to all the commands of meekness, love and mutual forbearance, which our Religion lays us un­der the Authority off, but have neglected to practice good manners, to observe the rules of Civility, to treat one another with common humanity & to do as we would be done unto. While we have been more offended at what seemed to supplant our Domi­nations & Grandures than at what dishonor'd God & reproached the Gospel; while we weighd not so much whether they whom we took into our sacred Communion as well as into our personal friendship, were conformable in their lives to the Scripture, as whether they comply'd with the Canons of the Church; while we reprobated all that were not of our way, tho never so vertuous & devout, and sainted all that were, tho ne­ver so wicked & prophane; while we branded such for Fanaticks, whom we could just­ly charge with nothing, save the not admiting that into Religion which came not from the divine Author of it, & hugged those for good and orthodox believers, that would sooner consult the Statute Book for their practice in the Worship of God, than the Bible; while we haled those to prison & spoiled them of their Estates, to whom no­thing could be objected except their being too precise and conscientious in avoiding that through fear & apprehension of sinning, which others had a liberty & latitude to do as judging it lawful, and in the mean time esteemed those worthy of the chiefest Trusts in the Church & commonwealth, whose folly & villanies made them unfit for civil Societies; while they who lived most agreeably to the Laws of God, & the ex­ample of Christ, were persecuted as Enemies to Religion and the pests of the Kingdom, and in the interim too many of the very Clergy were not only countenancers of the most profligate persons as their best friends, but joined and assisted in scandalous de­baucheries, under pretence of sustaining the honor of their Tribe, & doing service to the Church. I say while these were unhappy but too obvious fruits of our Divisions & of the bitter heats that accompanied them, how was the reverence for the sacred Order lessened & diminished, the veneration for Religion weakned and lost, the shame & dread of appearing profane & wicked removed and banished, & such who took the measures of Chistianity from the practices of those that were stiled Christians, rather than from the immaculate and holy Scriptures, tempted to think all Religion a juggle, & priesthood but an artifice & craft to compass honor & wealth. And tho nothing but a shortness of understanding, and an immoderate love to their lusts, could occasion the drawing such a conclusion from foregoing premisses, yet I must needs grant that there was too just ground administr'd to them of saying that many did not believe that themselves, the Faith whereof they recommended to others. But that which I would more particularly observe, is, that it is from among those who by the foregoing occasion have been tempted to debauchery & irreligion, that the Romish Emissaries have made the harvest of proselytes & converts to the Church of Rome. For as they who fear not God, will be easily brought to imitate Caesar, & such who are of no Religion, will [Page 13] in subserviency to secular ends assume the mask and profession of any; so Popery is extreamly adapted to the wishes and desires of wicked and profane men, in that it provides for their living as enormously as they please here, & flatters them with hopes & assurances of blessedness hereafter. They who can be ascertained of going to Hea­ven upon the confessing their sins to a Priest, and their receiving Absolution, the En­charist and Extreme Unction, need not look after Repentance toward God, Conver­sion to holiness, nor a life, of Faith, Love, Mortification, and Obedience, which the Protestant Religion, upon the Authority of the Gospel obligeth them unto, in or­der to the obtaining of eternal happiness. And as the late Apostates to Popery in England, are chiefly such who were Notorious for loosness, prophaness and immo­rality, and were the scandal of our Religion while they professed it, and while in our Church were not properly of it, so it from among men of this stamp & character that his late Majesty and the present King have found persons assisting and subservient to their Despotical and Arbitrary designs. For whosoever takes a survey of the Court Fa­ction, & considereth who have been the Advocates for encroachments upon our Liber­ties, and abetters of usurpation over our Right, they will find them to have been prin­cipally the profligate and debauched among the Nobility and Gentry, the Mercenary, ignorant & scandalous among the Clergy, the offscouring and such as are an ignominy to humane Nature among the yeomanry and pesants. And it was in order to this vil­lanous End, that the Royal Brothers have endeavoured so industriously to debauch the Nation, & have made sensuality & profaneness the qualifications for preferment, & the badges of Loyalty. And if among those that appear for the preservation of the Liberties of their Country, there be any that deserve to be stiled Enemies to Religion and vertue, as I dare affirm that they owe their immoralities to Court Education, Converse & Example, so I hope that though they have not hitherto been all of them so happy as to have left their vices where they learned them, yet that they will not continue to disparage the good cause which they have espoused with an unsuitable life, nor give their Adversaries reason to say, that while they pretend to seek the Refor­mation of the State, they are both the deriders of sobriety & virtue, without which no Constitution can long subsist, & guilty of such horrid Oaths, Cursing, imprecations, blasphemies and uncleanesses, which naturally as well as morally and meritously dis­pose Nations to subversion and Extirpation.

