are stretched unto this exorbitant height for the establishment of Popery. I belieue that the people of God in England haue, in theis late yeares, generally gent ruler over a rational people. In recompense, therefore, and acknowledgment of so good a government under his influence, his person is most sacred and inviolable; and whatsoever excesses are committed against so high a trust, nothing of them is imputed to him, as being free from the necessity or temptation, but his ministers only are accountable for all, and must answer it at their perils. He hath a vast revenue constantly arising from the hearth of the householder, the sweat of the labourer, the rent of the farmer, the industry of the merchant, and consequently out of the estate of the gentleman; a large competence to defray the ordinary expence of the crown, and maintain its lustre. And if any extraordinary occasion happen, or be but with any probable decency pretended, the whole land, at whatsoever season of the year, does yield him a plentiful harvest. So forward are his people's affections to give, even to superfluity, that a forainer (or Englishman that hath been long abroad) would think they could neither will nor chuse, but that the asking of a supply were a mere formality, it is so readily granted. He is the fountain of all honours, and has moreover the distribution of so many profitable offices of the household, of the revenue, of state, of law, of religion, of the navy (and since his present majesty's time, of the army) that it seems as if the nation could scarce furnish honest men enow to supply all those employments. So that the kings of England are in nothing inferior to other princes, save in being more abridged from injuring their own subjects: but have as large a field as any of the external felicity, wherein to exercise their own virtue, and so reward and encourage it in others. In short, there is nothing that comes nearer in government to the divine perfection, than where the monarch, as with us, enjoys a capacity of doing all the good imaginable to mankind, under a disability to all that is evil. And as we are thus happy in the constitution of our state, so are we yet more blessed in that of our church; being free growne faint. Somme, through feare, haue deflected from the integrity of their principles. Somme haue too deeply plunged themselues in worldly from that Romish yoak, which so great a part of christendome do yet draw and labour under. That Popery is such a thing as cannot, but for want of a word to express it, be called a religion nor is it to be mentioned with that civility which is otherwise decent to be used, in speaking of the differences of humane opinion about divine matters. Were it either open Judaisme, or plain Turkery, or honest Paganisme, there is yet a certain bona fides in the most extravagant belief, and the sincerity of an erroneous profession may render it more pardonable but this is a compound of all the three, an extract of whatsoever is most ridiculous and impious in them, incorporated with more peculiar absurdities of its own, in which those were deficient; and all this deliberately contrived, knowingly carried on by the bold imposture of priests, under the name of christianity. The wisdom of this fifth religion, this last and insolentest attempt upon the credulity of mankind seems to me, though not ignorant otherwise of the times, degrees and methods of its progress, principally to have consisted in their owning the scriptures to be the word of God, and the rule of faith and manners, but in prohibiting at the same time their com mon use, or the reading of them in public churches, but in a Latine translation, to the vulgar: there being no better or more rational way to frustrate the very design of the great institutor of christianity, who first planted it by the extraordinary gift of tongues, then to forbid the use even of the ordinary languages. For having thus a book which is universally avowed to be of divine authority, but sequestering it only into such hands as were intrusted in the cheat, they had the opportunity to vitiate, suppress, or interpret to their own profit those records by which the poor people hold their salvation. And this necessary point being once gained, there was thence forward nothing so monstrous to reason, so abhorring from morality, or so contrary to scripture, which they might not in prudence adventure on, &c. cares, and, so as they might enjoy their trades and wealth, haue lesse regarded the treasure that is layed in heaven. But I think there are very many who up haue kept their garments unspotted; and hope that God will deliver them, and the nation for their sakes. God will not suffer this land, where the gospel hath of late florished more than in any part of the world, to become a slave of the world; he will not suffer it to be made a land of grauen images: he will stirre up witnesses of the truth, and, in his owne time, spirit his people to stand up for his cause, and deliuer them. I liued in this belief, and am now about to dye in it. I knowe my Redeemer liues; and, as he hath in a great mesure upheld me in the day of my calamity, hope that he will still uphold me by his Spirite in this last moment, and giuing me grace to glorify him in my death, receaue me into the glory prepared for thoes that feare him, when my body shall be dissolued. Amen. An account of the growth of Popery and arbitrary government in England, etc. (By Andrew Marvell, 'who died shortly after, not without strong suspicions of being poysoned.') Of James 1. Charles 1. Charles 2. James 2. their evil deeds and sinnings against the people, see an admirable recapitulation, in that master tract intitled "A short history of standing armies in England," by that sprited, excellent English gentleman, John Trenchard. * In his bounty he did deliver them, and soon too, at the most noble, most happy revolution. |