THere is nothing which of late hath been more surprizing than the consideration of the wonderful Industry which a sort of Deluded People, for so in charity I would di­stinguish some of them, from others who act out of Malice, Interest, and Revenge, and what pains they have taken to make themselves and all others uneasy: and to see this toilsome and laborious Diligence, ine­vitably and in its natural and most rational consequences, tending to the pulling down upon their own heads the united vengeance of Heaven and Earth, the severity of Humane Laws, which by provoking, they daily exasperate to use the utmost rigor, and the more terrible and inexorable punishments of Hell and Damnation, as certainly the portion of those who resist the Higher Powers as that there is a God, and that the Scriptures are so true, that Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but not one single Iota of those dreadful Comminations pass unfulfilled. This conside­ration, as it increases my astonishment, so it moves my compassion; nor is the Compassion I have for the Dissenters from the Government of England, for such indeed are all those who are commonly called Dissenters from the Church, and eò Nomine punished by the Laws of the Civil Government, the Peace of which they disturb and endanger, only a bare pity, which looks no farther then a few tender Expressions, Alas poor Creatures! or God help them! or such like; but I have long had in my thoughts to do some­thing that might tend to their real advantage, and secure them from the dangerous Precipice of Ruin here, and Damnation hereafter, upon which they seem to stand.

It is the misfortune of these People, to have the blind lead the blind, their pretended Guides blinded with Rage, and the fear of losing their Shrine-making, which brings them in their Gains, will not let them see their danger, but exhort them to obstinacy against the Laws and Govern­ment, under the colour of Constancy and suffering Persecution for Reli­gion, when there is not the least foundation of truth in it; and they wildly buoy them up with expectations of some miraculous deliverance from Heaven, while in the mean time, they endeavour to draw all their hopes of assistance from Hell; and support them in their obstinacy a­gainst the Laws, and their Lawful Governours, by the expectation of a revolution in the Government it self, which they have and do with their utmost art and industry endeavour to undermine and overthrow.

The successless attempts they have of late made against it, would if they would sit down and bestow a few moments cool Reflection, be suf­ficient to convince them, that they are not at all either the Care or the Favourites of Heaven; and I am perswaded, that would they but see how like Pharaoh and his Chariots, and his Horse-men, and all his Host, they have pursued the Church into the midst of the Sea, and that the Waves [Page 2]have begun to return towards their strength, that the Wheels of their Chariots have been so often taken off, and have driven so heavily, they would be obliged to say with the Egyptians, Let us fly from the face of the English Israel, for God sighteth for them against the Egyptian Dissenters; and I wish they do not by their obstinacy drive the Allegory too far, and re­pent when it is too late.

Among all the variety of thoughts upon which I might fix, in order to do this miserable and mistaken People a real kindness, I could not think of any more proper, than the exposing to their view one of the great occa­sions of their Delusion, the late E. of Shaftsbury, the diseases of whose Mind lay in a great measure concealed from their eyes so long as he lived, as many times those of the Body do to the most learned sons of Hermes, till the death of their Patients, does by dissection of their bodies give satisfaction to their doubts and curiosity; and not only so, but may be of advantage too to the living, by shewing the true causes of some effects, which were before wholly unknown, and therefore incurable: And truly this is the principal reason of this Anatomy Lecture upon the Life and Death of that Noble Peer. And if we find in his Character, that his Religion was always calculated for the Latitude of his Interests and De­signs, that he could therefore certainly have none, who could be occasio­nally contented with any; that he could under an Usurper countenance and promote the trampling down of the Laws and Liberties of the En­glish Nation, and therefore could not by inward Principles be an Enemy either to Popery or Arbitrary Government; it may be a means to unde­ceive such as have been seduced by his Speeches and Professions, to be­lieve him so great a Pillar of the Protestant Religion, and so strong a Bastion against Arbitrary Government; and not only so, but may teach them for the future, to give no credit to any such, who hereafter by a sTATE Metempsychosis, shall seem to have received the Soul of Shaft sbury by transmigration, and shall with the same principles and pretences stand in opposition to the established Government, and thereby endeavour to maintain their Ground, and secure their own heads from punishment, by courting and animating a Popular Faction to oppose the Govern­ment, which in all humane probability must end in the ruin and confu­sion of those refractory and obstinate opposers of the Peace and Happi­ness of the Nation. I know it will look like a cowardly and ungenerous insolence, to tread hard upon the fame of the Dead, and if it contradicts the old Proverb, De mortuis nil nisi bonum, to speak well of the Dead, I must say this by way of Anticipation to that Objection, that the dead must first have deserved to be well spoken of; and that the intention of this Paper was never level'd at so low a mark as to trample upon the Fame of his Lordship, but to prevent the mischiefs which yet he may do even af­ter his death, if the world shall still be permitted to go on in the belief that his Lordship was all that which he pretended to be; and others who shall step up into the place of this head of the Hydra, which Providence hath newly cut off, shall be also supposed to succeed him in those imagi­nary Qualifications and Excellencies of Zeal for his Country and the Pro­testant Religion, which this Paper undertakes to demonstrate he was as far from, as Catiline, or Sejanus, or their far surpassing Oliver, ever were from being Friends to their Country, the Liberty, Peace and Happiness of the People who had the misfortune to be under the power of their Ty­ranny.

This Noble Peer was born in the County of Dorset, to a competent good fortune, but with a spirit which very early shewed he was of a tur­bulent, restless and changeable Temper, rather subtile than Politick, and malicious than Wise; and to contribute to this unsetled humour, especi­ally in Religion, he was committed in his Minority to the tuition of one Mr. Strong, a Nonconformist Minister, whom afterwards, in gratitude, he got preferred for his Excellent Talent in haranguing the People a­gainst the King and the established Government both in Church and State, to be placed at St. Margarets in Westminster, as I doubt not but diverse still living there can remember: From this Minister he received those early prejudices against Episcopacy, which stuck by him to his last; and it may be, the wanting of a good Foundation of that Apostolical and Primitive Christianity taught and maintained in the Church of England, did not only prejudice him against that constitution and form of Govern­ment, but gave him, as it hath done thousands besides, those loose and rolling sands of opinion, which makes them shift their Religion with e­very tide of alteration in matters of State.

Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, for such was then his Title, was very young at the breaking out of the late Horrid Rebellion raised by the Faction of Dissenting Protestants, which were united in one common interest (the only way that I know of Uniting Dissenters) against the King and the e­stablished Church and Government; and in the beginning of the Civil War, he was Captain of a Troop of Horse in the Royal Party, though there do not remain upon Record any great Monuments of his Chivalry; but the Kings affairs beginning, after many sharp conflicts with the Re­bels, to be in some disorder, the young Knight Errant, who was resolved that Victory should be his Mistress; upon what party soever she bestows her smiles, quickly turned Apostate, and at the same time, with his Troop, quitted his Loyalty and the Kings Service.

The young Deserter, who now began to set up for a Polititian, was a very welcome man among the Traitors, for this seasonable Treason; and it was not long before he got into the Commons House, where he met with notable Tutors in Antimonarchical, Rebellious, and Seditious Po­liticks; and his natural Talents lying that way, he quickly grew a Profi­cient in all the Arts of traducing the King, his Ministers and Government, and haranguing the Nation out of all the little remainders of Loyalty, by frighting them with the Dangers and Fears of Popery and Arbitrary Go­vernment; with which as they had first excited the People of the seve­ral Sects and Schisms, Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, Brownists, &c. to rebel, so they animated them to persist desperately in that unnatural War, by telling them, that should the King and Royal Party prevail, Pope­ry and Arbitrary Power would inevitably swallow up all. By these Arts they prevailed to that degree, that the whole World was a witness of the infamous Tragedy, which was acted upon the Person of the most Excel­lent Prince King CHARLES the First.

