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authority_n	book_n	church_n	faith_n	2,919	5	5.3557	4	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A40040	The history of the wicked plots and conspiracies of our pretended saints representing the beginning, constitution, and designs of the Jesuite : with the conspiracies, rebellions, schisms, hypocrisie, perjury, sacriledge, seditions, and vilefying humour of some Presbyterians, proved by a series of authentick examples, as they have been acted in Great Brittain, from the beginning of that faction to this time / by Henry Foulis ...	Foulis, Henry, ca. 1635-1669.	1662 (1662)	Wing F1642; ESTC R4811	275,767	264

Policy Questions used to be discust 1. Whether the Election or Succession of Kings were the better Form of Government 2. How farr the Royal Power extended 3. Whether Kings might be censured for abusing their Power and deposed by the Estates of the Kingdom And how they stated these Questions let their deeds be judge as they are most proper and then let any man tell me if men of such turbulent spirits can be good Subjects and by consequence good Christians for I believe the World can scarse parallel in one Kingdom so many treasonable and impudent actions in so short a time as less then fifty years let but our late English madness of which theirs and our Presbytery were the Original be at this time excepted And most of these Actions you will find confirm'd and owned though in a different style by the History of The Scots Reformation wrote by whom I know not for a late Reverend Authour denyes it to be Knox's And it is the custom of men of this perswasion to Father their Brats upon others witness Wilson's History of King James a Book not to be believed in all things Nor is it all the Nation hath these spots There is a Church as well as Kirk of Scots And to vilifie the whole Kingdom because it hath nurst up some hot-spurs would be implacable malice and to bring all the World into Ignomy If the Proverb assure us That it is a good Family which hath neither Whore nor Thief in it 't will be a difficult thing to expel Vice from a whole Nation The Virgin-City Venice esteem'd one of the Glories of the World and whose Government for Exactness yields to none abounds with more Venerian pleasures than any of her Christian Neighbours The Spaniards are famous for loyal Subjects yet a Rebel is no Monster in Castile her self Scotland hath been the Mother of as famous men as any other Kingdom if Denmark Germany Poland and the Low-Countries may testifie their valour whilest France will assure you of their fidelity whose Kings have altogether trusted their persons to their Guardship But enough since David Camerarius hath writ a whole Volume in the Commendation of the Scottish Nation CHAP. IX The illegal malepart and impious Plots and Designes of our Schismatical Presbyterians in England in the Raigns of Queen Elizabeth King James and King Charles till the beginning of the wicked Long-Parliament NOr was this hot-braind humour fostered alone in Scotland but England also tasted the fiery tryal of their madd pranks Queen Elizabeth no sooner setled in her Throne but the Zealots deface all Monuments and Pictures in Churches they met withall nor did the ashes of the dead lie undisturb'd which caus'd the Queen to set forth a Proclamation against such violations But these men having their malice stopt against Stones and Glasswindores will vent it against those who can be sensible of injuries Goodman Whittingham Gilbie and others having learn'd their lessons at Geneva came roring over against our English Church venting their venom not only by their Preachments and Conventicling but also in Print The latter of these viz. Anthony Gilby of whom formerly born in Lincolnshire and of Christs Colledge in Cambridge tearmed our Ceremonies Liveries of Antichrist accursed Leaven of the blasphemous Popish Priesthood cursed patches of Popery and Idolatry Nor must the Ceremonies alone suffer but the Reverend Bishops too by others of the same gang as Throgmorton Penry Fenner Udal and such like Bravado's calling them Antichristian Petty-Popes Bishops of the Devil cogging and cozening Knaves dumb Dogs Enemies of God c. And for our Worship they affirmed it to be an impious thing to hold any thing common with Rome and from this Argument they refused to come to Divine Service But at last such was the vigilancy of the Queens Council that the fautours of these seditious Non-conformists were found out and Sir Richard Knightly and Sir Wigston were fined in the Starr-Chamber for receiving the Printers and Publishers of such Schismatical Books the celler of one of the Gentlemen bringing forth like Lucian some foul mouth'd Pamphlets against the Church or other Neither do these men mount their Battery only against the Church but also throw their wild-fire and indignation against the Queen and their Supream Authority witness Mr. Edward Deering