The English nonconformity as under King Charles II and King James II truly stated…

L. Obj. XIV. But they say that it's by you that we are in danger of Popery, because you keep up their hopes of a toleration by your divisions weakening us.

L. Obj. XIV. But they say that it's by you that we are in danger of Popery, because you keep up their hopes of a toleration by your divisions weakning us.

M. They may of the two say more probably it is we that bring in Prelacy, Lay Excommunicators, Ceremonies, Liturgies: For of the two, we have done less against these than against Popery, and stand not at so great a distance from them: The impudency of some men is the shame of depraved humane nature. They know that it is for being more against Popery than they are, that our ruin is so implacably endeavoured. They know that the Papists are our chiefest prosecutors, thinking that if they could destroy us as their greatest adversaries, they should bring the Church of England to their will, and that it is but appropriating the name of Popery to the Italian Faction that set the ⟨p. 221⟩Pope above Councils, and calling the rest by a better Name, and cutting off a few shreds named by Heylin in the Life of Arch-bishop Laud, and it's done. They know that it is for drawing so near to Popery that the Non-Conformists Dissent from them; and take it for granted that those men that are labouring to bring in Popery, are the forwardest to make this putid accusation of us; and that it hath been their labour these two and twenty years to have forced us to yield to an universal toleration, and to petition for it, that they might bring in Popery, and then say it is we that did it, and that for denying this and being unreconcilable to Popery, the Papists are so unreconcilable to us, as that nothing will satisfy them but our utter extirpation, of which they would make blind, sensual, debauched, malignant men that call themselves Protestants the instruments. And how many of their pillars have written for a foreign Jurisdiction and defend Grotius, I have told you before. And to this day that Priest that is nearest to Popery, is the bitterest enemy to the Non-Conformists, and most preacheth for their destruction: And these brazen-faced men cannot endure an honest Conformist that doth but prefer Protestants that dissent from their fetters before the Papists: And those Bishops and Arch-bishops and the very Church of England in their times, that were most against Popery, are their scorn and hatred, as you may see in Heylin's reproach of Arch-Bishop Abbot, and the Bishops and Convocation, except six Bishops in his days: