is very true that ordinarily Lying arms its weaknesse with thorns like Lizards who save themselves by running into Bushes Above all in a point where the Question of Right is founded upon that of Fact as this Question now whether it be lawful for the English to take up Arms against their Prince here to go about to satisfie Reason and Conscience with political and metaphisical Contemplations is not to purpose they should besides Divine Authority which should ever march before enquire whether the Laws and Constitutions of the Country authorize this War The Question being not to dispute which is the best Form of Government but to preserve the Form to which God hath subjected us and to observe the Laws of the Kingdom and after many Moral and Political Discourses for our Adversaries pay us with no other those that have any Honesty or Understanding come always to this that they would shew us by what Law of England it is permitted the Subjects to take up Arms without the Kings permission and against him When did the people ever make this Election Where is it that they have reserved the liberty to resume the Supreme Authority when they shall please Is there any Statute made during the Ages that this Monarchy hath continued that prefers or equals the two Houses to the King or doth authorize them to ratifie any thing without him Where is the Articles of that Capitulation which in some certain cases dissolves the Subjects Oath of Allegiance Is there any Case in the Law in which it should be lawful for Subjects to take from their King or Supreme Magistrate his Forts Navies and Magazines and to take into their hands the sole Administration of Justice and the Militia to confer the great Offices of the Crown to receive Ambassadors to treat with Forreign Nations and to dispose of the Goods and Lives of the Kings Subjects To these so important Questions for the duty and happiness of all the members of an Estate and the eternal salvation of their Souls and Bodies to answer with Platonick considerations and in stead of producing the Laws of the Kingdom to Philosophy upon the Law of Nature and form an appeal from Authentical and known Laws to a Word not written made at pleasure This is to mock God and men this is to insult upon the Brutality of the people and to take a wicked advantage from the wine of Astonishment or Senselessness which God in his just wrath hath poured forth upon this miserable Nation for if they did beleeve there remained any common sense in this blind and mad people durst they so boldly return so ridiculous an Answer to those that demand where are those Fundamental Laws written that now make all other Laws bow to them namely that the Fundamental Laws are not written and that if they were they should be superstructive and not fundamental after this account the command to love God with all our heart and our Neighbour as our self is not fundamental because it is written it were to profane Reason to imploy it to refute a reasoning so unreasonable it must needs be that these people know they have to do with Persons of great credulity since they dare give them for a Fundamental Law a Fantasie which they never heard before spoken of and whereof no Writings nor Histories make mention and this is to fight against their King overthrow the State lose their goods hazard their Lives and Consciences But what should I say There is no reason but is perswasive when the Conclusions are taken and there is strength to maintain them Christendome which have now their eyes upon our Broils will take notice of the open confession of the Troubles of this State That for the War against the King and for the form of Government which they establish in the kingdome a Superiour power that abolisheth the Royal they have no Fundamental Law written Is not this then marvellously to abuse the Justice of God and the patience of reasonable creatures made after his Image and indued with knowledge to constrain them to prostitute their Consciences and Lives in a Quarrel for which they openly confess there is not any Law written and for which there is not the least footing of Approbation in all that hath been established or left authentically written since England hath been a Nation We have let you see before how they decline the Defences of Scripture against the resistance of Soveraigns behold now they confess there is no fundamental Law written for to justifie their Arms and the superiority of the people above the King which they would introduce with the sword and thus they acknowledge they have no authority neither divine nor humane for what they do as Cardinal Perron having maintained the power of the Pope over the Temporal of Kings before the Estates of France in conclusion affirmed that it was an Article which was not decided neither by the Scriptures nor the Ancient Church so that the Pope and our Mutineers agree together to usurp an authority upon Kings without any ground or warrant in the Word of God and contradicted by all humane Constitutions that is to say that hoth God and man are contrary unto them CHAP. VI. What Examples in the Histories of England the Covenanters make use of to authorize their Actions BUt do we not much wrong them to say that there is nothing makes for them in all the ancient Writings and Histories of this Kingdom Do they not alledg the two Parliaments that deposed Edward the second and Richard the second yea truly and to their great shame as the wisest of their party do acknowledg affirming that those Acts of Parliament against Richard the second were not properly the Acts of the two Houses but of Henry the fourth and his victorious Army in which they say true for the Duke of Lancaster who after caused himself to be called Henry the fourth having prevailed with the people to rise against their lawful King assembled a Parliament which he made to do whatsoever he would and having deposed and imprisoned this poor King soon after caused him to be put to death though this action were as just as it is execrable yet it would make nothing to the purpose where the Question is of that which the two Houses may do separate from the King for the deposing of King Richard was by another King sitting in Parliament for until these last States the two Houses never thought that they were able to conclude any thing without the Royal Consent and since the Parliaments held under the House of York declared Henry the fourth Usurper of the Crown and therefore condemned the Parliament which had confirmed his usurpation The other example is no better than this the deposing of Edward the second by the Conspiracy of his Wife and the Favourites of this Queen who served themselves of a Parliament to execute this wickedness and having deposed the King and crowned his Son who
