Every considering protestant cannot but observe with horror, what swarms of popish priests from abroad, and jacobite emissaries at home, are spread about among us, and busily employed to carry on these wicked designs; how in disguise they run up and down the countries, mingling themselves in all companies, and in coffee-houses, and private conversation, endeavouring to insinuate with all possible subtlety, favourable notions of the pretender into the minds of the people, thereby to pave the way, and to prepare you for receiving him; such as, that he is the lawful son of King James; that he is a protestant in his heart; that he will abjure the errors of popery as soon as he has an opportunity; that the late King William promised to prove him a bastard, but never could do it; that it is hard to reject him for what was none of his own fault, and the like.
Although thinking men can and do see through these things, yet, as they are calculated and prepared to deceive the ignorant people in the country, it is earnestly desired of those who have their eyes open to the said popish delusions, that they would endeavour to undeceive their brethren and neighbours, and earnestly persuade them not to be imposed upon by the jesuitical insinuations of the popish faction, furnishing the poor honest people with just reasons for their adhering to the protestant settlement, and full answers to those who go about to deceive them: which answers are such as follow:—
1. It seems absolutely necessary to remind them of the reason of the late revolution; how King James II., by his popish counsellors, priests, and jesuits, had laid the foundation of overwhelming all our liberties, in an arbitrary, tyrannical government, ruling us without a parliament to redress our grievances, and, by a standing army, to execute forcibly his absolute commands; how he had engaged in the overthrow of our religion, by undermining the constitution of the Church of England, erecting an arbitrary ecclesiastical commission to dispossess our universities, and displace our ministers in every parish, and then to establish popery throughout the whole nation.
2. That in this distress, the whole nation applied themselves to the Prince of Orange, whose right to the succession made him justly appear as the proper person to assist and relieve this oppressed people; which prince came over at our invitation, was blessed with success, and all the favourers of popery and tyranny sunk at once; King James fled with his queen, and that person whom he called his son, and whom we now call justly the pretender.
3. Concerning the birth of this person, the nobility and gentry of England who invited over the prince, as may be seen by the memorial they presented to his highness, alleged, that there were violent presumptions that he was not born of the queen's body, which, however, they desired to leave to examination in a free parliament; which also the said prince expressed in his declaration, and that he was willing to leave the same to a free parliament.
4. That before a free parliament could be obtained, King James withdrew himself, and carried away his pretended son into the hands of the ancient enemies of this nation, and of our religion, the French, there to be educated in the principles of popery and enmity to this his native country.
By which action he not only declined to refer the legitimacy of his said son to the examination of the parliament, as the Prince of Orange had offered in his said declaration, but made such examination altogether useless and impracticable, he himself (King James) not owning it to be a legal parliament, and therefore not consenting to stand by such examination.
By the said abdication, and carrying away his said pretended son into the hands of the French to be educated in popery, &c., he gave the parliament of England and Scotland abundant reason for ever to exclude the said King James and his said pretended son from the government of these realms, or from the succession to the same, and made it absolutely necessary for them to do so, if they would secure the protestant religion to themselves and their posterity; and this without any regard to the doubt whether he was the lawful son of King James or no, since it is inconsistent with the constitution of this protestant nation to be governed by a popish prince.
So that there is now no more room to examine whether the said pretender be the lawful son of King James, or whether he is, or will turn to be a protestant, the examination of the legitimacy by parliament which was offered by the Prince of Orange in his declaration, having been declined by his father, and himself having been delivered up into the hands of the sworn enemies both of our religion, constitution, and nation.
If King James would have expected he should be received as his son, and succeed to his crowns, he should have suffered his birth to have been legally determined by the English and Scotch parliament at that time, and have left him in good protestant hands to have been educated in the protestant religion, and in the knowledge of the laws and constitutions of his country; in which case it was more than probable, had his birth appeared clear, and his hereditary right just, the parliament might have set the crown upon his head, and declared him king under the protection of their deliverer, the Prince of Orange: but to talk of it now, when his birth has never been examined or cleared up, and while he has been bred up to man's estate in popery, and that the worst sort, viz., French popery; and after the parliament of the respective kingdoms uniting in one, have by an unalterable, indissolvable union, settled and entailed the crown upon another head, viz., the present queen, and entailed it after her majesty in the most illustrious house of Hanover, the next of blood in a protestant line: to talk now of proving the birth of the pretender, and of his abjuring his errors and turning protestant, this is a fraud so absurd and ridiculous, that we hope the people of Great Britain can never be blinded with it.