Finally being through the bitter effects which have ensued upon our Divisions, made apprehensive & jealous one of another, it hath from there come to pass, that while the care of the Conformists hath been to watch against the grouth of the Dissenters, & the solicitude of the Nonconformists hath been how to prevert the rage of the Bigotted Church men, the Papists in the mean time without being headed or observ'd have both incredibly multiplied, & made considerable advances in their designs of ruining us. For whensoever the Court was to take a signal step towards Popery & Arbitrary pow­er, there was a clamor raised of some menacing boldness of the Fanaticks. And if the Nation grew at any time alarm'd, by reason of the favor shewn to Roman Catholicks, & of some visible progress made towards the Kings becoming Despotical, all was im­mediatly husht with a shout and cry of the Government and Churches being in emi­nent hazard from the Dissenters. Yea whensoever the Papists & their Royal Patrens stood detected of having been conspiring against our Religion & Civil Liberties, all was diverted & stiffled by putting the Kingdom upon a false scent, and by hounding out their Beagles upon the Nonconformists. So that the eyes & minds of Protestants being employed in reference to what was to be apprehended & feared from one ano­other, [Page 14] the workings of our Popish Enemies either escaped our observation, or were heeded by most only with a superficial and unaffective glance. And while our Church men stood prepossessed by the Court with a dread and jealousie of the Fanaticks, all that was said and written of a Conspiracy carried on by the Papists against our Laws and Religion, was entertained and represented by the prejudiced Clergy, as an Arti­fice only of the Dissenters for compassing an Indulgence from the Parliament, which in case such a plot had obtained the belief that a matter of so great danger and conse­quence required, would have been easily granted, being the only rational expedient for the preservation of the established Religion and the legal Government. Nor did our Enemies question but that having enflamed our Divisions and raised our Animosities to so great a height, rather than the one party would lay aside their severities, and the other let fall their resentments, we would even be contented to lye at their mercy, and submit our selves to the pleasure and discretion of the Court and Papists. And there have not wanted some peevish, foolish, and ill men of both parties, who rather than sacrifice their spleen and passion, and abandon their particular Quarrels for the interest and safety of the whole, would be inclined to expose the Protestant Religion and En­glish Liberties, to the hazards wherewith they are apparently threatned, and to suffer all extremities, meerly to have the satisfaction of seeing those whom they respectively hate, involved with them under the same miseries. But as this is such a degree of madness and infatuation, as can proceed from nothing but brutish rage, and argues no less than a Divine Nemesis; so I hope they are but few that stand infected with these passionate sentiments and inclinations, and remain thus hardned in their mutual prejudices. And to those I have nothing to say, nor the least advice to administer, but shall leave them to their own follies, as persons to whose conviction no Discourse tho never so rational can be adapted, and whom only stripes can work upon.

'Tis to such therefore as are capable of hearkning to Reason, & who are ready to em­brace any Counsel that shall be found adjusted to the Common Interest, that I am to address what remains to be represented and said in the following leaves. For all parties of Protestants having seen, how far our Enemies have improved our divisions and ran­cours to the compassing their wicked and ambitious designs, and the robbing us of all, that good & generous men account valuable, they are at last convinced of the necessity we are reduced unto, of altering the measures of our acting towards one another, and both of laying aside our persecutions, and of exchanging our wranglings among our selves, into a joint contending for the Faith of the Gospel, & the Rights of the Nation. For what the Gentleman now in the Throne intends and aims at, is not any longer mat­ter of meer suspicion & jealousie, but of demonstrable evidence & unquestionable cer­tainty. His mask & vizor of zeal for the preservation of the Church of England, and of tender regard for the Laws of the Land are laid by & put off, and his resolutions of Governing arbitiarily, & of introducing Popery, are become obvious to all men whom Reason and sense have not forseken & left. The Papists whom it was thought much a while ago to see connived at in the exercise of their Worship in private Houses, are allowed now to practice their Idolatry openly in our chief Towns, and in the Metro­politan City of the neighboring Kingdom to usurp the publick Churches & Cathedarals. Those Catholick Gentlemen whom heretofore it was matter of surprise, to see coun­tenanced with the private favor of the Prince, are now advanced to the supream Com­mands in the Army, & the principal Trust in Civil affairs. The Recusant Lords whose enlargement out of the Tower, we could not but look upon as an unpresidented viola­tion both of Laws of the Land & of the Rights & jurisdiction of Parliament, being [Page 15] committed thither by the Authority of the House of Lords upon a charge & Impeach­ment of high Treason by the Commons of England in Parliament assembled, are now honored to be members of the privy Council, and exalted to be chief Ministers of State. They whom the Statutes of the Realm make