ot change its nature, and _cruelty and breach of faith
to heretics_, are as necessary parts of that religion, as
_transubstantiation_ and the _pope's supremacy_[33]." Andrew Marvel
wittily remarks of the pope's claim, "He has, indeed, of late, been
somewhat more retentive than formerly as to his faculty of disposing of
kingdoms, the thing not having succeeded well with him in some
instances, but he lays the same claim still, continues the same
inclinations, and though velvet-headed hath the more itch to be pushing.
And, however, in order to any occasion he keeps himself in breath,
always by cursing one prince or other upon every Maundy Thursday[34]."

[Footnote 33: BURNET'S _Eighteen Papers_, 84.]

[Footnote 34: _The Growth of Popery_, p. 9.]

CHAPTER IX.

THE ACT FOR THE OBSERVANCE OF THE DAY--A SERVICE PREPARED FOR THE
OCCASION--ALTERATIONS IN THE SERVICE TO SUIT THE LANDING OF KING
WILLIAM--REFLECTIONS.

As the Act of Parliament which enjoins the observance of the Fifth of
November is not generally known, or at all events is not within the
reach of ordinary readers, I shall insert in this place. It was couched
in the following terms:--

"Forasmuch as Almighty God hath in all ages shewed his power and mercy,
in the miraculous and gracious deliverance of his Church, and in the
protection of religious kings and states, and that no nation of the
earth hath been blessed with greater benefits than this nation now
enjoyeth, having the true and free profession of the Gospel under our
most gracious Sovereign Lord King James, the most great, learned, and
religious king that ever reigned therein, enriched with a most hopeful
and plentiful progeny, proceeding out of his royal loins, promising
continuance of this happiness and profession to all posterity: the which
many malignant and devilish papists, jesuits, and seminary priests, much
envying and fearing, conspired most horribly when the king's most
excellent majesty, the queen, the prince, and all the lords spiritual
and temporal, and commons, should have been assembled in the Upper House
of Parliament upon the Fifth day of November, in the year of our Lord
1605, suddenly to have blown up the said whole house with gunpowder: an
invention so inhuman, barbarous, and cruel, as the like was never
before heard of, and was (as some of the principal conspirators thereof
confess) purposely devised and concluded to be done in the said house,
that when sundry nece