Chapter XXVIII: Appendix: II

PROPOSAL FOR PREVENTING THE
FURTHER GROWTH OF POPERY.

Having, with great sorrow of heart, observed the increase of Popery among us of late years, and how ineffectual the penal laws and statutes of this realm have been, for near forty years last past, towards reclaiming that blind and deluded people from their errors, notwithstanding the good intentions of the legislators, and the pious and unwearied labours of the many learned divines of the Established Church, who have preached to them without ceasing, although hitherto without success:

Having also remarked, in his Grace's speech to both Houses of Parliament, most kind offers of his Grace's good offices towards obtaining such further laws as shall be thought necessary towards bringing home the said wandering sheep into the fold of the Church, as also a good disposition in the parliament to join in the laudable work, towards which every good Protestant ought to contribute at least his advice: I think it a proper time to lay before the public a scheme which was writ some years since, and laid by to be ready on a fit occasion.

That, whereas the several penal laws and statutes now in being against Papists, have been found ineffectual, and rather tend to confirm, than reclaim men from their errors, as calling a man coward, is a ready way to make him fight; It is humbly proposed,

I. That the said penal laws and statutes against Papists, except the law of Gavelkind, and that which disqualifies them for places, be repealed, abrogated, annulled, destroyed, and obliterated, to all intents and purposes.

II. That, in the room of the said penal laws and statutes, all ecclesiastical jurisdiction be taken from out of the hands of the clergy of the established Church, and the same be vested in the several popish archbishops, bishops, deans and arch-deacons; nevertheless so as such jurisdiction be exercised over persons of the Popish religion only.

III. That a Popish priest shall be settled by law in each and every parish in Ireland.

IV. That the said Popish priest shall, on taking the oath of allegiance to his majesty, be entitled to a tenth part or tithe of all things tithable in Ireland, belonging to the papists, within their respective parishes, yet so as such grant of tithes to such Popish priests, shall not be construed, in law or equity, to hinder the Protestant clergyman of such parish from receiving and collecting his tithes in like manner as he does at present.

V. That, in case of detention or subtraction of tithes by any Papist, the parish priest do have his remedy at law in any of his majesty's courts, in the same manner as now practised by the clergy of the Established Church; together with all other ecclesiastical dues. And, for their further discovery to vex their people at law, it might not be amiss to oblige the solicitor-general, or some other able king's counsel, to give his advice, or assistance to such priests gratis, for which he might receive a salary out of the Barrack Fund, Military Contingencies, or Concordatum; having observed the exceedings there better paid than of the army, or any other branch of the establishment; and I would have no delay in payment in a matter of this importance.

VI. That the archbishops and bishops have power to visit the inferior clergy, and to extort proxies, exhibits, and all other perquisites usual in Popish and Protestant countries.

VII. That the convocation having been found, by long experience, to be hurtful to true religion, be for ever hereafter abolished among Protestants.

VIII. That, in the room thereof, the Popish archbishops, bishops, priests, deans, arch-deacons, and proctors, have liberty to assemble themselves in convocation, and be impowered to make such canons as they shall think proper for the government of the Papists in Ireland:

IX. And that, the secular arm being necessary to enforce obedience to ecclesiastical censure, the sheriffs, constables, and other officers, be commanded to execute the decrees and sentences of the said popish convocation, with secrecy and dispatch, or, in lieu thereof, they may be at liberty to erect an inquisition, with proper officers of their own.

X. That, as Papists declare themselves converts to the Established Church, all spiritual power over them shall cease.

XI. That as soon as any whole parish shall renounce the Popish religion, the priest of such parish shall, for his good services, have a pension of £200 per ann. settled on him for life, and that he be from such time exempt from preaching and praying, and other duties of his function, in like manner as protestant divines, with equal incomes, are at present.

XII. That each bishop, so soon as his diocese shall become protestants, be called, My Lord, and have a pension of two thousand pounds per annum during life.

XIII. That when a whole province shall be reclaimed, the archbishop shall be called His Grace, and have a pension of three thousand pounds per ann. during life, and be admitted a member of his majesty's most honourable privy council.

The good consequences of this scheme, (which will execute itself without murmurings against the government) are very visible: I shall mention a few of the most obvious.

