Touching our Present Impositions of Loyalty and Obedience, Postscript
Postscript.
BEcause some will be offended at the Book, and others at this Bill at the end of it, the Printer shall (having this spare leaf) tell them this Story. A Minister of the Church of England, an Ingenious and Considerable person, who lived lately in a Town of good note in the Country, was in the Company of some Gentlemen of that place who were Papists, and he Discoursing occasionally about the Non-Conformists, they fell inveighing readily against them, as a Generation not to be suffered to live; and that they wondred that the Episcopal party did not use their Interest to root them out of the Kingdom. These expressions seeming bitter to him, as well as unusual (for the Papists ordinarily are more reserved) he could not choose but reflect upon it, and thought in his mind immediately that it would be worth his inquiry to know what the same persons did use to say to the Fanaticks of the Churchmen, that spake of the Dissenters thus to him, and going therefore to some of the more eminent of the Town of that perswasion, he desired them to tell him truly what such Gentlemen (naming them by name) were wont to say of the Episcopal party when they were in their Company. They told him they said ordinarily they were men of a Persecuting Spirit, that made not Conscience of their Religion, as the Fanaticks did, and consequently deserved to be looked on and dealt with accordingly, or words yet harsher to that effect. Ʋpon this the Minister tells them what those persons said of the Non-Conformists party in such Company to himself the other day. The good men were astonished at it, in regard of their frequent conversation with them; and the result was, that both they and the Minister concluded streight of what a dangerous importance the Dissention of the Protestants is amongst us; That the Design and Strength of the Papists lyes there; And what need we have therefore to use all the means, and speed we can, to endeavour a composure and concord one with another.
End of the text · John Humfrey, Touching our Present Impositions of Loyalty and Obedience (1680)