they may then give it the name of Lex and in effect it is but a request before the pleasure of the King makes it pass into a Law and was never other before this present Parliament Therefore the English Lawyers call the King the life of the Law for though the King in Parliament cannot make any Law without the concurrence of the two Houses yet nevertheless it 's his Authority only that gives it the strength and Name of a Law and they are so far from having any Legal Authority in their Commands without the consent of the King that the customary right gives them not so much as a Name neither takes any Cognisance of them To say then that the Parliament hath declared this War lawful and that the Orders of Parliament are Laws is by an ambiguous term to abuse the ignorance of the people for by the Parliament they understand somtimes one House somtimes both and somtimes the King and both Houses together it 's thus that men understand them when they speak of the Supream Court of Parliament and of Acts of Parliament for the King was ever accounted the first of the three Estate without whom the two other had not power to conclude any thing lawfully for all their Authority is derived from him not only for a time but by a continual Influence which being interrupted the power of necessity ceaseâ—h These three togeâ—her have power to interpret the Laws to revoke them and to make others therein properly lies the Oracle of the Laws A Judicious Writer of the Royal party calls the union of the three Estates the Sacred Tripos from whence the Oracles of the Law are pronounced When any one of these three are separate from other the other two stagger and are lame nor cannot serve for a firm foundation for the safety of the State and satisfaction of the Subjects Conscience But let us assume the business higher you cannot more vex our Enemies than to tell them this Truth that the Monarchy which is at this day began by Conquest this is that which by no means they will endure to hear of but would perswade men that it began by an Election and Covenant which indeed had never any being but in their own Fancies If they would be believed for this they should then produce some Records For the bold conjecturers are less credible than all the Histories which assures us of three Conquests in this Kingdom since the Romans and Picts Namely that of the Saxons Danes and Normans Moreover those that would abolish this Office and Dignity destroy that of their own Laws for all the Lands of the Kingdom are held of the King by right of the Sword as appears by the nature of Homages and Services that the Lords of Fiefes owe to the King when William the Conqueror took possession of the Kingdome strengthening the Right of his Conquest by the last Will and Testament of Edward the Confessor he declared himself Master of all the Land and disposed of it according to his pleasure His Son Henry the first eased the People somwhat of the severe and unlimited Government of his Father and confirmed to the English their ancient priviledges which since after long and bloudy wars were anew confirmed and the Quarrel determined by that wise King Edward the first who having as much valour as wisdom in condescending to the Rights of his Subjects knew well how thereby to preserve his own for after all the Soveraignty of Kings remained inviolable and those prerogaâ—ives were preserved which were only proper to him who is not subject but to God alone Such also is the Court of Wards by which a great many Orphans of the Kingdom are in Wardship to the King and almost all the Lands appertaining to him until they be of Age. In this thing the Kings of England exceed all other Christian Princes This being such an essential mark of absolute Soveraignty that there cannot be a greater Certainly if this Monarchy had begun either by Election or Covenant the Subjects would never have given the King so vast a power over their Estates and Families Amongst the priviledges of the English these three are the principal That the King cannot make a Law without the consent of his Estates That no Law made in Parliament can be revoked but in Parliament and that the King can levy no moneys of his Subjects beâ—â—des his ordinary Revenues without the concurrence of the Two Houses in the intervals of Parliaments the King according to his Supream Power may make Edicts seem burdensom to the Subjects or to impair their Laws and Priviledges they humbly present them in the next Parliament the K. when the complaint appears just unâ—o him easeth them for to make their requests pass for Acts without the pleasure of the K. they cannot neither can the K. make new Acts in Parl. without their consent In the mean while the King makes not them partakers of his Authority but assembling them in Parliament he renders them capable to limit his Authority in Cases that appertain to their cognisance for there are many cases wherein they are not to meddle at all in the point of the Militia and for fear they should forget that even this power they have to limit the King comes from the Authority of the King and he can take it away from them when he pleaseth for when he breaks up the Parliament he retires to himself the Authority that he gave them to limit his and moreover if they stretch their priviledges beyond the pleasure of the