But it happening that the Traitors who had been Ʋnanimous so long as the King had either Interest, Power or Life, which they could fear, when by taking away his, they thought they had secured their own lives, af­ter having divided the Kings and Church Lands, and the spoil of the whole Nation, among themselves, this Ʋnton came to be dissolved; and the Independents having supplanted the Presbyterians in the Army, the Army were resolved to dissolve the Parliament, and Rule by the power of [Page 4]the Sword: And here our little Polititian again turns Renegado to the Par­liament, as before he had done to the King; and judging that Oliver was now like to be the Supream Governour of the Nation, he immediately strikes in with his Interest, and contributes his utmost endeavours to make him Lord Protector of the three Kingdoms; and that he might rivet himself the closer into the favour of the Usurper, he was very sollicitous to marry Cromwell's Daughter, that so though he could not have the honor himself, his Posterity however might come to be Princes of the Blood: But though he was not very successful in his Amours, yet he was in his Politicks still, for he got to be of the Protectors Council of State, where, to the Book, his Hand, A. A. Cooper, may be seen to a thousand of the most Arbitrary, Illegal, and Tyrannical Orders, for the raising of Money without Act of Parliament, and for imprisoning the Subjects contrary to Magna Charta, and the so much Magnified Petition of Right: Nay his little Honor, for he was not yet a Peer, was also then a violent Persecutor of the People of the Lord, following the example of Oliver, and the thriving Religion, who filled the Jails with Quakers, notwithstanding they were very good Protestant Dissenters, and many of them had been helpful to him, in Cur­sing Meroz, and fighting the Lords Battels against the Mighty.

The disappointment however of the honour of being the Protectors Son-in-Law, did not a little shock the Ambition of Sir Anthony, and ha­ving a most admirable faculty of never forgiving any person, or to speak in his own Language, having ever the good fortune to be revenged upon those who did him any injury, though for the present he put it in his Pocket, yet it was but as he did his Book of Memoires, to be ready upon occasion to return it with a vengeance; and therefore the same whirlwind that hurried away Oliver, inspired the Triple-named Knight with resolu­tions to quit scores with that trifle of a Protectoret Richard, for the sins of his Father Oliver, in refusing him his alliance: So soon therefore as he saw Queen Dick begin to totter in the Coach-box of Government, he was resolved to have one whip or two at the pamper'd Jades in the Harness, not doubting but to break the neck of the Charrioteer, although his Fa­ther had the fortune to escape the danger of the Horses presented to him by the German Prince in Hyde-Park; he got in therefore with the Rump, who voted down Richard's highness into plain Dick Cromwell again; and in all those several turns, where the Government was made a meer Foot­ball, and now the Rump run away with it, then the Committee of Safety got a kick at it, sometimes Wallingford-House had it at their foot, some­times Lambert and his Levellers, Sir Anthony still was at the Goal of the Winning Party, ever giving those whose heels were last tript up the Go-by; as true to his Principles as the reeling Needle in a Storm is to its beloved North, which though it be twirled about the 32 points of the Compass, yet at last settles and points to its kind Star: So did our Knight, who was always resolved to be somebody, and to sail by the Star of his own Interest, let the wind blow from what quarter of the World it plea­sed.

