In Question and Answer
WEDNESDAY, April 13. 1681.
Q. WEll! They are so. But do you think now to bring’um to their Wits again with a Pamphlet?
A. Come, Come; ’Tis the Press that has made’um Mad, and the Press must set’um Right again. The Distemper is Epidemical; and there’s no way in the world, but by Printing, to convey the Remedy to the Disease.
Q. But what is it that you call a Remedy?
A. The Removing of the Cause. That is to say, the Undeceiving of the People: for they are well enough Disposed, of themselves, to be Orderly, and Obedient; if they were not misled by Ill Principles, and Hair’d and Juggled out of their Senses with so many Frightful Stories and Impostures.
Q. Well! to be Plain and Short; You call your self the Observator: What is it now that you intend for the Subject of your Observations?
A. Take it in few words then. My business is, to encounter the Faction, and to Vindicate the Government; to detect their Forgeries; to lay open the Rankness of their Calumnies, and Malice; to Refute their Seditious Doctrines; to expose their Hypocrisy, and the bloudy Design that is carry’d on, under the Name, and Semblance, of Religion; And, in short, to lift up the Cloke of the True Protestant (as he Christens himself) and to shew the People, the Jesuite that lies skulking under it.
Q. Shall the Observator be a Weekly Paper, or How?
A. No, No; but oftner, or seldomer, as I see Occasion.
Q. Pray favour me a word; When you speak of a True Protestant, don’t you mean a Dissenting Protestant?
A. Yes, I do: For your Assenting and Consenting Protestant (you must know) is a Christian.
Q. And is not a Dissenting Protestant a Christian too?
A. Peradventure, he is one; peradventure, not: For a Dissenter has his Name from his Disagreement, not from his Perswasion.
Q. What is a Dissenter then?
A. Tis Impossible to say either what a Dissenter IS, or what he is NOT. For he’s a NOTHING; that may yet come to be ANY thing. He may be a Christian; or he may be a Turk; But you’l find the best account of him in his Name. A DISSENTER, is one that thinks OTHERWISE. That is to say, let the Magistrate think what he pleases, the Dissenter will be sure to be of another Opinion. A Dissenter is not of This, or of That, or of Any Religion; but A Member Politique of an Incorporate Faction: or Otherwise; A Protestant-Fault-Finder in a Christian Commonwealth.
Q. Well! but tho’ a Dissenter may be any thing; A Dissenting Protestant yet tells ye what he Is.
A. He does so, he tells ye that he is a Negative: an Anti-Protester; One that Protests AGAINST, but not FOR any thing.
Q. Ay; but so long as he opposes the Corruptions of the Church of Rome.
A. Well: And so he does the Rites, and Constitutions of the Church of England too. As a Protestant, he does the former; and the Other as a Dissenter.
Q. But is there no Uniting of These Dissenters?
A. You shall as soon make the Winds blow the same way, from all the Poynts of the Compass.
Q. There are Good and Bad, of all Opinions, there’s no doubt on’t: But do you think it fayr, to Condemn a whole Party for some Ill men in’t?
A. No, by no means: The Party is neither the Worse, for having Ill men in it, nor the Better, for Good. For whatever the Members are, the Party is a Confederacy; as being a Combination, against the Law.
Q. But a man may Mean honestly, and yet perhaps ly under some Mistake. Can any man help his Opinion?
A. A man may Mean well, and Do Ill; he may shed Innocent Bloud, and think he does God good Service. ’Tis True: A man cannot help Thinking; but he may help Doing: He is Excusable for a Private Mistake, for That’s an Error only to himself; but when it comes once to an Overt Act, ’tis an Usurpation upon the Magistrate, and there’s no Plea for’t.
Q. You have no kindnesse, I perceive, for a Dissenting Protestant; but what do you think of a bare Protestant without any Adjunct?
A. I do look upon Such a Protestant to be a kind of an Adjective Noun-Substantive; It requires something to be joyn’d with it, to shew its Signification. By Protestancy in General is commonly understood a Separation of Christians from the Communion of the Church of Rome: But to Oppose Errors, on the One hand, is not Sufficient, without keeping our selves Clear of Corruptions, on the Other. Now it was the Reformation, not the Protestation, that Settled us upon a true Medium betwixt the two Extreams.
Q. So that you look upon the Protestation, and the Reformation, it seems, as two several things.
A. Very right; But in such a manner only, that the Former, by Gods Providence, made way for the Other.
Q. But are not all Protestants Members of the Reformed Religion?
A. Take notice, First, that the Name came Originally from the Protestation in 1529. against the Decree of Spires; and that the Lutheran Protestants and Ours of the Church of England, are not of the Sam Communion. Now Secondly; If you take Protestants in the Latitude with our Dissenters, they are not so much a Religion, as a Party; and whoever takes this Body of Dissenters for Members of the Reformed Religion sets up a Reformation of a hundred and fifty Colours and as may [sic] Heresies. The Anabaptists, Brownists, Antinomians, Familists, &c. do all of them set up for Dissenting Protestants; but God forbid we should ever enter these People upon the Roll of the Reformation.
Q. Well! but what do you think of Protestant Smith and Protestant Harris?
A. Just as I do of Protestant Muncer, and Protestant Phifer; a Brace of Protestants that cost the Empire 150000 Lives: and our own Pretended Protestants too, of Later Date, have cost This Nation little lesse.
Q. Ay: But these are men of quite another Temper: Do not you see how zealous they are for the Preservation of the King’s Person, the Government, and the Protestant Religion?