King he hath power to dissolve the Parliament and after the word of the King is passed which dischargeth them and sends them away they have not power to sit or consult a minute Whence Bodinus well versed in the nature of the States of Christendome concludes the King of England to have Soveraign Authority The Estates of England saith he cannot be assembled nor dissolved but by the Edict of the Prince no more then in France and Spain which proves sufficiently that the Assemblies have no power of themselves to command or forbid a thing and he laughs at the ignorance of Bellaga who affirm the States of Arragon to be above their King and yet nevertheless confesseth the States cannot assemble nor separate without him Illud Novum planè absurdum That saith he is New and altogether a most absurd Doctrine And therefore it was that which occasioned them who had a design to overthrow Church and State to labour to draw a promise from his Majesty that the late long Parliament should not be dissolved without the consent of both Houses well knowing that without that granted the King when he pleased might have overturned their designs which they having obtained shewed by their Actions that they thought themselves then priviledged to do what they would without his Authority and thus it is with us at this day Yet so it is that they themselves do confess that this grant did
not alter the Nature of the two Houses and the Gentlemen of the Parliament have often protested that they would not make use of this Act of Grace to the disadvantage of his Majesty so then if there were no Soveraignty resident in the two Houses before this grant there is no more after and the pretended Fundamental Laws not written that parts Soveraignty between the King and his Subjects yea that transport it wholly to the people are much to be suspected of falsity since they never appear but since the promise they obtained of the King both to his and their great damage to perpetuate this Parliament as long as they pleased and since they have begun to exercise the Soveraignty by force of Arms. Thus the new Nobility after they had obtained the Firss by right or wrong produce Coats of Arms and Titles which were heretofore unknown They maintain this their New Soveraignty by a Maxime of Stephanus Junius Brutus Rex est singulis Major universis Minor That is to say as they expound it That the King is the Soveraign of Particulars but the Representative body of the State is greater then he and have Soveraignty over him and all their Writers and amongst others the Observator on the Kings Answers attribute Majestie to the Commonalty and not to the King or Supreme if this be true it 's very strange how this Representative Body of the State the Parliament have left it so long time to the Kings the Court of Wards and many other Rights of Soveraignty which they have enjoyed without Contradiction until that present Parliament This vile Maxime then being destitute of all proofs from the Laws and Customes of the State ought to be despised but moreover it is also void of all reason for if the English be subject to their King in Retail are they not in Gross if in pieces not in the whole being born Subjects have they power to give the Soveraignty to their Deputies or Parliament men and make them Chief that is to say can they give them that which they have not And seeing also that they cannot assemble in Parliament without the King or Supreme Magistrates Writ this Writ of the Kings doth it render them forthwith Soveraigns above the King The stile of the Writ calls them ad Consul andum de quibusdam arduis to consult with him about some difficult affairs and not to master him and to dispose of his Authority And since they call this great Court the Body Representative of Subjects they must needs then be Subjects otherwise they should not represent them who sent them and that which the King accords to should be granted to Soveraigns but his Subjects should receive no benefit thereby He who will well examine this Proposition That the Soveraignty over the Soveraign rests in the Representative body of Subjects shall find it full of contradictions and to destroy it self They cannot bring any probable reason saith Bodin that the Subjects ought to command their Prince and that the Assembly of Estates ought to have any power unless when the Prince is under age or distracted or captive then the Estates may depute him a Regent or Lieutenant Otherwise if Princes were subâ—ect to the Laws of the States and Commands of the people their Power were nothing and the Title of a King would be a Name without the thing moreover under such a Prince the Common-wealth should not be governed by the people but by some few persons equal in their Suffrages who who would make Laws and Edicts not by the Authority of the Prince but by their own who for all that come and present him humbly with requests every one apart by himself and all in a body making shew of Faithfulness and Obedience these things are as ridiculous as can be imagined thus saith Bodin Behold here the Form of State of our Covenanters in their beginning so drawn to the life by this learned Person that one would say he took the very Copie from them In effect when under a Monarchy a Faction in an Assembly of States shall take upon them the Soveraignty the State change not into an Aristocracy nor Democracy but into a pure Obligarchy which is the worst of all Forms of State and but the corruption of others The Royal Power being once usurped 't is not then the greatest nor the best nor the most who govern the affairs but some few unquiet and ambitious persons who love contention and know how to fish in troubled waters and as these men deceive the King with a false Idea of Soveraignty so they deceive their companions perswading them that the have part in their Authority because they have voices in the House for in such Assemblies where the choice of persons is more by hap then Judgment the Suffrage is to all but the Power is in a few The same Author numbring the