of Kent's Sermon in which how unworthily let others judge he compared her Highness to an untamed Heifer and Christopher Goodman in a Book publickly vindicated Wiat's Rebellion affirming All who took not his part were Traytors to God his People and their Countrey And as some Common-Lawyers towl'd away by inticing tongues and Gold of the Non-conformists wrote against the Authority of Bishops so some pretending to the Civil and Canon-Law were obliged to oppose and deny the Queens Supremacy in Causes Ecclesiastical Nor might these fore-mentioned things seem strange since they were easily to be vindicated from some of the Geneva Notes upon our Bible where you may find the Disciplinarians highly to complain against Asa because he did not kill his Mother furiously calling of it lack of zeal and foolish pity And maliciously to compare our Arch-bishops Bishops Doctors and such like degrees with the Locusts though they carelesly seem to quit themselves in the exit And yet these are the very same men who profest to Queen Elizabeth That their Applications are such as may most appertain to Gods glory though how hide-bound they were at the same time from Charity may appear by their then slandering the Reverend and Learned Bishops with the ignominious title of ambitious Thus was Authority begun to be blasted by the Puritans a name now almost an hundred years old beginning in 1564. as Fuller thinks though Dr. Heylin out of Genebrard makes it two years younger though in a later History he seems to moderate its original between both viz. 1565. And these were so denominated as the word implyes and Genebrard and experience tells us because they thought themselves so much purer then other Christians that they would not perform Divine Service with them utterly rejecting all Forms used in the Primitive Ages and looking upon all decent Garbes to be unlawful in Church-affairs if different from the common wear or rather if not according to the Geneva-cut The Antiquity of this Name is very ancient as we may see in the old Hereticks who presumptuously call'd themselves Caethari i. e. Puritans the same with the Novatiani with whom the Parmenianistae in supposed purity did something agree and by this Name of Cathari I find Johnstonus in his large History to signifie our Non-conformists The Queen perceiving these men to sleight both her and the Bishops and to act only by the advice of private persons as Mr. Tho. Cartwright who affirm'd That we ought rather to conform our selves in Orders and Ceremonies to the fashion of the Turks then to the Papists Mr. Travers c. who had

their inspirations and commands from Geneva thought fit for example sake and fear to let the Law so much by them violated take her course whereby Copping and Thacker were hang'd at Saint Edmondsbury in Suffolk Barrow and Greenwood were executed at Tyburn Coppinger dyed in Prison and Hacket was hang'd by the Cross in Cheapside the two last were more extravagant then the rest falling to open blasphemy Nor did John Penry a Welshman escape this was the man who made those scurrilous Pamphlets against our Church under the title of Martin Mar Prelate a man so much guilty of his own villanies that with Cain he feared death from every mans hand and therefore was forced to sculk and ramble amongst his brethren for protection so that his Antagonist was not amisse when he sang of him thus Qui tantum constans in knavitate sua est He was taken at Stepney and condemned for felony and hang'd at Saint Thomas Waterings Upon whose death an honest Northern Rimer made these Couplets The Welshman is hanged Who at our Kirke flanged And at our state banged And brened are his buks. And though he be hanged Yet he is not wranged The De'ul has him fanged In his kruked kluks Besides these Udal Billot Studley and Bouler were condemned yet through the Queens mercy were reprieved and Cartwright and some others were imprisoned These round dealings did a little terrifie the rest of them and gave a check to the furiousnesse of the wiser sort But yet having some of the Nobility their Patrons whether for Conscience or Policy let others judge as Leicester Lord North Burleigh Shrewsbury Warwick Walsingham Sir Francis Knollys Mr. Beal Clerk of the Council and others they took heart again and proceeded in their Consultations and Actions as formerly Nor was Arch-bishop Grindal thought to be so vigilant as his place required for which he got the Queens displeasure Yet formerly had they kept meetings of some of their Ministers to carry on their intended innovations but privately for fear of discovery The first known to be kept in England was at Wandsworth in Surry 1572. Novemb. 20. Another they had at Cockfield in Suffolk where threescore of their Ministers met 1582. May 8. where they consulted concerning our common-prayer-Common-Prayer-book Canonical Apparel and other Ceremonies of the Church though they had no call but their own presumption And because they resolved to be vigilant they had another Synod passing by one also the same year at Cambridge where was drawn up a form of Discipline scorning to submit to Ours or Anthority by which they were to be guided of which thus a painful and learned Antiquary will inform us Inventing out of their own corky brains a new certain no-form of Liturgy to themselves thereby to bring into the Church all disorder and confusion And in the same Assembly they made a Collection for their Scottish brethren who fled into England for their guilt of high Treason and what loyalty can be expected from such traiterous Assistants let moderate men judge though I am apt to give some credit to one of our old English Versifyers Nor Queen in her Kingdom can or ought to sit fast If Knox or Goodman's books blow any true blast After this another Synod was held at Coventry 1588. June 10. where they imperiously condemned the reading of Homilies Crosse in Baptism that Bishops ordination by them and their autherity are all unlawful and that a Bishop is neither Doctor Elder nor Deacon And besides all this they decree that occasions are to be sought to bring the people in liking to their Discipline and that those of deeper apprehensions shall be drawn to it by all private allurements possibly And these positions with others were carried cunningly abroad to be subscribed by all to make their faction more unanimous And many other Meetings and Assemblies they had at London Oxford Cambridge and other places to carry on their designs as appears by the confession of Mr. Thomas Stone and the Collections of the Right Reverend Bancroft And so powerful were they grown amongst some of the Nobility and Gentry that at the Parliament at Westminster 1585. they were so vigilant by their whispering with the Members day and night that if the Queen had not interposed her authority they might have given the Bishops a scurvy lift by the assistance of their Schismatical Brethren by them voted into the House To this Parliament the Non-conformists having framed another Book by them called A Book of the Form of Common Prayers c. in which was contained the substance of their pretended Discipline To this Representative I say in them having great hopes they presented this book With this Petition May it therefore please your Majesty that it may be Enacted that the Book hereunto annexed Intituled A Book of the Form of Common-prayers Administratien of Sacraments and every thing therein contained may be from henceforth authorized put in ure and practised throughout all your Majesties Dominions By this they shewed themselves no enemies to set Forms of Prayer but only that they not others should have the honour of making it Like the Cardinal who confess 't that Reformation was necessary but was vext that Luther should undertake it And at the Dissolution of this Parliament Queen Elizabeth takes special notice of our Innovators for finding fault with our orderly Church-government the which humour she not unfitly terms New fanglednesse I might here tell you of many more bold actions in this Queen's time used by these Renegadoes as a very serious and learned Gentleman calleth them But only one shall instance for an hundred to shew you how partial they were in all their dealings as to make the Proverb true that Kissing goeth by favour and this shall be of one of their grand Masters viz. Mr. Snape and thus it was in brief Mr. John Nelson of Northampton one of their Elders or Deacons had his Worship's daughter classically got with child by his serving-man nor durst the Elders maid associate with the same species that the Mistris doth For this Snape brings the poor man to publick repentance and ignominy amongst his neighbours nor do I blame him if he had used the Gentlewoman so too and impowred to do it but she O she was the Daughter of a rich Brother and Sectaries were of old observed to gain most by pleasuring simple women and colloguing with those who had full coffers She therefore good soul was esteemed to run counter to the Primitive Fall there the woman but here the man or rather poverty is judged the tempter But because the Country had both eyes and ears therefore a marriage was thought most plausible to vindicate the Brethren the which was accordingly performed by a lame Souldier of Barwick by the appointment of Snape by whose order the same Souldier had married many others at the same place And it may be Barebone's Parliament drew their new model of coupling

any of your Protestations and seeming kindnesses may thank himself for his own distruction not a man of you but like Pope Sixtus IV. if the Poet hit right Fraudisque dolique Magister Et sola tantum proditione potens A Master of frauds and deceits And only powerful in Treacherous feats So stubborn and perverse are these People in their Iniquities that the King Church must either submit to their whimsies or else neither shall have Peace For if ever the common-prayer-Common-Prayer-Book be imposed again against the Authority ofthese seditious Caterpillers they plainly tell the present King that there will inevitably follow sad Divisions and widening of the Breaches which your Majesty is endeavouring to heal And in their second Paper to his Majesty they thus swagger Should we lose the opportunity of our desired Reconciliation and Union It astonisheth us to fore-see what doleful effects our Divisions should produce which we will not so much as mention in particular lest we should be mis-understood And in another place they threaten the King with what great Calamities will fall upon the People in his Raign if Episcopacy be fully setled And in another of their Pamphlets talks of the Worlds running into Confusion yet a little after assures the Bishops how patiently they will undergo this Persecution for such is Obedience in the Opinion of these men But how improbable it is that these men should continue in this Resolution shall be left to experience though any man may imagine that their words were farr from their intentions when they shall hear the same People tell the very same Bishops that they must make loud complaint of their Persecutions in their Sermons Prayers and other Discourses To which purpose thus take their own words It is easie to fore-see how those expressions in mens Sermons or Prayers or familiar Conference which seem to any mis-understanding or suspicious or malicious Hearers to Intimate any sense of Sufferings will be carryed to the Ears of Rulers and represented as a Crime And Nature have planted in all men an Unwillingness to suffer and deny'd to all men a love of Calamity and necessitated men to feel when they are hurt and made the Tongue and Countenance the Index of our Sense These Effects will be unavoidable while such Impositions are continued And while a fear of sinning will not suffer men to swallow and digest them These are the expressions not of private but the publick and chief persons of their Faction not singly neither for not a word of these past but with the approbation and consent of their wisest Grandees which may be for ought I know a Representative of their whole Body Yet here you see the Foundations of another Warr laid if their desires be not satisfied and if this do not signifie their Obedience to be no longer than the King and Bishops comply with their humours I will submit to be chain'd for a punishment to Jenkin's or Calamy's Pulpit for a twelve-month to learn the meaning of the Covenanters Gibbridge When they expresly declare that unless the King satisfie their desires there shall be Divisions Breaches aoleful Effects great Calamities Confusions and that they for their parts shall not hold their peace I must take it for granted that they are willing nay resolv'd if they can get opportunity again to renew their Rebellion and all this wickedness to retrive that hellish Imp their Covenant burnt by the Hang-mans hand by publick Authority And those who will thus out-face King Church Law and Authority must be as farr from being good Subjects as Ravaillac was when he stab'd his Soveraign CHAP. V. I. The wicked Reproaches the Presbyterians cast upon the present Episcopal Church II. What small reason they have to desire Toleration from the King and Episcopal Party since they deny the same to them with their scandals upon the Church as Popish which are wiped off III. Their slanders upon the late King and his vindication from his own Enemies IV. Their endeavours to begger the Episcopal Church V. Their stories of Gods judgments retorted THere is a Tale of Bajazet the first that he had an Ethiope born in India about him and having upon a march one day his Tent pitch'd near an high Tree He call'd the Ethiope and said Dre Areb if thou lov'st me go up to the top of that Tree The Indian scambled up presently so the Emperour sent presently for some to hew down the Tree the poor Ethiop begging his life all the while and that his Counsellors would intercede for him but nothing prevailing the Ethiop pull'd down his Breeches and with his Excrements and Urine did so bewray the hewers that they gave over work and in the interim the Ethiop gets down telling the Turks Counsellors Would all such privy Counsellors as you were so bewray'd whose Counsell cannot do as much good as mine Excrements There is nothing in this story that I do entend to be applicatory but to one piece of policy of the Presbyterians who at this time when all means else fail them make it one of their best Asylum's and last refuge to bespatter and vilifie those whom they take for their enemies And in this art they are so dexterous as to charme the simple people into a belief of their words each of their Lecturers being as active for England as the spirit Rigilde in Scudery's Master-piece was for to perswade the Spaniards into Tumults and Uproars And they are not ignorant how credulous the vulgar are A poor