And now, Beloved, if you have any Regard to your Country, which lies bleeding under these dreadful Extremities, bring the King to his just and undoubted Right. That is the only Way to be freed from these Misfortunes, and to secure all those Rights and Privileges which are in Danger at present. King James has promis’d to protect and defend the Church of England; He has given his Royal Word to consent to such Laws, which you your selves shall think necessary to be made for its Preservation. And his Majesty is a Prince of that Justice, Vertue and Honour, that you have no manner of Reason to doubt the Performance of his Royal Promise. He studies nothing so much as how to make you all Easy and Happy; and whenever he comes to his Kingdom, I doubt not but you will be so.
REMARKS.
This Paragraph continues Parson Paul’s rebellious Declamation, which is very well adapted to the Cause he dy’d for. ’Tis the Encomium of a false Prophet upon a spurious and counterfeit Prince, who stands attainted by our Laws as an Impostor. But were it otherwise, the Parson dies with a Lye in his right hand as to the Character of his pretended King: for the World knows, that instead of giving that Security which the Parson promises in his Name for the Church of England, he would not so much as take an Oath for supporting the Traitor’s dear Brethren, the Nonjuring Episcopal Party in Scotland; in which perhaps he was right, since a Nonjuring Church ought to have a Nonjuring King. Nay, he would not so much as countenance the Church-of-England Liturgy with his Presence, because he lik’d the Mass in Latin better. In short, there wanted nothing to make this Paragraph a compleat intelligible Lye, but that the Parson, to the Qualities of Justice, Vertue and Honour, which he ascribes to his King, should have added Valour; a Quality as applicable to a finish’d Coward, as those of Vertue, Honour, and Justice are to one bred up in the Idolatry of Rome, and the Tyrannical Maxims of France: and that this is the Pretender’s Character, we can prove by Queen Anne’s Speech to Parliament in 1708.
The SPEECH.
I shall be heartily glad, good People, if what I have said has any effect upon you, so as to be instrumental in making you perform your Duty. It is out of my power now to do any thing more to serve the King, than by employing some of the few Minutes I have to live in this World, in praying to Almighty God to shower down his Blessings Spiritual and Temporal upon his Head, to protect him and restore him, to be favourable to his Undertaking, to prosper him here, and to reward him hereafter. I beseech the same Infinite Goodness to preserve and defend the Church of England, and to restore it to all its just Rights and Privileges: and lastly, I pray God have mercy upon me, pardon my Sins, and receive my Soul into his everlasting Kingdom; that with the Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles and Martyrs, I may praise and magnify him for ever and ever. Amen.
REMARKS.
Had not the High-Church Faction been bred up in as much Ignorance by their Priests, as those of Rome, the Parson could never have hop’d that his pitiful Rhapsody would be any way instrumental to make them perform what he calls their Duty; which in plain English (as the Act to oblige Papists to register their Persons and Estates, well expresses it) is ‘to dethrone and murder his Sacred Majesty, to destroy our present happy Establishment, to settle a Popish Pretender on the Throne, to destroy the Protestant Religion, and cruelly to murder and massacre its Professors.’ None but such barbarous Priests as Mr. Paul could exhort them to do this, and none but such ignorant Bigots could swallow the Suggestions of Hell as Christian Doctrine: and since this is the way in which the High Church Party, when brought to the Gallows, pretend to forgive their Enemies, we may easily guess at their Clemency, had Heaven, for our Sins, have suffer’d their Arms to prevail.
The Prayers of the Parson’s last Minutes for the Pretender, are answerable to Mr. Paul’s Behaviour during the Course of his Life. It would seem however, that he had forgot the Order of the Toasts, which was follow’d by his Brethren in the last Reign, to put the Church before the Queen; for here he has put his King before his Church. But his Prayers are like to be equally effectual in both respects; for God will not hear the Petitions of those who regard Iniquity in their Hearts, as ’tis plain this Parson did.
He should however have told us what those Just Rights and Privileges are, to which he prays the Church of England might be restor’d, or he could not expect our Amen. ’Tis certain she enjoys as many Privileges now, and is as well secur’d in them, as she has been at any time since the Reformation. But if he meant that she should be restor’d to all the Church-Lands, which were enjoy’d by the Secular and Regular Clergy in time of Popery; that the Clergy should be Independent on the State, as they pretended to be then, but could never obtain it; that the High-Church Writ, de Hæretico Comburendo, should be reviv’d; that some of the Inferior Clergy should sit in the House of Commons, instead of the Popish Priors; that others should sit in the House of Lords, instead of the Mitred Abbots; or, in a word, that it should be in the power of the High-Church Clergy to King and Unking, to Christen and Unchristen whom they pleas’d. If these are the Privileges and Liberties he wants to have restor’d, his Prayers will never be granted by God, because they are contrary to his reveal’d Will, nor listen’d to by Englishmen, till they put off human Nature, and degenerate into Brutes.
The Clergyman at last comes to take some Care of his own Soul, and prays that his Sins may be pardon’d, and that he may be receiv’d into the Everlasting Kingdom, among Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, and Martyrs: but ’tis observable, that in his whole Speech he does not pray for any one thing thro the Merits of Christ; which shew’d how little he understood the Gospel that he pretended to preach, and gives us too just Ground to conclude, that as he did not live like a Christian, he did not die one.