A. I See well enough what they Say, and I know what they do. Consider, First, that they are Profess’d Anabaptists: Smith no less then a pretended Prophet; and the Other, a kind of a Wet Enthusiast. Secondly; ’tis the very Doctrine of the Sect to root out Magistracy, Cancel Humane Laws; Kill, and take Possession; and wash their Feet with the Bloud of the Ungodly; and where ever they have set Footing, they have Practic’d what they Taught. Are not these likely men now, to help out a King, and a Religion, at a dead lift? If you would be further satisfy’d in the Truth of things, reade Sleidan, Spanhemius, Gastius, Hortensius, Bullinger, Pontanus, The Dipper dipp’d, Bayly’s Disswasive, Pagets Heresiography, &c. Hortensius tells ye, how Jack of Leydens Successor murthered his Wife, to make way to his Daughter, P. 74. and after that, cut a girls throat, for fear she should tell Tales. Gastius tells us of a Fellow that cut off his brothers Head, as by Impulse, and then cry’d, The Will of God is fulfilled, lib. I. Pa. 12. Jack of Leyden started up from Supper, to do some business (he said) which the Father had commanded him, and cut off a Soldiers Head; and afterwards cut off his Wives head in the Market-place. Sleydans Comment. Lib. 10.
Q. You will not make the Protestant-Mercury to be an Anabaptist too, will ye?
A. If you do make him any thing, I’le make him That. But in one word, they are Factious and Necessitous; and consequently, the fittest Instruments in the world, for the Promoting of a Sedition. First, as they are Principled for’t; and then, in respect of their Condition; for they are every man of them under the Lash of the Law, and Retainers to Prisons; So that in their Fortunes they can hardly be worse. Insomuch, that it is a common thing for them to lend a Name to the countenancing of a Libel which no body else dares own.
Q. Well! but let them be as poor, and malicious as Devils, so long as they have neither Brains, nor Interest, what hurt can their Papers do?
A. The Intelligences, you must know, that bear their Names, are not of their Composing, but the Dictates of a Faction, and the Venom of a Club of Common-wealths-men instill’d into those Papers.
Q. These are Words, all this while, without Proofs; Can you shew us particularly where the Venom lies?
A. It is the business of every Sheet they Publish, to Affront the Government, the Kings Authority, and Administration; the Privy-Council; the Church, Bench, Juries, Witnesses; All Officers, Ecclesiastical, Military, and Civil: and no matter for Truth or Honesty, when a Forg’d Relation will serve their turn. ’Tis a common thing with them, to get half a dozen Schismaticall Hands to a Petition, or Address in a corner, and then call it, the sense of the Nation: and when all’s done, they are not above twenty Persons, that make all this Clutter in the Kingdom.
Q. But to what End do they all this?
A. To make the Government Odious, and Contemptible; to magnifie their own Party; and fright the People out of their Allegeance, by Counterfeit Letters, Reports, and false Musters, as if the sober and considerable part of the Nation were all on their side.
Q. We are in Common Charity to allow, for Errors, and Mis-reports, and not presently to make an Act of Malice, and Design, out of every Mistake. Can you shew me any of these Counterfeits, and Impostures that you speak of? These Cheats upon the People, and Affronts upon the Government?
A. Yes, yes; Abundantly. And Il’e give you Instances immediately upon every poynt you’l ask me: Only This note, by the way; That let them be mistakes, or Contrivances, or what you will, they all run Unanimously against the Government, without so much as one Syllable in favour of it: Which makes the matter desperately suspitious.
Q. Let me see then, in the First place, where any Affront is put upon the Government.
A. Some Persons (Says Smiths Prot. Int. N. 7.) in Norwich, &c. who have a greater stock of Confidence, and Malice, then Wisdom, and Honesty, are so far transported with Zeal to serve the Devil, or his Emissaryes the Papists, that they are now Prosecuting several Dissenting Protestants upon Stat. 35. Eliz. &c. (And so the Protestant-Mercury, N. 15.) Some People at Norwich, are playing the Devil for Godsake: several honest, peaceable, Protestant Dissenters, having been troubled for not coming to Church, or having been Present at Religious Meetings &c. Now what greater Affront can there be to Government, then This language, First, from an Anabaptist that is a Professed Enemy to all Government; and Secondly, from a Private Person, Bare-fac’d, to arraign a Solemn Law: A Law of this Antiquity; a Law of Queen Elizabeth’s, (a Princesse so much Celebrated by our Dissenters themselves for her Piety, Good Government, and Moderation;) a Law which, upon Experience, has been found so Necessary, that the bare Relaxing of it, cost the Life of a Prince, the Bloud of two or three hundred thousand of his Subjects, and a Twenty-years-Rebellion? To say nothing of the dangerous Consequence of making it Unsafe for Magistrates to discharge their Dutyes, for fear of Outrages, and Libells.
Q. Well! but what have you to say now to the Kings Authority, his Administration, and his Privy Council.
A. Smith (in his Vox Populi, P. 13.) saith, that the King is oblig’d to pass or Confirm those Laws his People shall Chuse, at which rate, if they shall tender him a Bill for the Deposing of himself, he is bound to agree to’t. Secondly, in the same Page, he Denies the Kings Power of Proroguing, or Dissolving Parliaments; which is an Essential of Government it self, under what Form soever, and he’s no longer a King, without it. And then for his Administration, P. 1. the Anabaptist charges upon his Majesty [those many surprizing and astonishing Prorogations, and Dissolutions (as he has worded his Meaning) to be procur’d by the Papists.] And then, P. 15. he wounds both the King, and his Council, at a Blow; in falling upon those that make the King break his Coronation-Oath; arraigning his Council in the First place, and the King himself in the Second; and that for no less then the breach of Oath, and Faith.——Wee’l talk out the Rest at our next Meeting.
London, Printed for H. Brome, at the Gun in S. Pauls Church-yard.
Numb. 13.