German was easily perswaded that a fellow was burnt at Auspurg for a Cheat by placing snow before an hot furnace and there to remain till it was hardened with the heat and then to have sold it for salt A priest once made some people so firmly believe that the Storks were men of a farre Country but only in winter Transfigured That they did all seriously profess for the future to have a greater respect and honour for those Birds If many men of good literature are apt to credit the stories in Gononus Metaphrastes Surius Dauroultius Nider Marulus Cantipratanus Lippeloo Caesarius and such like Sacred Romancies we may well suppose the Faith of the unlearned to be more easily wrought upon This makes them at this time throw about their dirt to the purpose perswading the people that nothing but wickedness and Sathan rules and over-spreads the whole Land To which purpose thus they send their Mercuries about and old Hall of Kings-Norton rants bravely I do verily believe there hath been a greater flood of open profanesse in ten weeks past than in ten years before Which is a pretty information to the people of what mischief the Kings return hath brought upon the Kingdome And to this purpose also Crofton when he tells us of the Suppressing pious painful Preachers thrust out and prophane drunken deboist canonical Common-Prayer-Book men forced in wheresoever a Bishops power can reach And this

bob at Bishops and not receiving a Positive Answer according to their Intentions They publickly protest to stand to their Tenents and that they will defend all those who shall violate such Acts and Rites which are commanded by their Adversaries i. e. the Queens Party And that if any Tumult and Uproar shall rise or abuses be violently reformed or whatsoever inconvenience shall happen to ensue that these crimes be not imputed to them but to those who will not hearken to our Petitions At these actions the Queen-Regent was so moved as to profess she could not keep promise with them upon which they reply We cannot any longer acknowledge your Authority and will henceforth renounce all Obedience to you Thus do they acknowledge and deny Supremacy as each action will serve for their turn And to this purpose King James who had most reason to know these people thus tells us That John Knox wrote to the Queen-Regent telling her that she was the Supream Head of the Church and therefore charged her to suppress the Popish Bishops But this lasted no longer than till they had got their desires and then they made small account of her Authority but took all into their own hands and how they used that poor Lady my Mother saith King James is not unknown and how they dealt with me in my minority you all know it was not done secretly As they told the Queen Regent that they would renounce all Obedience to her so were they as good as their words For away go they in Tumults and ruine all before them pulling down the Monasteries and Cathedral Churches at Perth St. Andrews Scone Sterling Edenbourgh and other places John Knox inciting them to it by his Sermon upon our Saviours Purging the Temple And in another of his Sermons preach'd at Craile he incouraged the people to Wars telling them There was no Peace to be hoped for at the Regents hands because no truth could be given to her and that there could be no quietness till one of these Parties were Masters therefore he wished them to prepare themselves either to dye like men or to live victorious Upon this the Congregators growing more numerous and strong than the Queen-Regent she was forced to fly to Dunbar yet a Treaty was after begun at Preston where she offer'd them free use of their Religion but where her own Court was but this they would not accept of And a little after with the consent of John Willock and Knox their two Ministers they depose her who not long after dyed of grief and displeasure June 1560. though a little before not only by Letters to her self but also by Proclamation they declare that they would never do it And this way of protesting one way and working another as if their actions looked a squint like Argile have our late English Grandeesand Army followed The Presbyters in Scotland having hitherto gone under the Name of Congregators or those of the Congregation did now to comply with England hoping from thence to gain some assistance as Queen Elizabeth in truth through a private policy did not only too much countenance but help them change that Title and brought themselves under the general denomination of Protestants A little after this they plaid their Cards so well that they obtained the Mass and Popes Authority in that Nation in that Nation to be null'd in Parliament and by the same authority with the assistance of the Lords of the Articles they got the Confession of their Faith ratifi'd which they sent to be confirmed by their King and Queen in France the which was refused and the King dyed presently after Then they send