subject to the severest penalties for Apostacy to Rome, are not only protected from the edge of the Law, but maintained in Parochial Incumbencies & Headships of Colledges. Our Orthodox Clergy are not only inhibited to preach against Popery, but are illegally reprimanded, silenced, & suspended, for discharching that duty, which their Consciences, Offices, Oaths, and the Laws of the Kingdom oblige them unto. And such whom neither the Ecclesiastical nor Westminster Courts, can arraign & proceed against, we have a new Court of Inquisition erected for the adjudging & punishing of them. So that it is not the Fanaticks who are the only persons to be stuck at and ruined, but the Conformists are to be treated after the same manner, and to share in the common lot whereunto all honest & sincere Protestants are destined & designed. Even they who were the darlings of Whitehall & St. Iames's, & recompenced with Honors and Titles for betraying the Rights and Priviledges of Corporations, persecuting Dissenters, & heading Addresses, wherein Par­liaments were reproached, the Course of Justice against Popish Offenders was slander­ed, the illegal & arbitrary procedures of the Court applauded and justified, & all that were zealous for our Laws and Liberties stigmatised with the names of Villains and Traitors, are now themselves, for but discouraging Popish Assemblies & attempting to put the Laws in execution against Priests who had publickly celebrated Mass, not only checkt and rebuked, but punished with seisure and imprisonment. Nor are our Religion and Civil Liberties meerly supplanted and undermined by illegal Tricks glos­sed over with the varnish of judicial Forms, but they are assaulted & battered in the face of the Sun, without so much as a palliation to give their procedures a plausible fi­gure. And the King being brought to a despair of managing the Parliament to his bare­faced purposes of Popery & Arbitrariness, & of prevailing with them to establish Tyranny & Idolatry by Law, notwithstanding their having been as industriously packt & chosen to answer such a design▪ as art, bribery & Authority could reach, & notwith­standing their having been obsequious in their first Session to an excess that hath prov­ed unsafe to themselves & the Nation, he seems resolvd not to allow them to meet any more, but to set up a la mode de France, and to have his personal Commands, seconded with the assent of his durante beueplacito judges to be acknowledged and obeyed for Laws. So that they who were formerly seduced into a good opinion of him, are not only undeceived, but provoked to warm resentments for having had their credulity & easmess of belief so grosly abused. And as the converting so vast a number of well meaning but wofully deluded people, who had suffered themselves to be hoodwinked and fatally hurried to betray their Religion, Country, & Posterity, to the Ambition & Popish Bigottry of the Court, was a design becoming the Compassion, Mercy and Wisdom of God; so the methods & means whereby they are come to be enlightned & proselyted, are a signal vindication of the Sapience & Righteousness of God in all these tremendous steps of his providence, by which our Enemies have been emboldned to detect & discover themselves. For tho their continuing so long to have a good opinion of the present King, and their abetting him so far in the undermining our Religion and invading our Liberties, may seem to have proceeded not so much from their ignorance is from their obstinacy & malice; yet God who penetrates into the hearts of men, may have discovered some degrees of sincerity in their pretensions & carriages tho accom­panied with a great deal of folly & unmanliness. Nor are the Lords ways like to outs, [Page 16] to give persons over us unteachable and irreclaimable, upon their withstanding every measure of light, and the resisting even those means which were sufficient and proper for their conviction; but he will try them by new and extraordinary methods, & see whether feeling & doleful experience may not convert those, upon whom arguments and moral evidence could make no impressions. And their being among those for­merly missed and deluded Protestants, many who retained a love for their Country, a care for their posterity, and a zeal for the Gospel and Reformed Religion, even when their actions imported the contrary, & seem'd to betray them; the singling and weed­ing out such from among the Court Faction & party, is a compensation both for the defeatment of all endeavours for the prevention of the evils that have overtaken us, & for the distresses & calamities under which we do at present lye & groan. And if there be joy in Heaven upon the conversion of a Sinner, with that thankfulness to God, & joy in themselves, should they who have so many years wrestled against the encreach­ments of Popery & Arbitrariness, & who have deeply suffered in their Names, Per­sons and Estates upon that account, welcome & embrace their once erring & misled but now enlightned, reclaimed and converted Brethren. And instead of remembring or upbraiding them with the opposition and rancour▪ which they expressed against our persons, principles, & ways, let there be no language heard from us, but what may declare the joy we have in our selves for their conversion, and the entire trust & con­fidence which we put in them. For tho as to many things which might have been hin­dred, had they not been lulled into deep delusions, they may seem born out of due time, yet there is season enough left both for giving obstruction to what we are farther threatned with, & for recovering out of the jaws of the Enemy what he thinks he hath irretrievably swallowed and devoured.