Soveraign and absolute Monarchies of Christendom places England and Scotland amongst them and saith That without all Question their Kings have all the rights of Majesty and that it is not lawful for their Subjects neither apart nor in a Body to attempt any thing against the Life Reputation or Goods of their Soveraign be it either by ways of Force or Justice although he were guilty of all the crimes a man could imagine in a Tyrant For the Subjection that the Parliament owe to their King we can have no better witness then the Parliament it self for that disloyal maxime that the body of the State is above the King is contradicted by the ordinary stile of their papers presented to the King by this Body The Two Houses most humbly beseech their Soveraign Lord the King and they qualifie themselves the most humble and loyal subjects of his Majesty 'T is the Presentative Body of the Kingdome who speaks and nothing by way of Complement but Duty This Preface hath an excellent Grace in the beginning of a Declaration of the Two Houses to their King wherein they tell him that they deal favourably with him if they do not depose him and that they may do it without exceeding the limits of their Duty and Modesty This discourse is like the Locusts of the bottomless pit Revelations 9. which had the faces of men but the tails of Scorpions and therefore to avoid this disproportion in their Articles presented to the King at New-Castle they left out the Qualification of Subjects The ordinary Preface of Statutes do lively express the Nature of the three Estates The King by the Advice and Consent of the Prelates Earls and Barons and at the instance and request of the Commonalty hath ordained c. For it 's the King alone properly that ordains the Peers as Councellors advise and Consent the Commons as Suppliants require and solicite The Parliament held in the twenty fourth year of Henry the Eight speaks thus By divers ancient and authentical Histories and Chronicles it is manifestly declared that this Kingdome of England is an
to obey the Laws until the same Authority that made them alters and changes them This Authority being that of the Prince sitting in Parliament we hold not our selves bound by that which passeth in any House or Councel without him and against him accounting that where the Princes Authority shines not their power is eclips'd above all since the Houses at Westminster were reduced to the fourth part of their number and the lesser part the major part being frighted away and filled their vacant places with persons of their own judgement without the Kings Authority if the Houses had ever any Power without him it was like the light of the Moon without the Sun Exiguum malignum Lumen as the Astrologers call it it was a little light which did nought but hurt Our great Lawyer Fortescue speaks well that as a Natural Body when the Head is cut off is not called a Body but a Trunck so in the Body Politick the Commonalty without a Head cannot any way incorporate or make a Body CHAP. VIII How the Covenanters will be Judges in their own Cause BUt was there ever any thing more unreasonable then this proceeding They would that the judgement of the Lesser part of the Two Houses without the King and against all former Parliaments should be received yea in their own Quarrel and that in the Controversie whether the King hath Authority above this Assembly or it above him this Assembly will be judge 't is for them they tell us to declare what is Law and to make the Law Now that Assembly declares that their Authority is above the King that their Arms are just and the Kings unjust and that the Representative Body of the State cannot erre in Law and that it 's your duty to stand to their judgement These people would be ashamed to confess where they have learned thus to reason Is it not of him who said Dic Ecclesiae hoc est tibi ipsi Tell it to the Church that is to say to thy self and truly to confute them we will do them the shame to employ the same words we make use of against him changing only the persons In the present Quarrel one of the Controversies is Whether the Two Houses at Westminster without the King are the Soveraign Judges in point of Law In this Controversie should the Two Houses be Judges they should then be Judges in their own Cause and should be assured to gain their process Item if it be disputed whether they can erre in this Controversie also they would judge they could not erre Should they be Infallible Judges of their Infallibility Who beholds not in this an evident contradiction That it must be that he that disputes whether the Two Houses can erre must address himself to the Two Houses as to Judges that cannot erre to judge this Question so likewise in the Question whether the Authority of the Two Houses be above the King it 's certain that the Two Houses cannot be Judges since by this same Question their Authority to Judge is called into doubt the one pretends that the difference hath been decided and judged by the Authority of a Soveraign and infallible Judge it 's certain that hereby he renders the wound incurable the quarrel eternal and beyond all terms of reconciliation It matters not to say that between two parties that pretend to the Soveraignty there can be no Judge but that the strongest must carry it for if the two parties desire peace they may choose Arbiters The King or Supreme being the Natural Soveraign of his Enemies and he who gives vigor to the Laws hath desired notwithstanding that the difference should be determined by the Laws he pretends not to infallibility He hath also often chosen his Neighbours for Arbiters and hath fully satisfied them by reasonable offers and such as are worthy of him witness the Report that the extraordinary Ambassadors of the States Generals made to their Lords for which the Parliament of London declared their great discontent in writings The King being to render account of his Actions to none but God alone submitted himself notwithstanding to Reason and Piety remitting himself wholly to the