and desire their young Widdow-Queen to return into Scotland the which she intends but before her arrival it was publickly ordered by them that all Cloysters and Abby Churches should be pull'd down to the ground John Knox inciting them to it in a Sermon by telling them That the sure way to banish the Rooks was to pull down their Nests And this order was so furiously put in execution that under the pretence of demolishing of these all other Churches suffer'd either being defaced or quite destroyed so that of such buildings a pitiful devastation hapned throughout the whole Land holy Vessels Timber Lead and Bells sold the very Sepulchres of the dead not spared the Registers and Libraries burnt and in a word all ruin'd And all this so much the worse because committed under the colour and warrant of Publick Authority The Queen being come over and though being bred a Roman-Catholick yet condiscended to alter nothing of the Protestant Religion as she found it then established thinking thereby to live peacebly and gain their affections only she would use her own Service apart and hear Mass in private but this and What more favourable then this the Preachers in their Sermons did publickly condemn as intolerable and unlawful and the Earl of Arrane protested against it and so uncivil were some as to break the Wax-tapers intended for her Chappel Nor was this all but the Ministers oppose and dispute in Conventicles the case of Obedience to Soveraigns the which because some disliked it Knox and Row do not only urge it more eagerly but forsooth they would have it resolved by their Fellow-Labourers in the Church of Geneva The Reformers being grown to this height enter into a pretty malepert Covenant That whosoever shall molest trouble or hurt any of their Members the fact shall be reputed hainous against the whole Body of them all By this pretty device they got to their Party several of the unruly Nobility who were like to make good use of this Doctrine by way of Protection And some years before 1558. some of the Nobility did bind themselves together by Oaths and Subscriptions to assist one another with their lives and substance for the advancement of their Religion Thus are they resolved to carry all things with a high hand let the Laws of God or the Land say what they will to the contrary Nay so pragmatical were they that the Queen and her Ladies being drest in too fine Cloaths as they thought they never rested till they had presented Articles for Reformation therein for which curiosity being a little checkt by Earl Murray Knox in a rage by writing forbids him to meddle with the Kirk or his affairs But this is nothing to the Insolency they used to their Soveraign Queen for when it was noys'd about that she intended to marry Henry Lord Darnly Son to Lenox Knox rails to the purpose against this match affirming that it would bring Plagues upon the Nation and the Kirks Curse to boot for this the Queen sends for him in private where with trickling tears she tells them How low her Princely nature had descended in often Conferences with them advising them to moderation and she would consult for their quiet establishment and truly told him That the more she

this Objection may sound harsh in a Presbyterians ear who do not love to hear of their Iniquities yet that famous Geneva Bull Stephen Marshall can out-rore this though its clamours were as loud as the Nilan Thunderings of Catadupa Noysing it out to the World that if he had been so slain it had been none of the Parliaments fault for he might have kept himself farther off if he pleas'd These men rail against the Pope as Antichrist and the Whore of Babylon and their wording is all for they never yet proved it but whether they do not both tread in the same way both taking upon them to depose Kings let those who are skill'd in Story judge yet for my part I think that one of our Countrey-men was not amiss in this They depose Kings by force by force you 'll do 't But first use fair means to perswade them to 't They dare kill Kings now 'twixt you here 's the strife You dare shoot at the King to save his life And what 's the difference pray whether they fall By the Popes Bull or your Oxe-General Three Kingdoms you have striv'd to make your own And like the Pope usurp a Triple-Crown But somewhat more to this purpose the former Writer thus reasoneth If in matter of Supream Command we of the People may not obey any but the Husband or the King Why then did the Presbyterian Party for so many years oppose and not totally submit to their now supposed Husband Why did they Commissionate so many thousand men who by accident of Warr had the power though not the Chance to kill him Nay in the Parliaments Case it was alwayes conjoyntly argued by them that it was he the Husband that would have kill'd them the supposed Wife for which reason the Kirk of Scotland long ago sent him a Bill of Divorce unless he satisfied for the bloud of three