The Good Catholic no Bad Subject.  
Or, A LETTER FROM A CATHOLLCK GENTLEMAN TO Mr. RICHARD BAXTER.  
Modestly accepting the Challenge by him made in his Sermon of Repentance, Preached before the Honourable HOUSE of COMMONS, 30 April, 1660.  GAL. 5.26. 
Non efficiamur inanis gloriae cupidi, invicem provocantes, invicem invidentes.  
LONDON, Printed in the Year 1660.   

The Good Catholic no Bad Subject. OR, A Letter from a Catholic Gentleman to Mr. Richard Baxter.  
SIR,  
SInce, I presume, you desire an Adversary, who use the diligence of a public Challenge to procure one, and that none will think it strange, you should be solicited to perform what you have so solemnly undertaken; All I have to do, is, in few words, to acquaint my Reader, (who, I think, will see it reasonable you should be opposed,) why you are opposed by me.  
I am a person, by the infinite Grace of God, bred up in the Catholic Religion, from which I have learned, my Duty to God cannot be complied with, without an exact performance of my Duty to my Sovereign: To obey him, not for advantage, or temporal concerns, but out of conscience; and because such is the known will of him, the obedience to whose commands is Religion, has always made a part of mine, being a point, as all other which belong to my Faith, preached by he Apostles, and from them derived to me by the ministry of those persons his sacred wisdom has appointed to succeed them.  
This Doctrine instilled into my youth by Catechisms, confirmed to my riper years by Sermons and Conferences, and possessing my soul with so settled a belief, that I did not think any body could pretend to know what Catholic Doctrine is, and not know that this is a part of it, occasioned a strange surprise in me, when Chance seconding my Curiosity, in giving me a fight of your Sermon preached before the Honourable House of Commons, Apr. 30. 1660. of which I had heard something before, I found in it a plain Challenge, and undertaking to prove against any Adversary, That a Papist must cease to be a Papist, if he will be truly or fully loyal to his Sovereign. Had you said only, Loyalty were no part of his Religion, and that he performed his Allegiance by the help of s●me other Virtue, (though an indifferent Judge would wonder you should have better intelligence of their Religion, than themselves, who certainly know, and from the certain knowledge profess it teaches Loyalty to be a Divine indispensable Command) the Assertion, however it would have been altogether as false, would perhaps have appeared not altogether so exotic. But to deny Loyalty not only an admittance into, but a consistence with his Religion, and put an unavoidable necessity upon him, of being eihter a Traitor to God, by renouncing his Faith, or a Traitor to his Sovereign, by renouncing his Allegiance, is a Paradox of that wonderful excess, that I know not whether is greater, the confidence to assert, or impossibility to maintain it. How, Sir, will you undertake to prove, A Catholic must necessarily desert either God, or his King, who, I think, cannot, I am sure, should not be ignorant, that to render what is Caesar's to Caesar, does as truly belong to his Religion, as to render what is Gods to God That he makes not distinct Duties of these, but believes his Obedience to Caesar is so much a part of his Obedience to God; that the later cannot be performed without the former? In fine, you, who, with that strong judgement Fame, and I think Desert, gives you to be Master of, cannot but see, were there nothing to intercept the prospect, that a Papist, who is not truly loyal, is not truly a Papist, if the not being faithfully obedient to what is taught by a Religion, make a man cease to be of it.  
But, as it is not for me, to pry into what it was that moved you to assert this Paradox, so your care in publishing it, suffers none to be ignorant that you have asserted it, and by doing so cast an aspersion upon a sort of people, whose tried Loyalty in all vicissitudes of dangerous troubles, as it should have altered your judgement, so their long and grievous sufferings, whereof their Loyalty was one, and perhaps the only cause, should, from the charity of your profession, have found, rather pity for their afflictions, than aspersions upon their innocence.  
And yet, in the small Sphere of my acquaintance, I find very little forwardness to use any other defence, then silent patience, hitherto their only shield, against the many, and heavy blows, which (to borrow the mildest expression the condescendence of charity affords me,) mistaken Zeal has so long given their Fames and Fortunes; and a greater disposition to have recourse to heaven for an increase of strength, as the blow grows heavier, then to endeavour to lighten the burden they groan under. But for my part, I must confess the value I set upon Religion and Allegiance, makes me not endure to be deprived of either of them at any rate; and however I may be reconciled to all other miseries, I am not able to bear that of deserving to be miserable.  
Besides, I apprehend silence in this case would amount, or at least be misinterpreted to a confession; and that a Charge accompanied with such circumstances, would, if not cleared, be looked upon as a Sentence, and the world take it for granted, nothing could be pleaded to it, but Guilty. I know I am Minimus inter Tribus Israel, little known even among those of my own Religion; but as loyal as any, and as certain of my Obligation to be so. I know also the concern is general, and greater than to be trusted to any one man's ability, especially such a one as is truly conscious of his own insufficiency; Neither do I undertake this Demand of Satisfaction vainly, or without just occasion offered, but as I have my share in the injury, I have also a title to be righted; and; since no better Champion appears to defend me, think, I both may and aught to defend myself.  