Ancient Laws and Constitutions of his Kingdome He hath often protested and oft-times published and in this difference taken all Christendome for Arbiters but what in the Question whether his Subjects can make a Law against him and whether they have right to make war on him and would also that he should remit himself to their Ordinances yea even those which they have made without him against his will and against himself and that he should acknowledge them for Supreme Judges in their own cause without other Arbiters then their will Now they have had their wills wholly and have been Judges and parties both together a priviledge that belongs to God alone to whose Supreme Court we appeal CHAP. IX That the most Noble and best part of the Parliament retired to the King being driven away by the worser THat which doth strongly perswade us to believe that the Priviledges of Parliament which they would extend even in infinitum have an ill foundation is because we have seen them opposed by the better part of the Parliament both in Quality and Dignity For besides the King an hundred seventy five of the House of Commons and the best qualified withdrew themselves from amongst them and of the Lords eighty three so that scarcely the third part remained at Westm Almost all the Gentry wholly followed the King and when we consider the persons the Condition and Revenues of those that withdrew themselves we cannot see that they had any need to fish in troubled waters or to warm themselves at the Great Fire that began to slame as those had that remained Without doubt that great Body of Lords and Gentlemen of the Kingdome loved their Liberty and would never have assisted the King to have obtained an unlimited power break their Priviledges and impose a perpetual yoak of slavery upon them and their posterity When need was these Members of Parliament assembled themselves and the King deferred to their Councels as much as their Priviledges required Whereupon those of the Parliament of London were extraordinarily vexed maintaining that the Name and Power of Parliament was from that time fastened to the place where they sate which is a point that we will not dispute how strange soever it be but we would have them remember that they have had their sitting in other places and have not for all that thought they had left their Authority at Westminster and we dare answer for them that if the Lords and Commons which held with the King had driven them away and taken their place they would soon have changed their Opinion Besides this strong consideration of numbers and persons all those who know that the King is the Fountain of Authority and that without him there is no more lawful Power then day without the sun would never make
power by certain humane means introduced by custome which notwithstanding hinders not but their power may be founded in the Word of God when they are once established for as we said before the Question is not of the means by which a Prince comes to the Kingdome but what Obedience is due to him after he is once instaled And therefore Saint Peter after he had called this Ordinance an humane Ordinance commands us to subject our selves for the Lords sake and to obey his command Whosoever makes the Authority of Kings depend upon the institution of men and not upon the Ordinance of God lessens their Majesty more then three quarters and takes from them that which secures their lives and Crowns more then their Guards or mighty Armies which plants in the Subjects hearts Fear instead of Love and Reverence Then the fidelity and obedience of Subjects will be firm and lasting when it shall be incorporated with piety and accounted a part of Religion and of the service we owe to God This foundation being over-turned that the Authority of Kings is but an humane Ordinance that which they build upon it must necessarily fall for to reason thus that the people may take away their Authority from the King because they gave it him is to prove one absurdity by another as if one should prove the Moon might be burnt because it s made of wood For to say the people gave the power to the King is to imagine that which never was no not in Kingdomes which are Elective The People give not the King his Authority for they cannot give that they have not but he defers his obedience to Henry or Charles But this Prince being elected receives his Authority from God as the beginning and source from whence all power flowes By me Kings Raign Pro. 8.15 And there is no Power but of God Rom. 13.1 None ought therefore to take this Power which God hath given him Thus the Wife choseth her Husband and gives him a promise of obedience in marriage but it is not she that gives him his Authority that comes from above And there is as great an absurdity to say that the People may depose the King because they chuse him as to affirm that the Woman may put away her Husband or subject him to her when she shall judge expedient because that she made choice of him For the woman loseth the liberty of her choice by the bond of marriage and the People likewise lose the liberty to revoke their choice when the Prince Elected is declared King 'T is a strange consequence to say that the people may take away the Kings Authority because they have sworn obedience to him the Election is no other thing And it 's a reason that overthrows it self to say that the people may take from the King his Authority because they gave it him For put the case that it were true that the people gave Authority to the King whom they Elect since then the people have given away their Authority 't is no more in them This maxime being once admitted that it is lawful for every one to take back again what he hath given it would break the Laws of Society and fill the world with injustice and confusion But let our enemies know that although the Authority of the King had not begun before the Oath of Allegiance which this Parliament took in a Body at the beginning of their sitting yet the Body of the State made thereby an irrevocable gift