Kingdoms Which of the two Parties it was that at last kill'd him belongs not much to the satisfaction of us the people though here questioned because those Parties as to that Act differ'd no more than Diminutio and Obtruncatio Capitis do for they who after a long Warr and by long Imprisonment dispoil'd him of that Regal power did according to the Term of the Civil Law Diminuere Caput Regis and they who in Consequence of his Civil death took away his Natural life did Obtruncare Caput Regis If he had been kill'd in an Action of Warr before should the Souldier or he who gave the Souldier Commission have answer'd for his life For the more clearing of this I shall desire Jack Presbyter to resolve me these two Quaeries First Whether he doth approve of Cook ' s Appeal or Vindication of the King's Tryal except where he demands Justice though I need not except it If he doth take him Jaylor and Lord have mercy upon him But if he doth not then Secondly Whether he can shew me any thing in that Hellish piece of Treason except when Cook doth vindicate his Majesty from some slanders but I can show the same wickedness in Books publish'd by the Authority of Presbyterians or made and printed by people of that Faction For a piece of Parallel I shall at present point you to one or two Instances See The Mystery of Iniquity yet working in the Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland Printed for Sam. Gellibrand 1643. Declaration of the Commons of England concerning no farther Address or Application to be made to the King 1647. A Remonstrance of the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland to his Majesty 1645. Mr. Robert Douglas being Moderator whose Sermon at Scoon 1651. you may also read John Vicars his several lying and scandalous Pamphlets And the several Presbyterian Books and expressions mentioned in this Book needless now to be repeated And to this purpose thus saith the learned Mr. Rich. Watson Whosoever will take the pains to compare the particulars in the Scottish Remonstrance which they brought in their hands when they came in upon the Covenant with those in the accursed Court proceeding against his late Royal Majesty may be able to do Dorislaw Steel Cook c. some little courtesie in their credit and plead for them that they drew not up but only Transcrib'd a Charge brought long since from Edenburgh to London Thus both Parties think the King alike guilty though it was the Presbyterian that first perswaded the Independent to think him so Then here must be all the difference The first declares him abominably wicked the latter being credulous believes the Declaration One part cowardly deliver him up I shall not hint upon the word selling to Execution and the other being more hardy strike the stroak Not that by this I lessen the wickedness of a Rumper as I cannot excuse that of a secluded Member since the latter knowingly destroy'd and kill'd the King 1642. the other under the notion of a private man murther'd Charles Stuart six years after The Laws of the Land not only in Killing but also in Fighting against the Kings Command making it Treason How to that Heaven did this Pilot Steer 'Twixt th' Independent and the Presbyter Plac'd in the Confines of two shipwracks thus The Greeks are seated 'twixt the Turks and Vs Whom did Bizantium free Rome would condemn And freed from Rome they are enslav'd by Them So plac'd betwixt a Precipice and Wolf There the Aegean here the Venice-gulf What with the rising and the setting Sun By these th' are hated and by those undone Thus Vertue 's hemm'd with Vices and though either Solicites her Consent she yields to neither Nay thus our Saviour to enhance his grief Was hung betwixt a Murderer and a Thief What the Powder-plot intended the Independent acted and I am confident the Presbyterians acted more mischief than Faux or his Complices Both of them were stopt in their designs and actions Only we know how farr the Romanists would have gone but we cannot understand what would have been the conclusion of the Puritans Villanies As we have a fifth of November in memory of one so shall we never think of the third of November but in detestation of the other two If the Presbyter would repent his former Vindications of the late Rebellion against their King It would convert the Act of Indempnity into one of Oblivion and people instead of dashing them in the teeth with their Iniquities would pitty their former blindness But when at this day they still continue in the same faults 't is not a sign of infirmity but real malice and enmity to that which is good Still we hear them perswade the people to the legality of the late Warr and that by consequence the same may be lawful against the Son which was against the Father and that upon such petit jealousies as their factious brains can possess the poor people with all whose easie natures are accustomed to take Pique against any thing that their hot-spurr'd Parson