I. The giving the priest a right to the tithe would produce law-suits and wrangles; his reverence, being entituled to a certain income at all events, would consider himself as a legal incumbent, and behave accordingly, and apply himself more to fleecing than feeding his flock; his necessary attendance on the courts of justice would leave his people without a spiritual guide; by which means protestant curates, who have no suits about tithes, would be furnished with proper opportunities for making converts, which is very much wanted.

II. The erecting a spiritual jurisdiction amongst them would, in all probability, drive as many out of that communion, as a due execution of such jurisdiction hath hitherto drove from amongst ourselves.

III. An inquisition would still be a further improvement, and most certainly would expedite the conversion of Papists.

I know it may be objected to this scheme, and with some shew of reason, that, should the Popish princes abroad pursue the same methods, with regard to their protestant subjects, the Protestant interest in Europe would thereby be considerably weakened: but as we have no reason to suspect Popish counsels will ever produce so much moderation, I think the objection ought to have but little weight.

A due execution of this scheme will soon produce many converts from Popery; nevertheless, to the end may it be known, when they shall be of the true Church, I have ordered a large parcel of ecclesiastical or Church thermometers to be made, one of which is to be hung up in each parish church, the description and use of which take as follows, in the words of the ingenious Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.

The[1] Church thermometer, which I am now to treat of, is supposed have been invented in the reign of Henry the Eighth, about the time when that religious prince put some to death for owning the Pope's supremacy, and others for denying transubstantiation. I do not find, however, any great use made of this instrument till it fell into the hand of a learned and vigilant priest or minister, (for he frequently wrote himself both the one and the other) who was some time Vicar of Bray. This gentleman lived in his vicarage to a good old age; and after having seen several successions of his neighbouring clergy either burnt or banished, departed this life with the satisfaction of having never deserted his flock, and died Vicar of Bray. As this glass was first designed to calculate the different degrees of heat in religion, as it raged in Popery, or as it cooled, and grew temperate in the Reformation, it was marked at several distances, after the manner our ordinary thermometer is to this day, viz. extreme hot sultry hot, very hot, hot, warm, temperate, cold, just freezing, frost, hard frost, great frost, extreme cold.

[Footnote 1: In the "Tatler" this paragraph is preceded by the following: "_From my own apartment, Sept. 4._--Having received many letters filled with compliments and acknowledgments for my late useful discovery of the political barometer, I shall here communicate to the publican account of my ecclesiastical thermometer, the latter giving as manifest prognostications of the changes and revolutions in Church, as the former does of those in State, and both of them being absolutely necessary for every prudent subject who is resolved to keep what he has, and get what he can." [T.S.]]

It is well known, that Torricellius,[2] the inventor of the common weather-glass, made the experiment of a long tube which held thirty-two foot of water; and that a more modern virtuoso finding such a machine altogether unwieldly and useless, and considering that thirty-two inches of quicksilver weighed as much as so many foot of water in a tube of the same circumference, invented that sizeable instrument which is now in use. After this manner, that I might adapt the thermometer I am now speaking of to the present constitution of our Church, as divided into High and Low, I have made some necessary variations both in the tube and the fluid it contains. In the first place I ordered a tube to be cast in a planetary hour, and took care to seal it hermetically, when the sun was in conjunction with Saturn. I then took the proper precautions about the fluid, which is a compound of two different liquors; one of them a spirit drawn out of a strong heady wine; the other a particular sort of rock-water, colder than ice, and clearer than crystal. The spirit is of a red, fiery colour, and so very apt to ferment, that, unless it be mingled with a proportion of the water, or pent up very close, it will burst the vessel that holds it, and fly up in a fume and smoke. The water, on the contrary, is of such a subtile, piercing cold, that, unless it be mingled with a proportion of the spirits, it will sink almost through every thing it is put into, and seems to be of the same nature as the water mentioned by Quintus Curtius, which says the historian, could be contained in nothing but in the hoof, or (as the Oxford Manuscript has it) the skull of an ass. The thermometer is marked according to the following figure, which I set down at length, not only to give my reader a clear idea of it, but also to fill up my paper.

[Footnote 2: Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647) was assistant to Galileo, and is famous as the discoverer of the phenomena on which he made the barometer. In 1644 he published "Opera Geometrica." [T.S.]]

Ignorance.
Persecution.
Wrath.
Zeal.
CHURCH.
Moderation.
Lukewarmness.
Infidelity.
Ignorance.