In the face of the world therefore, I require you to perform your undertaking, and desire you to reflect, and every body take notice, That if you prove not what you profess you are ready to do, viz. That a Papist must cease to be a Papist, if he will be truly and fully loyal to his Sovereign, you are guilty of the breach of charity to your Neighbour, in as great a height as circumstances can improve a sin to. For to say nothing of the time, when the joyful and long prayed for Victory of Right over Ambition and Tyranny fills the Kingdom with comfortable hopes, That the privileges of Birthright shall no more be forfeited, but by real and really proved misdemeanours: to say nothing of the Great Auditory before whom you preached, persons, of whose wisdom the Nation has given so signal a Testimony, and of whose Counsels his Majesty has expressed so tender a regard: Be pleased to consider, 'tis no one you asperse, but many, and those, who, of all that lay claim to so regarded a Title, give the best evidence of being truly tender Consciences, since for them they suffer so generally, so constantly, so deeply. Neither is it a small fault you charge them with, but that Monster of sins, Treason, and that not only by the violence of passion once committed, but such as is impossible not to be always committed. And all this with so notorious a publickness, that none can be ignorant of your charge, as I hope none will be ignorant of our innocence.  
Now I beseech you join all these together, and see (if yours do prove an offence) whether Chance could light upon, or Industry contrive greater aggravations. Consider therefore, Sir, what you have done, and what you are to do; and either prove what you have so solemnly undertaken, or practise what you have as solemnly taught; give an example to the world of that serious and true Repentance you so excellently delivered to your Auditory. But prove it effectually, and let not the Question, when we come to grasp it, vanish away by the artifice of some deceitful word. You have raised in the hearts and thoughts of as many as have either heard or read your Sermon, I conceive, an uncharitable, and unjust apprehension: If it prove so, I hope the reparation you will make, shall not be by the fallacy of some term, to which your Art may perhaps give another sense, than you have caused by it in others, to save yourself from the obligation of making any.  
And yet, to deal plainly, I cannot but be jealous of the expressions you use. For why do you call us Papists? You know we have another name, and are not perhaps such men as you make us pass for by that Term: We owe no blind servile obedience to any upon earth, that can ensnare our Judgements to any thing contrary to those Divine Truths brought from Heaven by our Saviour, to bring us up to Heaven, planted by his Apostles, and preserved by his Spouse the Church. I presume you intent by it a Name of Religion, not Opinion; for 'tis the Faith of Christ I am to lay down my life for, but know no Obligation to lose a Pins head for the fancies of any private man.  
The again what mean you by a true and full Loyalty? Those Epithets seem to me no more than the issue of a fruitful fancy; since a Loyalty which is not a true one, is truly no Loyalty: as false money is no money; and as half a pint is not a pint; so if any thing want of full Loyalty, how near soever you approach it is not Loyalty. I do not therefore see any necessity of those terms; Loyalty in the natural acception of words, saying both true and full Loyalty: as a shilling signifies both Twelve pence and good Silver.  
Under your term of Loyalty too, I conceive you do not comprehend any obligations contradictory to the great one to which all others ought to be subservient; neither of us being, I hope, guilty of that impious flattery, to imagine any duty can be a duty, which is inconsistent with that first and chiefest duty we own to our Maker and Preserver. I beseech you therefore let all these Terms be defined, that the Question may not vanish from us in the mist of the words we use in treating it. That which I, and I think every one else, apprehends by your words, is that this Kingdom holds a sort of people, whose Birthright indeed gives them a title to the Protection of the Laws and privileges of Community, but whose Religion, by misteaching them in their duty to their King and Country, renders them unworthy of those advantages. This is what I apprehend, and what you are to prove.  
Now if you should man by Papist something which I am not; by True and Full Loyalty, something which I either do pay, or which none are bound to pay: Your words indeed would be innocent, but the artifice of wresting them to oppose innocence, little suitable to your Condition. And that, as I desire not to be mistaken in your meaning, none may be so in my sentiments, I conceive myself comprehended in your assertion, but know no reason why I should deserve the name you express it in, more than that I am of the Communion of those men whose Faith and Government was taught and instituted by Christ and his Apostles, and by their successors conveyed in an uninterrupted Delivery down to us. I believe, and what I profess to you in the face of the world, I am ready by Oath to confirm to all men in the face of heaven, That my Loyalty to my Sovereign is an indispensable duty from which no power Spiritual, or Temporal, Domestic or Foreign, under any pretence of Excommunication, Deposition, or any other whatsoever, can free me either wholly or in part; and till I am called upon to do it more solemnly, I here do in the mean time renounce hearty all Dispensations, Absolutions, and whatsoever to the contrary which may raise jealousy in my Sovereign, or dissatisfaction in my fellow Subjects, professing that notwithstanding any such pretext, if any should happen to be, I will by the grace of God, perform my Allegiance truly and fully as every good Subject is bound to do. This is my Religion; this is what I have been taught in It concerning Loyalty; and what the occasion has prompted me to digress into: since however the Confession I make be impertinent to the business I have in hand (my task being to oppose what you say, not to say all I know myself) it will not I hope be unwelcome to the Reader, at least to such an one as desires his judgement should be built upon the unmoveable foundation of Truth, of which in things of this nature, there is no greater evidence than the testimony of such as certainly know what they say, and faithfully say what they know.  
But to return to our work; I utterly deny your Assertion, professing to all the world 'tis not true, That a Papist must cease to be a Papist, if he will be truly and fully Loyal to his Sovereign; and before all the world demand of you to prove it, as you have undertaken. If you show me disloyal, I acknowledge I ought, and seriously profess I will repent: if you cannot, lay your hand on your heart, and consider what 'tis to make an innocent man, nay, so many innocent men pass for guilty, and guilty of so execrable a crime as Treason; in which case I hope you will need no admonition to repent yourself.  
FINIS.