The Nation grown weary of this tumbling and tossing of the Go­vernment from one hand to another of the Factious true Protestant Rebels, begun after the dear bought Experience of being seduced, at the rate of so many Millions of Treasure and whole Seas of Christian blood, to grow weary of the pretended Reformation and Reformers, of the standing Ar­mies, Major Generals, Free Quarter, and Endless Taxations, with which [Page 5]they were oppressed, to defend that Freedome and Liberty which they found was in reality a most intolerable slavery; and now it was evident that Ship-money and all the Monopolies, were but as a little finger of the Kings compared to the Loins or Rump of a Parliament, and there seemed to be such an Universal Wish throughout the three Nations, for the Restauration of the King, our now Gracious Soveraign, that wise Men every where now began to see it must be so; the best most ardently hoping it, and the worst who feared it, struck with such a pannick fear and horror that they durst not oppose it; and General Monk who with the first perceived the Motion of the Angel in this Troubled Pool, was re­solved to help the Cripled Kingdoms into the Water, that they might be healed. And here our Polititian made a most meritorious virtue of Ne­cessity, as many others of the Faction did, who glory much of their help­ing to restore his Majesty, when in truth, they saw if they did not, it would be done without their help. Sir Anthony finding the wind freshing up thus strongly for the Coast of Loyalty, brought all his Tacks aboard, and stood in with Monk with all the Sail he could make, to bring in the King, cunningly foreseeing that this would bring him into Reputation and Play again under Monarchy, as he had before been against it; but for a parting blow however, he was one of those who thought to have broken Monk's neck, and thereby have made their own Game, by imposing up­on him that Arbitrary Order and the greatest affront that was ever done to the City of London, by pulling down their Gates, Posts and Chains, and marching his whole Army into the City. These were then no Crimes with Sir A. A. Cooper, no Violations of the City Charter; though lately the marching of the Royal Guards through it, and the Guards them­selves, have by him and his Party been thought and called a thou­sand Standing Armies and Illegal, Arbitrary, Mercenary Popish Guards, and motions made not to permit any of them to march through the City of London.

Well, in comes the King, and (with his August and Sacred Person and Government) Law, Liberty and the best Reformed Government and Re­ligion in the World, Peace and Plenty Crown the Land, Joy and Glad­ness smiles in every Face, nay the greatest of his own and his Fathers Enemies, the infamous Regicides only excepted, drink Brimmers of the Royal Bounty, all are pardoned, many preferred to places of Honor, Trust and Reputation: And if you will but draw the Curtain, you shall see Sir Anthony sitting as a Judge at the Old Bayley, helping to Hang Draw and Quarter his Quondam Masters, whose treasonous Commands he had for­merly obeyed, but had the good luck to keep his hand from Bradshaws Ink. So true it is, Ille Crucem sceleris pretium tulit his Diadema; For not long af­ter those notorious Villains deservedly got their Necks incircled with a Halter, Sir Anthony got his Temples impaled with a Coronet, being advan­ced to the honour of a Baron of England, and Chancellor of the Exche­quer; and indeed running so very hard up the hill of his own Ambition, which was to be the Premiere Minister of State, very many who then observed it, made presages of what hath since fallen out.

Not long after, happened the difference between his Majesty and the States of the United Netherlands; and as the Noble and never enough La­mented Earl of Ossory told him, (upon occasion of his reflecting upon his Grace the Duke of Ormond, in the House of Lords, to which he was able to make no Reply) his little Lordship advised the shutting up of the Checquer, [Page 6]breaking the Triple League, seizing the Dutch Smyrna Fleet, and several other things, which since his Lordship and his Faction have so often charged as miscarriages upon his Majesties Government; and being now advanced to be Lord Chancellor of England, so sollicitous was his Lordship for the Protestant Religion and Interest, that he made that famous Speech of Delenda est Carthago, animating the great Council of the Nation the Parliament, to prosecute the War against the Dutch, though Dissent­ing Protestants, with the same animosity, as Cato did the Romans, to the utter subversion of the Pagan Carthaginians, to level the proud and Re­bellious City of Amsterdam, after the example of that Affrican City, which contested with Rome for the Empire of the Universe.

And here you see his Lordship upon the top of the Hill; but it was not long before he fell into the displeasure of the Commons, who for some Councels of his, tending as they said to the breach of their Priviledges, were framing Articles against him; of which by his Espials being adver­tized, he immediately makes a short turn, and strikes in with those of the Commons House, who then called themselves the Country Party, a­gainst the Court Party, as they were invidiously distinguished, and having the Purse, Seal and Mace taken from him, which before hung in his eyes that he could see no such matter, those beams were no sooner removed, but he pretended to see Popery and Arbitrary Government as plainly com­ing in upon the Nation, as in a clear day a man may see Callis Sands from Dover Cliff.