of their obedience to the King and from this Oath we draw a better consequence then theirs namely that they cannot dispose of their obedience since they have given it to the King So that were their reasons good they would be of no force but in Kingdomes which were Elective and make nothing against King Charles for neither he nor any of the Kings his Ancestors in all ages past ever came to the Crown by Election It 's not to purpose to alledge the Oath the King took at his Coronation as an agreement and paction made with his people equivalent to an Election for the King receives not his Kingdome at his Coronation he is King before his Crown is put on and therefore Watson and Clark who conspired against King James of glorious memory were justly condemned as guilty of High Treason although they alledged that the King was not then Crowned and it was judged by the Court that the Crowning was but a ceremony for to make the King known to his people It 's the like also in France I judge saith Bodin that no man doubts but the King enjoyes before his Anointing the possession and propriety of his Kingdome Before this ceremony the King enjoyes as fully all his Rights as after and according to the Laws of France and England the King never dies whilst there remains any of the Royal Blood for in the same hour that the King expires the lawful Heir is totally invested of the Kingdome Wherefore the Eldest Sonne of Edward the Fourth who was murthered by his Uncle Richard is by general consent numbered amongst the Kings and named Edward the Fifth although he never wore the Crown nor took any Oath nor exercised any Authority Henry the Sixth was not Crowned but in the ninth year of his Reign and yet before his Coronation many were attainted of High Treason which could not have been done if he had not been acknowledged King In the Oaths of the Kings of France and England at their Coronation there is no image of stipulation covenant or agreement betwixt them and their subjects They receive not their Crowns upon any condition and their people owe their obedience whether they perform or violate their promises This Oath is a laudible custome profitable to bear up the Authority of the Prince by the love of his Subjects and to give to the people this satisfaction that the King whom God hath given them hath an intention to govern them with Justice and Clemency and to preserve their Rights and Liberties If the King by his Oath should bind himself to fall from the Right to his Kingdome when he should violate his Promises he would then be lesser after his Oath then before and surely if the Kings did believe they should diminish their propriety by their Oath they would never take it and to shew that their Authority depends not of their Oath but their Oath of their Authority the Kings of England form it at their pleasure Very hardly shall you find three that have taken the same Oath without changing some things That which was presented to Henry the Eighth which is to be seen in the Rolls was corrected by his own hand and interlined And moreover the Oath is made to God and not to the People and binds the Conscience of the Prince but doth not limit his Soveraignty if the intention of this solemnity were to make a stipulation or agreement with the people the people at the same time should also
deny but the defenders of this pernicious Doctrine were the chief of their New Reformation and the Authors of the war people whose Counsels were applauded as Oracles and who drew after them their party by the repetition of their sanctified strength of zeal those who dared to contradict them did it very fearfully and kissing their hands before they spake but they themselves carried all before them acting with a prophetick liberty and boldness also after all they only were the men to be trusted and who were put upon all great designs and employments for they feared that they who are less governed by Enthusiasms might at last so far forget themselves as to be faithful to their Sovereign and yield to a peaceable accomodation Behold here then wherefore we would not joyn our selves with these Reformers because we see that even they themselves have the greatest need of Reformation being far gone from the Doctrine of the reformed Churches erring in the Faith but yet more in Charity It 's they would sweep the Church as God swept Babylon with the Beesom of destruction They speak not of reforming neither Doctrines nor Manners but to ruine the Persons They account the most part of the Clergy of the Kingdom unworthy to be corrected but altogether to be rooted out that one part of the Reformation was to ruine the King and to take the sword from his side to cut off his head the favourers of tumults were the only persons that were caressed they lent their ears to the populâ—r tumults whilst they shut the mouths and bound the hands of the Magistrates It was they taught that the people were above the King and that the Command of Saint Paul that every one should be subject to the higher Powers obligeth the King for to obey the People it was they that upheld yea favoured and courted all sorts of pernicious Sects provided that they would bandy with them against their King It was they that suffered to go unpunished the Blasphemies in the Pulpits the Insolencies Sacriledges and horrible profanations of the Service of God and permitted all things to those who were of the zealous party We beheld on the other side that the King took knowledge of the grievances of his people as well for the spiritual as temporal and laboured sincerely to remedy them that he consented to the alteration of offensive things in Religion and to the punishment of those who were accused as troublers of the Church provided that the things and persons were examined by regular and lawful waies of a general Synod which he offered to assemble he also was pleased to yield of his own right to augment the rights of his Subjects and daily multiplied acts of favour capable to convert the most alienated spirits passed by the many and