As first, the Queen has promised them to continue them in their
tolerated liberty, and has told us she will be a religious observer of
her word.
What Her Majesty will do we cannot help; but what, as head of the
Church, she ought to do, is another case. Her Majesty has promised to
protect and defend the Church of England, and if she cannot
effectually do that without the destruction of the Dissenters, she
must of course dispense with one promise to comply with another. But
to answer this cavil more effectually: Her Majesty did never promise
to maintain the toleration to the destruction of the Church; but it is
upon supposition that it may be compatible with the well-being and
safety of the Church, which she had declared she would take especial
care of. Now if these two interests clash, it is plain Her Majesty's
intentions are to uphold, protect, defend, and establish the Church,
and this we conceive is impossible.
Perhaps it may be said that the Church is in no immediate danger from
the Dissenters, and therefore it is time enough. But this is a weak
answer.
For first, if a danger be real, the distance of it is no argument
against, but rather a spur to quicken us to prevention, lest it be too
late hereafter.
And secondly, here is the opportunity, and the only one perhaps that
ever the Church had, to secure herself and destroy her enemies.
The representatives of the nation have now an opportunity; the time is
come which all good men have wished for, that the gentlemen of England
may serve the Church of England. Now they are protected and encouraged
by a Church of England Queen.
What will you do for your sister in the day that she shall be spoken
for?
If ever you will establish the best Christian Church in the world; if
ever you will suppress the spirit of enthusiasm; if ever you will free
the nation from the viperous brood that have so long sucked the blood
of their mother; if ever you will leave your posterity free from
faction and rebellion, this is the time. This is the time to pull up
this heretical weed of sedition that has so long disturbed the peace
of our Church and poisoned the good corn.
But, says another hot and cold objector, this is renewing fire and
faggot, reviving the act _De Heretico Comburendo_; this will be
cruelty in its nature, and barbarous to all the world.
I answer, it is cruelty to kill a snake or a toad in cold blood, but
the poison of their nature makes it a charity to our neighbours to
destroy those creatures, not for any personal injury received, but for
prevention; not for the evil they have done, but the evil they may do.
Serpents, toads, vipers, etc., are noxious to the body, and poison the
sensitive life; these poison the soul, corrupt our posterity, ensnare
our children, destroy the vitals of our happiness, our future
felicity, and contaminate the whole mass.
Shall any law be given to such wild creatures? Some beasts are for
sport, and the huntsmen give them advantages of ground; but some are
knocked on the head by all possible ways of violence and surprise.
I do not prescribe fire and faggot, but, as Scipio said of Carthage,
_Delenda est Carthago_. They are to be rooted out of this nation, if
ever we will live in peace, serve God, or enjoy our own. As for the
manner, I leave it to those hands who have a right to execute God's
justice on the nation's and the Church's enemies.
But if we must be frighted from this justice under the specious
pretences and odious sense of cruelty, nothing will be effected: it
will be more barbarous to our own children and dear posterity when
they shall reproach their fathers, as we do ours, and tell us, 'You
had an opportunity to root out this cursed race from the world under
the favour and protection of a true English queen; and out of your
foolish pity you spared them, because, forsooth, you would not be
cruel; and now our Church is suppressed and persecuted, our religion
trampled under foot, our estates plundered, our persons imprisoned and
dragged to jails, gibbets, and scaffolds: your sparing this Amalekite
race is our destruction, your mercy to them proves cruelty to your
poor posterity.'
How just will such reflections be when our posterity shall fall under
the merciless clutches of this uncharitable generation, when our
Church shall be swallowed up in schism, faction, enthusiasm, and
confusion; when our Government shall be devolved upon foreigners, and
our monarchy dwindled into a republic.
It would be more rational for us, if we must spare this generation, to
summon our own to a general massacre, and as we have brought them into
the world free, send them out so, and not betray them to destruction
by our supine negligence, and then cry, 'It is mercy.'
Moses was a merciful, meek man, and yet with what fury did he run
through the camp, and cut the throats of three and thirty thousand of
his dear Israelites that were fallen into idolatry. What was the
reason? It was mercy to the rest to make these examples, to prevent
the destruction of the whole army.
How many millions of future souls we save from infection and delusion
if the present race of poisoned spirits were purged from the face of
the land!
It is vain to trifle in this matter, the light, foolish handling of
them by mulcts, fines, etc.,--it is their glory and their advantage.
If the gallows instead of the Counter, and the galleys instead of the
fines, were the reward of going to a conventicle, to preach or hear,
there would not be so many sufferers. The spirit of martyrdom is over;
they that will go to church to be chosen sheriffs and mayors would go
to forty churches rather than be hanged.
If one severe law were made and punctually executed, that whoever was
found at a conventicle should be banished the nation and the preacher
be hanged, we should soon see an end of the tale. They would all come
to church, and one age would make us all one again.
To talk of five shillings a month for not coming to the sacrament, and
one shilling per week for not coming to church, this is such a way of
converting people as never was known; this is selling them a liberty
to transgress for so much money. If it be not a crime, why don't we
give them full license? And if it be, no price ought to compound for
the committing it, for that is selling a liberty to people to sin
against God and the Government.
If it be a crime of the highest consequence both against the peace and
welfare of the nation, the glory of God, the good of the Church, and
the happiness of the soul, let us rank it among capital offences, and
let it receive a punishment in proportion to it.
We hang men for trifles, and banish them for things not worth naming;
but an offence against God and the Church, against the welfare of the
world and the dignity of religion, shall be bought off for five
shillings! This is such a shame to a Christian Government that it is
with regret I transmit it to posterity.