The first duty incumbent therefore upon Dissenters towards those of the Church of England, is to believe that notwithstanding there having been many of them so long Advocates & Partizans for the Court through ignorance of what was aimed at & in­tended, they are nevertheless as really concerned as any others, and as truly zealous for the preservation of the Protestant Religion, & for maintaining the legal Rights & Liberties of the Subject, & when occasion shall offer will approve themselves accord­ingly. 'Tis a ridiculous as well as a mischievous fancie, for one party to confine all Religion only to themselves, or to circumscribe all the ancient English ardor for the common Rights of the Nation to such as are of their particular Fellowship & persuasi­on, there being sincere Christians, & true Englishmen among those of all judgments, & societies of Protestants, & among none more than those of the Communion of the Church of England. It were the height of wickedness as well as the most prodigious folly, to imagine that the Conformists have abandoned all fidelity to God. & cast off all care of themselves and their Country, upon a mistaken iudgment of being Loyal & obedient to the King. They know as well as any, that the giving to Cesar the things that are Cesars, lays them under no obligation of surrendring unto him the things that are Gods, nor of sacrificing unto the will of the Soveraign the priviledges reserved unto the people by the Fundamental Rules of the Constitution, [...]d by the Statutes of the Realm. And they understand as well as others, that the Laws of the Land are the only measures of the Princes Authority and of the Subjects Fealty, and where they give him no Right to command, they lay them under no tye to obey. And tho here & there a Dissenter have written against Popery with good success, yet they have been mostly conformable Divines who have triumphed over it in elaborate Discour­ses, and who have beaten the Romish Scriblers off the Stage. Nor can it be thought [Page 17] that they who have so accurately related and vindicated the History, and asserted an desended the Doctrine of the Reformation, should either tamely relinquish, or be wanting in all due and legal ways to uphold and maintain it. And tho one or two Fanaticks have with sufficient strength and applause brandished their pens against Arbitrariness and in detecting the Designs of the Royal Brothers, yet they who have generally and with greatest honor appeared for our Laws and Legal Government a­gainst the Invasions and Usurpations of the Court, have been Theologues and Gentle­men of the Church of England. Nor in case of further attempts for altering the Constitution and enslaving the Nation, will they shew themselves unworthy the having descended from Ancestors, whose Motto in the high places of the Field was Nolumus leges Angliae mutari. They who have so often justified the Arms of the u­nited Netherlands against their Rightful Princes the Kings of Spain, and so unan­swerably vindicated their casting off Obedience to those Monarchs, when they had invaded their Priviledges, and attempted to establish the Inquisition over them, cannot be ignorant what their own Right and Duty is in behalf of the Protestant Religion and English Libertles; for the security whereof, we have not only so ma­ny Laws, but the Coronation Oaths and Stipulations of our Kings. And those Gentlemen of the Church of England, who appeared so vigorously in three Parlia­ments for excluding the Duke of York, from the Succession to the Crown, by reason of a jealousie of what, through being a Papist, he would attempt against our Reli­gion and Priviledges, in case he were suffered to ascend the Throne; cannot be now to seek what becomes them towards him, tho actually Regnant, having seen and felt what before they only apprehended and feared. For if the Law that en­talleth the Succession upon the next of Kin, and obligeth the Subjects to admit and receive him, not only may but ought to be dispensed with, in case the Heir, through having imbib'd Principles which threaten the safety, and are inconsistent with the happiness of the People, hath made himself incapable to inherit; we know by a short Ratiocination how far we stand bound to a Prince on the Throne, who by transgressing against the Laws of the Constitution, hath abdicated himself from the Government, and stands virtually deposed. For whosoever shall offer to Rule arbi­trarily, does immediately cease to be King de jure, seeing by the Fundamental, Common and Stature Laws of the Realm, we know none for Supream Magistrate and Governor, but a limited Prince, and one who stands circumscribed and bounded in his Power and Prerogative. And should the Dissenters entertain a belief that the Conformists are less concerned and zealous than themselves for the Prote­stant Religion and Laws of the Kingdom, they would not only sin and offend a­gainst the Rules of Charity, but against the measures of Justice, and daily Evi­dences from matters of Fact. For neither they not we owe our Conversion to God, and our practical holiness to the Opinions about Discipline, Forms of Worship, and Ceremonies, wherein we differ, but to the Doctrines of Faith and Christian Obedience, wherein we agree. 