The whole Nation being in a violent agitation upon the Dissolution of the Long Parliament and the breaking out of a Popish Plot, his Lordship who was admirable at the sport of fishing in troubled Waters, was now got into his own Element, and resolved at once to be revenged of all his Enemies, and who but he to be the head of the United Faction of Dissenters throughout the Nation; by way of eminence, he had the Title of the Pro­testant Peer, as if all others who did not come under his protection had been Papists. All the Applications of the Party, all Informations, all Counsels and Cabals were at Thanet-House; there the Protestant Joyner Colledg, and fourteen of the Jury who brought in the Bill against him Igno­ramus, who were of his Lordships Neighbourhood, the Anabaptist Book­sellers Smith and Harris, Jack Starkey, &c. the Libellers of the Govern­ment, Care, Ferguson, &c. found warm Entertainment; there was the constant Rendezvous of the Basket-hilted old Olivarian Officers, who had lost their Crown and Church-Lands, there all those mischiefs were contrived which have given the Government and Nation so much trou­ble; thither the Green Ribbon Club and their Foreman Sir R. P. used to repair constantly to take their Measures for what was to be done in the Commons House, there the famous Bill of Exclusion was hatched, which was to invade the Prerogative of God Almighty, as well as the Kings; from thence came the Seditious Addresses and Petitions of the Furious Dissenters, insolently to teach their Representatives to demand the Militia of the King, to exhort him to part with his Evil Councellors; so they called, as they did his Fathers, the Loyal Nobility, Friends to the Crown and Church; promising to assist them in their demands with their Lives and Fortunes, and above all not to supply the King with a Penny of Money but upon those Conditions, though at the same time, the Nation was con­stantly alarm'd with the formidable power, and dangerous greatness and designs of the French King upon us. From thence came the Invention of [Page 7]stealing the Sword from the Kings Scabbard, by putting on such Sheriffs as Bethel, who as it is averred under the Town Seal of Hamburgh, offered his service to be the late Kings Executioner, and such Sheriffs, returning such true Protestant Juries, as would crack Oaths as fast as a Squirril does Nuts, as Wilmores, &c. who could return Ignoramus upon a Bill of Indict­ment of High Treason though sworn by a thousand legal Witnesses: There was found the Traiterous Association, which was to overturn the Foun­dation of the old English Government, and destroy not only Monarchy, but the very Essence and Constitution of Parliaments, vesting the Govern­ment in the hands of such Persons, as should take that damnable Oath.

It were endless to recount all the Speeches of this Noble Peer, made in the House of Lords, not to trust the King, or to give him Money, &c. or the whole shoals of Lewd and Seditious Pamphlets, Letters to Friends, Appeals to the City, Dialogues between Tutors and Pupils, which were Written, Printed and Dispersed by his Direction and Approbation; every Coffee house, every Town, City, and corner of the Land is full of these trea­sonous and disloyal Papers; and the late abominable Pamphlet of the se­cond part of the Growth of Popery, a Libel that has more Lies than Lines in it, as it is confidently reported came as a parting blow from his Amanu­ensis, Ferguson.

And they who saw his Lordship march with his Armed Guards to the Parliament at Oxon, will without difficulty believe, that the Design of seizing his Majesties Person there was hatched in Aldersgate-street, and though, notwithstanding the legal Trial of Colledg, and his Conviction for that Treason, 'tis endeavoured to ridicule that matter, yet I doubt not but a little time will make further clear discoveries of it to the world.