great affronts that were done to his authority and endeavoured by all waies possible to overcome evil with good But the more the King yielded the more insolent were the factious against him he offered to reform both the State and Church but they would not permit him they themselves would do that work without him The King sent divers messages to know of them what things they would reform but to this they answered only with complaints Neither could he obtain any declaration of that which they desired until that his Forts Magazines Ships and Revenues were taken from him the reason of which hath since been given by one of their principal Champions Having to sow the Lords Field they had need to make a fence about it before they begin that the work-men might labour without interruption and that to lance the Apostume of a sick State they must first bind the Patient Our Conscience could not accomodate it self to this prudence neither ever expect any good from such a way of Reformation which would bind the Royal hands and feet of Majesty before they would declare what they desired of his Favour and cut asunder the Nerves of his Authority and subsistance under colour to establish the Kingdom of Jesus Christ A strange proceeding to us that have learned of St Paul that a Prince beareth not the sword in vain Rom. 13.4 But in that is the Minister of God to execute wrath and that to resist him yea when he should make use of the sword to commit injustice is to resist the Ordinance of God But if he use it well or ill that ought to be left to him who gave it him and to whom only he ought to render account his Subjects ought to counsel him if he did ill and refuse to assist him in evil doing and not repress him by Arms That if this Command of St Paul obliged the Romans to obey a cruel vicious Prince and enemy to God we should account our selves much more bound to obey a just merciful religious Prince whose life was a rare example of piety and sanctity and his Government so just and peaceable that he might well be called the Father of his Subjects who wanted nothing to make them happy but to know their happiness CHAP. II. That the Covenanters are destitute of all Proofs from Holy Scripture for their War made against the King THese violent beginnings of the Covenanters and their Progress also which overthrows all humane Authority had great need to strengthen it self by Divine Authority to satisfie the Conscience whence is it that they made a great noise of it in their Pulpits but not in their Disputes for those that exhorted the people in Scripture-term to War against the King hang down the head when in conference their Proofs are demanded saying that It is not for Divines but Lawyers to decide the present quarrel Whence it appears that there is a great difference betwixt the terms and proofs of Scripture and that many that have the voice of the Lamb speak as the Dragon But fearing lest they should accuse us that we suppress their proofs behold here all that they make use of both in their Books and Sermons part borrowed from the writings of the Jesuites and part from two Books which are Printed with Machiavels Prince and not without great reason for there are three wicked Books together and its a wonder how that in threescore years their Books have not been burnt for company by the hands of the common Executioner They alledge the example of David who had six hundred men for his guard when he was pursued by Saul 1 Sam. 22.2 The example of the Army of Israel which saved Jonathan when Saul would have put him to death 1 Sam. 14.45 Of Ehud who slew Eglon King of Moab an Oppressor of the Israelites Judg. 3.21 The example of the Town of Libnah which revolted from the obedience of Jehoram because he had forsaken the Lord God of his Fathers 2 Chr. 21.10 Of Jehu that cut off the House of Ahab 2 Kings 9. The example of Jehojadah the High Priest who commanded Athaliah the Queen to be put to death 2 Kings 11.15 Of the Priests
King whom they ought to defend and maintain against a stranger usurping and that had murthered the Royal Family and here the Maxime is valid That against a publike enemy every one hath right to take up Arms But what conclude they from these two last examples they would have been ashamed to have named them before the death of their King but since they have explained themselves God defend the holiness of his Word and confound this Divelish Divinity Those that follow are not much better they alledge the example of the Priests who resisted King Uzziah when he would have exercised the Priests Office so ought the Ministers of the Gospel to resist the King if he would administer the Sacraments but this resistance ought to be done by humble admonitions and as refusing to serve him in his design not by way of Arms In the matter of 〈…〉 the Priests used not any violence it is said 〈…〉 caused him to go out of the Temple because Go◠〈…〉 him with the Leprosie but that 〈…〉 force for the Text saith vers 20. he 〈…〉 â—ed to go out because the Lord had 〈…〉 his serves nothing for their Subject they have no other reason to alledge this but because having quarrelled against all Kings they take delight to blast their Dignity The like is the example of Elisha who commanded the door to be shut against the messenger that was sent from Ioram to cut off his head 2 Kings 2.32 If Elisha had sent a Messenger to cut off the Kings Head the example had been to the purpose for this is our case at this day but to shut the door against an Officer of the Kings to save his life being condemned to die wrongfully and without force of Justice is very far from attempting either against the Person or Authority of the King The English Law in many Caseâ— gives to every one his house for a place of safety neither is there any Law either Divine or Humane that forbids us to defend a blow from what part soever it comes if the Covenanters had done no other thing there never had been a War but they proceeded further then defence Was there ever a more important Action upon so small a