'Tis not their being for a Liturgy, a Surprize, or a Bishop, that hath heretofore Influenced them to subserve the Court in Designs tending to Absoluteness, but they were seduced unto it upon Motives whereof they are now ashamed, and the ridiculousness and folly of which they have at last dis­covered. Nor is the multitude of profligate and scandalous persons with which the Church of England is crowded, any just impeachment of the purity of her Do­ctrine in the Vitals and Essentials of Religion, or of the Virtue and Piety of many of her Members. For as it is her being the only Society established by Law that attracts those Vermin to her Bosom, so it is her being restrained by Law from de­barring them, that keeps them there to her reproach, and to the grief of many [Page 18] of many of her Ecclesiasticls. Neither is it the fault of the Church of England, that the Agents and Factors for Popery and Arbitrary Power, have chosen to pass under the name of her Sons; but it proceeds partly from their Malice, as hoping by that means to disgrace her with all true Englishmen, as well as with Dissenters, and partly from their Craft, in order thereby the better to conceal their Design, and to shrowd themselves from the Censure and Punishment, which had it not been for that Mask▪ they would have been exposed unto, and have undergone. And I dare affirm, that besides the Obligations from Religion, which the Conform­ists are equa [...]ly under with Dissenters, for hindering the introduction of Popery, there are several inducements from Interest, which sway them to prevent its establish­ment, wherein the Fanaticks are but little concerned. For tho Popery would be alike afflictive to the Consciences of Protestants of all Perswasions, yet they are Gentlemen and Ministers of the Church of England, whose Livings, Revenues, and Estates are threatened in e [...]se it come to be established. Nor wou'd the most Loyal and Obsequious Levites, provided they resolve to continue Protestants, be willing that their Parsonages and Incumbencies, to which they have no less Right by Law, than the King hath to the Excise and Customs, should be taken from them and bestowed upon Romish Priests, by an Act of Dispotical Power, and of unlimited Prerogative. And for the Gentlemen, as I think sew of them would hold them­selves obliged to part with their Purses to High-way Padders, t [...]ough such should have a Patent from the King to rob whomsoever they encountred upon the Read; so there will not be many inclined to suffer their Mannors and Abbey-Lands, to which they have so good a Title, to be ravished from them either by Monks or Janizaries, tho authorized thereunto by the Prince's Commission. E­ven they who had formerly suffered themselves to be seduced to prove in a man­ner Betrayers of the Rights and Religion of their Country, will now (being un­deceived! not only in conjunction with others withstand the Court in its prose­cution of Popish and Arbitrary Designs, but through a generous exasperation for having been deluded and abused, will judg themselves obliged in vindication of their actings before, to appear for the Protestant Religion and the Laws of England, with a Zeal equal to that wherewith they contributed to the undermin­ing and supplanting of them. For they are not only become more sensible than they were of the Mischiefs of Absolute Government so as for the future to prize and assert the Priviledges reserved unto the People by the Rules of the Constitu­tion, and chalkt out for them in the Laws of the Land; but they have such a fresh view of Popery both in its Heresies, Blasphemies, Superstitions and Idola­tries, and in the Treachery, Sanguinariness, Violence and Cruelty, which the Pa­pal Principles mould, influence, and oblige men unto, that they not only enter­tain the greatest Abhorrency and Detestation imaginable for it, but seem resolved not to cherish in their Bosom, a thing so abominable to God, execrable to good Men, and destructive to Humane as well as to Christian Societies.

Nor are the Dissenters merely to believe that the Conformists are equally zea­lous as themselves for the Reformed Religion and English Rights, but they are to consider them as thy only great and united Body of Protestants in the Kingdom, with whom all other Parties compared bear no considerable proportion. For tho the Nonconformists considered abstractedly make a vast number of honest and useful People, yet being laid in the Scale with those of the Episcopal Communion, they are but few and lie in a little room. And whosoever will take the pains to ballance the one against the other, even where the Fanaticks make the greatest Figure, and may justly boast of their multitude, they will soon be convinced that the number [Page 19] of the other doth far transcend and exceed them. And it be so in Cities and Corporations, where the greatest Bulk of Dissenters are, it is much more so in Country Parishes, where the latter bear not the proportion of one to a hundred. Nor doth the Church of England more exceed the other Parties in her number, than she doth in the Quality of her Members. For whereas they who make up and constitute the separate Societies, are chiefly persons of the middle Rank and Con­dition, the Church of England doth in a manner vouch, and claim all the Persons of Honor, of the Learned Professions, and such as have valuable Estates, for her Communicants. And though the other sort are as necessary in the Common­wealth, and contribute as much to its Strength, Prosperity, and Happiness, yet they make not that Figure in the Government, nor stand in that capacity of ha­ving influence upon publick Affairs: for not only the Gentlemen of both the Gowns, who by reason of their Calling and Learning are best able to defend our Religion and vindicate our Laws and Privileges with their Tongues and Pens, but they whose Estates, Reputation, and Interest, recommendeth them to be elected Members of the great Senate of the Nation, as well as they who by reason of their Honors and Baronages are hereditary Legislators, are generally, if not all, of the Communion of the Church of England: so that they who conform to the established Worship and Discipline, are to be look'd upon and acknowledged as the great Bulwark of the Protestant Religion in England, and the Hedge and Fence of our Civil Liber­ties and Rights. And though it be true that this great breach, made upon our Reli­gion and Laws, is fallen