An answer to a letter from a clergyman in the city, to his friend in the country containing his reasons for not reading the declaration.

LETTER.

To lose our Livings and Preferments, nay our Liberties and Lives in a plain and direct opposition to Popery, as suppose for refusing to read Mass in our Churches, or to swear to the Trent-Creed, is an honourable way of falling, and has the divine comforts of suffering for Christ and his Religion; and I hope there is none of us but can chearfully submit to the will of God in it. But this is not our present Case; to read the Declaration, is not to read the Mass, nor to profess the Romish Faith; and therefore some will judg that there is no hurt in reading it, and that to suffer for such a refusal, is not to fall like Confessors, but to suffer as Criminals for disobeying the lawful Commands of our Prince: but yet we judge, and we have the concurring Opinions of all the No∣bility and Gentry with us, who have already suffered in this Cause, that to take away the Test and Penal Laws at this time, is but one stop from the introducing of Popery; and therefore to read such a Declaration in our Churches, though it do not immediatly bring Popery in, yet it sets open our Church doors for it, and then it will take its own time to enter:

So that should we comply with this Order, all good Protestants would despise and hate us, and then we may be easily crushed, and shall soon fall with great dishonour and without any pity. This is the difficulty of our Case; we shall be censur'd on both sides but with this difference: We shall fall a little sooner by not reading the Declaration, if our Gracious Prince resent this as an act of an obstinate and peevish or factious Diso∣bedience, as our Enemies will be sure to represent it to him; We shall as certainly fall, and not long after, if we do read it, and then we shall fall unpitied and despised, and it may be with the Curses of the Nation, whom we have ruined by our complyance; and this is the way never to rise more And may I suffer all that can be suffered in this World, rather than contribute to the final Ruin of the best Church in the World.