States and Princes, and acknowledged to be so in the Oath of Supremacy. However this is now become a right of the Clergy, by ancient Laws through all Christendom; and to take it away, after so long continuance, must needs be a great blow to Religion, and of worse Consequence than if the Church had never possessed it; yet this was actually done by King James to the Protestant Clergy; and is a plain sign that he intended to destroy their Religion, when he depriv'd them of their support.
2. For first he past an Act of Parliament, whereby he ex∣empted all that dissented from our Chruch, from the Juris∣diction thereof: and a Man needed no more to free him from all punishment for his Misdemeanors, though only cogni∣zable and punishable in the Ecclesiastical Courts, than to pro∣fess himself a Dissenter, or that it was against his Conscience to submit to the Jurisdiction of our Church: nay, at the first, the Act was so drawn, and past the House of Com∣mons, that no Protestant Bishop could pretend to any Juris∣diction even over his own Clergy; but that, and several o∣ther passages in the Commons Bills, were so little pleasing to some who understood the King's Interest, that Sir Edward Herbert was employed by King James to amend the Act for the House of Lords; which he did in the form it is now in; nothing of the Commons Bill being left in it, but the word, Whereas; tho after all it effectually destroyed the Ju∣risdiction of the Church.
3. But second, in most places there was no Protestant Bi∣shop left; and consequently the Popish Bishop was to suc∣ceed to the Jurisdiction; they being by another Act invest∣ed in Bishopricks, as soon as they could procure King Jame's Certificate under his privy Signet, that they were Archbishops or Bishops; all incapacities, by reason of their religion, by any Statute or Law whatsoever, being taken off. There were already vacant in Ireland, one Archbishoprick and three Bishopricks; they had Attainted Two of the surviving Arch∣bishops, and Seven Bishops, so that they had already the Ju∣risdiction of ¾ of the Kingdom by a Law of their own ma∣king, secured into the Hands of Papists; and the rest were quickly to follow.