If men sin against God, affront His ordinances, rebel against His
Church, and disobey the precepts of their superiors, let them suffer
as such capital crimes deserve. So will religion flourish, and this
divided nation be once again united.
And yet the title of barbarous and cruel will soon be taken off from
this law too. I am not supposing that all the Dissenters in England
should be hanged or banished, but, as in cases of rebellions and
insurrections, if a few of the ringleaders suffer, the multitude are
dismissed; so, a few obstinate people being made examples, there is no
doubt but the severity of the law would find a stop in the compliance
of the multitude.
To make the reasonableness of this matter out of question, and more
unanswerably plain, let us examine for what it is that this nation is
divided into parties and factions, and let us see how they can justify
a separation, or we of the Church of England can justify our bearing
the insults and inconveniences of the party.
One of their leading pastors, and a man of as much learning as most
among them, in his answer to a pamphlet, entitled 'An Inquiry into the
Occasional Conformity,' has these words, p. 27, 'Do the religion of
the Church and the meeting-houses make two religions? Wherein do they
differ? The substance of the same religion is common to them both; and
the modes and accidents are the things in which only they differ.' P.
28: 'Thirty-nine articles are given us for the summary of our
religion; thirty-six contain the substance of it, wherein we agree;
three the additional appendices, about which we have some
differences.'
Now, if, as by their own acknowledgment, the Church of England is a
true Church, and the difference between them is only in a few modes
and accidents, why should we expect that they will suffer galleys,
corporeal punishment, and banishment for these trifles? There is no
question but they will be wiser; even their own principles will not
bear them out in it; they will certainly comply with the laws and with
reason; and though at the first severity they may seem hard, the next
age will feel nothing of it; the contagion will be rooted out; the
disease being cured, there will be no need of the operation; but if
they should venture to transgress and fall into the pit, all the world
must condemn their obstinacy, as being without ground from their own
principles.
Thus the pretence of cruelty will be taken off, and the party actually
suppressed, and the disquiets they have so often brought upon the
nation prevented.
Their numbers and their wealth make them haughty, and that is so far
from being an argument to persuade us to forbear them, that it is a
warning to us, without any delay, to reconcile them to the unity of
the Church or remove them from us.
At present, Heaven be praised, they are not so formidable as they have
been, and it is our own fault if ever we suffer them to be so.
Providence and the Church of England seem to join in this particular,
that now the destroyers of the nation's peace may be overturned, and
to this end the present opportunity seems to be put into our hands.
To this end her present Majesty seems reserved to enjoy the crown,
that the ecclesiastic as well as civil rights of the nation may be
restored by her hand. To this end the face of affairs have received
such a turn in the process of a few months as never has been before;
the leading men of the nation, the universal cry of the people, the
unanimous request of the clergy, agree in this, that the deliverance
of our Church is at hand. For this end has Providence given us such a
Parliament, such a Convocation, such a gentry, and such a Queen as we
never had before. And what may be the consequences of a neglect of
such opportunities? The succession of the crown has but a dark
prospect; another Dutch turn may make the hopes of it ridiculous and
the practice impossible. Be the house of our future princes never so
well inclined, they will be foreigners, and many years will be spent
in suiting the genius of strangers to this crown and the interests of
the nation; and how many ages it may be before the English throne be
filled with so much zeal and candour, so much tenderness and hearty
affection to the Church as we see it now covered with, who can
imagine?
It is high time, then, for the friends of the Church of England to
think of building up and establishing her in such a manner that she
may be no more invaded by foreigners nor divided by factions, schisms,
and error.
If this could be done by gentle and easy methods, I should be glad;
but the wound is corroded, the vitals begin to mortify, and nothing
but amputation of members can complete the cure; all the ways of
tenderness and compassion, all persuasive arguments, have been made
use of in vain.
The humour of the Dissenters has so increased among the people that
they hold the Church in defiance, and the house of God is an
abomination among them; nay, they have brought up their posterity in
such prepossessed aversions to our holy religion that the ignorant mob
think we are all idolaters and worshippers of Baal, and account it a
sin to come within the walls of our churches.
The primitive Christians were not more shy of a heathen temple or of
meat offered to idols, nor the Jews of swine's flesh, than some of our
Dissenters are of the Church, and the divine service selemnised
therein.
This obstinacy must be rooted out with the profession of it; while the
generation are less at liberty daily to affront God Almighty and
dishonour His holy worship, we are wanting in our duty to God and our
mother, the Church of England.
How can we answer it to God, to the Church, and to our posterity, to
leave them entangled with fanaticism, error, and obstinacy in the
bowels of the nation; to leave them an enemy in their streets, that in
time may involve them in the same crimes, and endanger the utter
extirpation of religion in the nation?
What is the difference betwixt this and being subjected to the power
of the Church of Rome, from whence we have reformed? If one be an
extreme on one hand, and one on another, it is equally destructive to
the truth to have errors settled among us, let them be of what nature
they will.
Both are enemies of our Church and of our peace; and why should it not
be as criminal to admit an enthusiast as a Jesuit? Why should the
Papist with his seven sacraments be worse than the Quaker with no
sacraments at all? Why should religious houses be more intolerable
than meeting-houses? Alas, the Church of England! What with Popery on
one hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified
between two thieves!
Now let us crucify the thieves. Let her foundations be established
upon the destruction of her enemies. The doors of mercy being always
open to the returning part of the deluded people, let the obstinate be
ruled with the rod of iron.
Let all true sons of so holy and oppressed a mother, exasperated by
her afflictions, harden their hearts against those who have oppressed
her.
And may God Almighty put it into the hearts of all the friends of
truth to lift up a standard against pride and Antichrist, that the
posterity of the sons of error may be rooted out from the face of this
land for ever.