out under their hand, while the poor Dissenters had neither accession to, nor were in a condition to prevent it; yet seeing their own Consci­ences do sufficiently load and charge them for it with Shame and Ignominy, it were neither candid, nor at this juncture seasonable, to upbraid it to them, or im­prove it to their dishonor and reproach. For as they have tamely look'd on and con­nived till our Religion and Liberties are so far undermined and supplanted, so it is they alone who are in a condition of stemming the Inundation of Idolatry and Ty­ranny with which we are threatned, and of repairing our Breaches, and reducing the Prerogative to its old Channel, and making Popery sneak and retreat into its Holes and Corners again. And should the Church of England he overthrown and devoured, what an easie Prey would the Fanaticks be to the Romish Cormorants. And could the King, under the Conduct of the Iesuits, and with the assistance of his Myrmidons, dissolve the established Worship and Discipline, they of the Separa­tion would be in no capacity to support the Reformed Religion, nor able to escape the common Ruine and Persecution. 'Tis therefore the interest as well as the du­ty of the Dissenters, to help maintain and defend those Walls, within the skreen and shelter whereof, their own Hutts and Cottages are built and stand; and the ra­ther, seeing the Conformists are at last, tho to their own Religion's and the Nations expence, become so far enlightned, as to see a necessry of growing more amica­ble towards them, and if not to enlarge the Terms of their Communion, yet to grant an Indulgence to all Protestants that differ from them. And as we ought to admire the Wisdom of God in those Providences, by which Protestants are taught to lay aside their Animosities, and to let fall their Persecutions of one another; so it would be a contradiction both to the Principles and repeated Protestations of Dis­senters, to aim at more than such a Liberty as is consistent with a National Eccle­siastick Establishment. Yet it were to proclaim themselves both Villains and Hypocrites, not to allow their Fellow Protestants the exercise of their Judgments, with what farther Profits and Emoluments the Law will grant them, provided themselves may be discharged from all obnoxiousness to Penalties and Censures up­on the account of their Consciences, and be admitted a free and publick practice of [Page 20] their own respective Modes of Discipline, and be suffered to Worship God in those ways which they think he hath required of and enjoyned them. And were England immediately to be rendered so happy as to have a Protestant Prince ascend the Throne, and to enjoy a Parliament duesy chosen, and acting with freedom, no one Party of the Reformed Religion among us, must ever expect to be established and supported to the denyal of Liberty to others, much less to be by Law empowered to ruin and destroy them. Should it please Almighty God, through denying Male Issue to the King, to bring the Princess of Orange to the Crown, tho the Church of England may in that case justly expect the being preserved and upheld as the Na­tional Establishment, yet all other Protestants may very rationally promise them­selves an Indulgence, and that not only from the mildness and compassionate sweetness of her Temper, but from the influence which the Prince her Husband will have upon her, who as he is descended from Ancestors, whose glory it was to be the Redeemers of their Country from Papal Persecution and Spanish Tyranny, so his Education, Generosity, Wisdom, and many Heroick V [...]rtues, dispose him to embrace all Protestants with an equal tenderness, and to erect his Interest upon the being the Head and Patron of all that profess the Reformed Religion. Had the late Duke of Monmouth been victorious against the Forces of the present King, and ina­bled to have wrested the Scepter our of his hand; tho all Protestants might there­upon have expected, and would certainly have enjoyed an equal Freedom, without the lyableness of any Party to Penal Laws for matters of Religion, yet he would have been careful, and I have reason to believe that it was his purpose, to have had the Church of England preserved and maintained, and that she should have suffered no alteration but what would have been to her strength and glory, through an enlargement of the Terms of her Communion, and what would have been to the praise of her Moderation and Charity, through her being perswaded to bear with such as differed from her in little things, and could not prevail with themselves to partake with her in all Ordinances. Upon the whole, it is both the prudence and safety of Dissenters, as they would escape Extirpation themselves, and have Religion conveyed down to Posterity, to unite their strength and endea­vours to those of the Church of England, for the upholding her against the Assaults of Popish Enemies, who pursue her Subversion. As matters are now circumstanc­ed and stated in England, there is not an Affront or Injury offered or done unto her by the Court, which do not at the same time reach and wound the Fanaticks. 'Tis not her being for Episcopacy Cerimonies, and imposed set Forms of Worship, the things about which she and the Nonconformists differ, that she is maligned and struck at by the Man in power and his Popish Juncto; but it is for being Protestant, Re­formed, and Orthodox, Crimes under the guilt whereof Dissenters are equally concerned and involved. Being therefore in opposition to the common Cause of Religion, that the late Court of Inquisition is erected over her Ecclesiasticks, all Protestants ought jointly to resent the Wrongs which she sustains, and not only to sympathise with those Dignified and lower Clergy, which are called to suffer, but to espouse their Quarrel with the same warmth that we would our own.