But now we must think of bringing his Lordship to his Journeys end, for after all his endeavours, and those of his Faction, to subvert the Govern­ment, had proved insuccessful, and even his Irish Evidences, whom he drew over to accuse his Grace the Duke of Ormond, proving himself not only guilty of Subornation, but of Plotting against the Government, and the Tide of Loyalty turning very swift upon him, beyond his foresight or expectation, his Lordship durst not trust to the innocence of his Actions, or abide the Legal Trial of his Peers; but thinking Heels the best secu­rity for his Head, he resolves to fly for the same, in hopes that the Treason which he had tap'd and left abroach at parting, might work so effectu­ally as yet to give him the hopes of another squeek at least for his Life; and whether should his Lordship retreat but to that Carthago of Amsterdam, which, had his advice been followed with success, had not been capable of securing his Lordship: But his Lordship found but very cold entertain­ment there, for the Delenda est Carthago, which was by publick Order of the States General entred upon their Books of Journals, came fresh into their Memories, so that he was neither Complemented upon his arrival, nor any notice taken of him by either the Magistrates or Ministers of the Establisht Church there; nor indeed by any other sort of People than a few pitiful Brownists, the despised Dissenters of Holland, such persons being his Companions, as had either fled from Justice like himself, or were the Sons of Traitors, and persons disaffected to the Person of his Majesty and his Government, such as Mr. Cromwel, Mr. Phelps, Mr. Venner, Mr. Medlay, Ald. Freeman Israel Hayes, Hayes's Son, Thomas Garret; and John Starkey, who for printing divers seditious and treasonable Pamphlets, was forced to leave the Mitre, and hang upon his Lordship for subsistance, [Page 8]but gave him little Reputation among the sober and discerning Protestants of that Countrey, as will appear by a Letter from thence, to a worthy Citizen of London, and a Speech made to the Lords the Burge-Masters by the late English Consul, which I shall here present the Reader with.

The Letter I mentioned before was to this effect.

By this time you see in what Reputation our Noble Peer was like to have stood in Holland, as well as in England; and that we may commit him to his long repose, for his Religion, he was as good a Protestant, as any one can be suposed to be, who could atheistically call the New Testament the New Cheat; his Fortitude was evident as well as his Loyalty, by the Cou­rage he had to oppose a most potent Monarch, and his Natural Liege Lord; Mother—to whom in his splendor, with the Purse, Seal and Mace, he made a publick visit, shall depose for the severe virtue of his chastity; and his timely flying from Justice, and opportunely dying, will demonstrate his Conduct and Prudence; the Exiles who will want it, shall attest his Charity; the Dissenters upon whom he hath, by animating them against the Go­vernment, intailed the severity of the Laws, and left them fluttering in the Net which he had escaped, will stand obliged to him for their suf­ferings; and I hope the King and the whole Nation whom he hath in­formed of the Temper of men of his Principles, Designs and Faction, will have reason to thank him for their future Settlement and Establish­ment against the Real Fears and Dangers of Phanaticism and Arbitrary Tyranny its inseparable Companion.

I have nothing more to add, but to wish the Dissenters who have been fond of this Noble Peer even to Idolatry, to read in his, their own De­stiny; there is a long Arrear due to them for the former Rebellion, the Blood and Rapine, the Sacriledge and Hypocrisy of them and their Fathers; and a new Reckoning too for their Insolent Disobedience to the best and most merciful of Princes, their ingratitude towards God and Men, their stub­borness against the best Reformed Church in the World, and refractori­ness to the most Excellent Civil Government under the Sun, which they have as wickedly, as vainly attempted to subvert: They have had a long time given for Repentance, but they may see if they be not willfully blinded, that there is a time coming, if they withstand Gods and the Kings Clemency and Mercy, when they shall be paid all this long Arrear; and in the opinion of many wise men, who have particularly remarked how Providence hath by their own folly baffled all their late Designs, blasted their Hopes, and cut off the Engineers of the Faction, it looks as if they were even weary of that happiness they might yet enjoy, and that with their own hands they would pull down those punishments up­on their own heads, which commiserating Heaven and a Compassionate Prince have so long delayed to execute upon them; for certainly they must be weary of their Lives, and out of their Wits, who dash out their own Brains against the Government in hopes to overturn its strong Founda­tions. I wish they may recollect themselves, and remember the Earl of Shaftsbury, who when he might have lived Glorious, Easy, and Happy by obeying his Prince, and Country Laws, died a miserable, despised Fugi­tive, the Scorn of the present, and the Contempt of all future Ages.