The reader will observe, that the Church is placed in the middle point of the glass between Zeal and Moderation, the situation in which she always flourishes, and in which every good Englishman wishes her, who is a friend to the constitution of his country. However, when it mounts to Zeal, it is not amiss; and, when it sinks to Moderation, it is still in admirable temper. The worst of it is, that when once it begins to rise, it has still an inclination to ascend, insomuch that it is apt to climb from Zeal to Wrath, and from Wrath to Persecution, which often ends in Ignorance, and very often proceeds from it. In the same manner it frequently takes its progress through the lower half of the glass; and, when it has a tendency to fall, will gradually descend from Moderation to Lukewarmness, and from Lukewarmness to Infidelity, which very often terminates in Ignorance, and always proceeds from it.

It is a common observation, that the ordinary thermometer will be affected by the breathing of people who are in the room where it stands, and indeed it is almost incredible to conceive how the glass I am now describing, will fall by the breath of the multitude crying Popery; or, on the contrary, how it will rise when the same multitude (as it sometimes happens) cry out in the same breath, _The Church is in Danger_.

As soon as I have finished this my glass, and adjusted it to the above-mentioned scale of religion, that I might make proper experiments with it, I carried it under my cloak to several coffee-houses, and other places of resort, about this great city. At Saint James's Coffee-house the liquor stood at Moderation; but at Will's, to my extreme surprise, it subsided to the very lowest mark of the glass. At the Grecian it mounted but just one point higher; at the Rainbow it still ascended two degrees; Child's fetched it up to Zeal, and other adjacent coffee-houses to Wrath.

It fell in the lower half of the glass as I went further into the City, till at length it settled at Moderation, where it continued all the time I stayed about the Change, as also whilst I passed by the Bank. And here I cannot but take notice, that, through the whole course of my remarks, I never observed my glass to rise at the same time that the stocks did.

To complete the experiment, I prevailed upon a friend of mine, who works under me in the occult sciences, to make a progress with my glass through the whole Island of Great Britain; and, after his return, to present me with a register of his observations. I guessed beforehand at the temper of several places he passed through, by the characters they have had time out of mind. Thus that facetious divine, Dr. Fuller,[3] speaking of the town of Banbury near a hundred years ago, tells us, it was a place famous for cakes and zeal, which I find by my glass is true to this day, as to the latter part of his description; though I must confess, it is not in the same reputation for cakes that it was in the time of that learned author; and thus of other places. In short, I have now by me, digested in an alphabetical order, all the counties, corporations, and boroughs in Great Britain, with their respective tempers, as they stand related to my thermometer. But this I shall keep to myself, because I would by no means do any thing that may seem to influence any ensuing election.

[Footnote 3: Thomas Fuller, D.D. (1608-1661) was the author of "History of the Worthies of England," "History of the Holy War," and many other works distinguished for their humour and style. [T.S.]]

The point of doctrine which I would propagate by this my invention, is the same which was long ago advanced by that able teacher Horace, out of whom I have taken my text for this discourse: We should be careful not to over-shoot ourselves in the pursuits even of virtue. Whether zeal or moderation be the point we aim at, let us keep fire out of the one, and frost out of the other. But, alas! the world is too wise to want such a precaution. The terms High-Church and Low-Church, as commonly used, do not so much denote a principle, as they distinguish a party. They are like words of battle, they have nothing to do with their original signification, but are only given out to keep a body of men together, and to let them know friends from enemies.

I must confess I have considered, with some attention, the influence which the opinions of these great national sects have upon their practice; and do look upon it as one of the unaccountable things of our times, that multitudes of honest gentlemen, who entirely agree in their lives, should take it in their heads to differ in their religion.[4]

[Footnote 4: Here the "Tatler" paper ends. [T.S.]]

I shall conclude this paper with an account of a conference which happened between a very excellent divine (whose doctrine was easy, and formerly much respected) and a lawyer.

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And behold a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

He said unto him, What is written in the law? How readest thou?

And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.

And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right; this do, and thou shalt live.

But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?

And Jesus answering, said; A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.

And by chance there came down a certain priest that way; and, when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.

But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was; and, when he saw him, he had compassion on him.

And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine; and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

And on the morrow, when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him, and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.

Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?

And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise. Luke x. 25 to 38.

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