And as we are to look upon those of the Episcopal Communion, to be the great Bulwark of the Protestant Religion and Reformed Interest in England; so it is far­ther incumbent upon Dissenters towards them, and a duty which they owe to God, the Nation, and themselves, not to be accessary to any thing, through which the legal Establishment of the Church of England, may by any Act of pretended Regal Prerogative be weakned and supplanted. I am not counselling the Fanaticks to re­nounce their Principles, nor to participate with the Prelatical Church in all Ordi­nances [Page 21] on the Terms to which they have straitned and narrowed their Communion, For while they remain unsatisfied of the lawfulness of those Terms and Conditions, they cannot do it without offending God and contracting guilt upon their Souls; nor will they of the Church of England in Charity, Justice, and Honesty, expect it from them: for whatsoever any man believeth to be in, it is so to him, and will by God be impured as such, till he be otherwise englightned and convinced; nor are the Fanaticks to be falie and cruel to themselves, in order to be kind and friendly to them. But that which I would advice them unto, is that after the maintaining the highest measure of love to the consormable Congregations as Churches of Christ, and the esteeming their Members as Christian Protestant Brethren, notwithstanding the several things wherein they judge them to err and to be mistaken, that they would not by any Act and Transaction of theirs, betray them into the Despotical Power of this Popish King, nor directly nor indirectly acknowledge his being vested with an Authority paramount unto, and superceding the Laws, by which the Church of England is established in its present form, order, and mode of Jurisdiction, Disci­pline, and external Worship. Whatsoever ease arriveth to the Dissenters, through the King's suspending the execution of the Penal Laws, without their Address and Application, they may receive it with joy and humility in themselves, and with thankfulness to God; nor is there hereby any prejudice offered on their part to the Authority of the Law, or offence or injury given or done to the Conformable Clergy. Nor is without grief and regret that the Church-men are forced to be­hold the harassing, spoiling, and imprisonment of the Nonconformists, while in the mean time the Papists are suffered to assemble to the celebration of their Idolatrous Worship without censure and controul. And were it in their power to remedy it, and give relief to their Protestant Brethren, they would with delight and readiness embrace the occasion and opportunity of doing it. But alas! instead of having an advantage put into their hand, of contributing to the relief of the Fanaticks, which I dare say many of them ardently wish and desire, they are compelled, contrary to their Inclination as well as their Interest, to become instrumental in persecuting and oppressing them, Nor does the King covet a better and a more legal Advantage against the Conformists, than that they would refuse to pursue Dissenters, and de­cline molesting them with Ecclesiastical Censures and Civil Punishments: so that their Condition is to be pitied and bewailed, in that they are hindred from Acting against the Papists, though both enjoined by Law, and influenced thereunto by motives of Self-preservation, as well as by ties of Conscience; while in the mean time they are forced to prosecute their Fellow Protestants, or else to be suspended and deposed, and put out of their Offices and Employs. And though I do believe, that they would at last have more Peace in themselves, and be better accepted with God in the great day of their account, should they refuse to disturb and prosecute their Protestant Brethren, and scorn to be any longer Court Tools for weakning and undermining the Reformed Cause and Interest; yet I shall leave them to act in this as they shall be persuaded in themselves, and as they shall judge most agree­able to Principles of Wisdom and Conscience. In the interim, the Fanaticks have all the reason in the World to believe, that the Proceedings of the Clergy and Mem­bers of the Church of England at this season and juncture against them, are not the Results of their Election and Choice, but the effects of moral compulsion and neces­sity. Not will any Dissenter that is prudent and discreet, blame them for a mat­ter which they cannot help, but bear his misfortune and lot with patience in him­self, and with compassion and charity towards them, and have his Indignation rai­sed only against the Court, which forceth them to be instrumental in their oppres­sion [Page 22] and trouble. And instead of being thereby provoked to petition the King to suspend the execution of the Penal Laws, or that he would by an Act of his Prero­gative dispense with their Meetings for religious Worship in defiance of them; they ought to consider that is what the Court aims at, by commanding their conforma­ble Brethren to molest and pursue them. For a power paramount and transcendent to the Law is what the King is usurping, and which he would fain work his Subjects one way or another to acknowledge. The Fanaticks cannot be so far void of sense, as to think that the person now in the Throne bears them any good will, but his drift is to screw himself into a Supremacy and Absoluteness over the Law, and to get such an Authority confessed to be vested in him, as when he pleaseth he may sub­vert the established Religion, and set up Popery: for by the same power that he can dispense with the Penal Statutes against the Nonconformists, he may also dis­pense with those against the Roman Catholicks: and whosoever owneth that he hath a Right to do the first, doth in effect own that he hath a Right to do the last; for if he be allowed a Power for the superceding some Laws made in reference to mat­ters of Religion, he may challenge the like Power for the superceding others of the same kind: and then by the same Authority that he can suspend the Laws against Popery, he may also suspend those for Protestancy: and by the same Power that he can in defiance of Law indulge the Papists the exercise of their Religion in Houses, he may establish them in the publick celebration of their Idolatry in Churches and Cathedrals. Yea whereas the Laws that relate to Religion are enacted by no less Authority than those that are made for the preservation of our Civil Rights, should the King be admitted to have an Arbitrary Power over the one, it is very like that by the Logick of Whitehall he will challenge the same absoluteness over the other. Nor do I doubt but that the eleven Iudges who have gratified him with a Despoti­calness over the former, will, when required, grant him the same over the latter. I know the Dissenters are under no small Temptations, both by reason of being hindred from enjoying the Ordinances of the Gospel, and because of many grie­vous Calamities which they daily suffer for their Nonconformity, of making Ap­plications to the King for some relief, by his suspending the execution of the Laws; but they must give me leave to add, that they ought not, for the obtaining of a little ease, to betray the Kingdom, and sacrifice the legal Constitution of the Go­vernment to the Lust and Pleasure of a Popish Prince, whom nothing less will serve than being Absolute and Despotical. And were he once in the quiet Possession of an Authority to dispense with the Penal Laws, the Fanaticks would not long enjoy the benefit of it. Nor can they deny him a Power of reviving the execution of the Law, which is part of the Trust deposited with him as supreme Magistrate, who have granted him a Power of suspending the Laws, which the Rules of the Govern­ment preclude him from. And as he may, whensoever he pleaseth, cause the Laws to which they are obnoxious, to be executed upon them, so by virtue of having an Authority acknowledged in him of superceding the Laws, he may deprive them of the Liberty of meeting together to the number of Five, a Grace which the Par­liament thought fit to allow them, under all the other Severities to which they were subjected. Nor needs there any further evidence that the Prince's challenging such a Power is an Usurpation, and that the Subjects making any Application by which it seems allowed to him, is a betraying of the ancient Legal Government of the Kingdom; than to consider that the most obsequious and servile Parliament to the Court that ever England knew, not only denied this Prerogative to the late King, but made him renounce it by revoking his Declaration of Indulgence, which he had emitted Anno 1672. And as it will be to the perpetual Honor of the Dissenters [Page 23] to have chosen rather to suffer the Severities which the Laws make them liable unto than by any Act and Transaction of theirs, to undermine and weaken either the Church or the State; so it will be a means both of endearing them to future Parlia­ments, and of bringing them and the Conformists into an union of Counsels and endeavours against Popery and Tyranny, which is at this season a thing so indispen­sably necessary for their common preservation: especially when, though a new and more threatning Alliance and Confederacy with France than that in 72, the King hath not only engaged to act by and observe the same measures towards Prote­stants in England, which that Monarch hath vouchsafed the World a Pattern and Copy of in his carriage towards those of the Reformed Religion in France; but hath promised to disturb the Peace and Repose of his Neighbors, and to com­mence a War in conjunction with that Prince against Foreign Protestants. For as the Kings giving Liberty and Protection to the Algerines to frequent his Havens, and sell the Prizes which they take from the Dutch, is both a most infamous Action for a Prince pretending to be a Christian, and a direct violation of his Alliance with the States General; so nothing can be more evident, than that he thereby seeks to render them the weaker for him to assault, and that he is resolved (if some unfore­seen and extraordinary Providence doth not interpose and prevent) to declare War against them the next Summer, in order whereunto great Remises of Mony are already ordered him from the French Court. So that the Indulgence which he pretends to be inclinable to afford the Dissenters, is not an effect of kindness and good Will, but an Artifice whereby to oblige their Assistance in destroying those abroad of the same Religion with themselves. Which if he can compass, it is easie to foresee what Fate both the Fanaticks and they of the Communion of the Church of England are to expect. Who as they will not then know whither to retreat for shelter, so they will be destitute of Comfort in themselves, and depriv­ed of Pity from others, not only for having through their Divisions made them­selves a Prey to the Papists at home, but for having been accessary to the ruine of a Reformed State abroad, and which was the Asilum and Sanctuary of all those that were elsewhere oppressed and persecuted for Religion.