foundation to persecute their King by Sea and Land destroy his Estate plant their Cannon against his Person imprison him and at last cut off his head because Elisha caused the door to be shut against the Messenger of Joram But in recompence behold here two proofs wherein there is as much piety as reason Judg. 5.23 Deborah cursed the Inhabitants of Meroz because they came not forth to help the Lord against Jabin and Sisera and Jer. 48.10 Jeremy cursed them that kept their sword from shedding the blood of the Moabites Ergo Cursed are all they that came not to help the Covenanters against the King For these rare consequences they deserve a bundle of Thistles such as Asses feed on and to be driven from the society of men as being deprived both of Reason and Humanity who hath given them power to stretch to the King either by words or actions the judgements pronounced against the enemies of God and which are restrained to certain Nations and Persons The King was he a Moabite Was he a Pagan or an Usurper of a Kingdom as Jabin Are you Prophets as Deborah and Jeremy to curse with Authority If ye be not Prophets ye are Sacrilegious for cursing is a Fire that appertains only to God to cast forth they who are so bold to take it into their hands without Authority burn them and hurt none but themselves but oftentimes doth good to them whom they would hurt for this Rashness moves God to jealousie and provokes him to do the contrary according to the Psalmist Psal 109. Let them curse but do thou bless we have great hopes that our enemies shall be the Occasion of the blessing of God upon us since they take such pains to curse us it is the constant Argument of their Sermons and publike Prayers to it they employ the vehemency of their Eloquence and fervour of their Devotion Let us then say with David 2 Sam. 16.12 It may be the Lord will look upon our affliction and that the Lord will requite good for their cursing but let us bless them that persecute us and despitefully use us O our God! turn their Hearts and bless their persons and as our Lord Jesus by his Prayer on the Cross saved them which crucified him save we beseech thee all those that crucifie him in his Members and those who killing us think they do God service CHAP. III. Express Texts of Scripture which Commands Obedience and forbids Resistance to Soveraigns FOr to draw them from Examples and particular Cases which is their retreat to general Precepts we beseech them as they love God and their own salvation to review their proofs and consider that in all the Scripture there is neither Precepts nor Permission that authorizeth the taking up of Arms against their Soveraign but there are very many formal Commands to the contrary The first Commandment Honour thy Father and thy Mother binds us to honour the King for in the beginning Soveraignty appertained to Fathers and is derived of the paternal power Deut. 13.6 c. Now it is impossible to honour the King and draw your sword against him upon which we observe that in case of Idolatry the Father was commanded by the King to accuse his Son and Daughter and the Husband his Wife and to stretch forth first his hand against them to slay them but neither the Son nor the Daughter ought to accuse the Father nor the Wife the Husband much less to put forth their hand against them Whence we learn that neither Children nor Subjects ought to rise up against their Fathers or their Kings which have in them the Paternal Character no not for the service of God and that their Persons ought to be inviolable those who confess this Truth and yet in the mean while separate the Authority of the King from his Person deny that which they have confessed and expose the Person of the King to violence for it is the Authority that renders the Persons of Kings unviolable Therefore among so many Reprehensions and Judgments against Idolatrous Kings whereof the holy History is full ye shall in no place nor part find that the people are reproved for not depressing or deposing their King ordinarily the punishment that God sent upon them came immediatly from himself or out of the Kingdome not by their own Subjects Before God would employ Jehu who was a Subject to destroy the Kings of Israel and Judah he anointed him King and besides gave him a special and extraordinary Command We say the like of Jeroboam whose Example is very ill alledged to defend Rebellion for Jeroboam was sent of God to take the Kingdom from Rehoboam and was authorized by a formal donation The sentence of David before mentioned 1 Sam. â—6 9 is of
in Parliament that takes not their Oaths at his entrance neither is it in their power to overthrow without and against the King that which is established by the King sitting in Parliament Also this is a thing that never entred into the spirits of the English before the times of this epidemical phrensie that the Kings Writs which makes the Estates to assemble and the deputation of the people that sends them should exempt their Deputies or Parliament men from the duty of Subjects and absolve them of their Oath of Allegiance and St. Pauls Command The Text of St. Paul according to the Greek requires that every Soul should be subjects If so be then that their Deputies or Parliament men have no souls they are not bound to give obedience to the King When we reason thus our adversaries are extraordinarily moved and would take this matter out of the hands of the Clergy saying that the Lawyers not the Divines are to decide where the Supream Power of the State rests whether it be in the person of the King or the people and with what limitations the King ought to be obeyed and that the Apostle requiring an obedience to supream Powers intends an obedience according to the Laws and the Laws are every where different and that one and the same Rule of Scripture cannot serve for all Kingdoms that the Kingdom of England not being formed as the Kingdom of Israel or the Roman Empire the Commands of the Old and New Testament alledged toucheth not the present Quarrel Now are they not ashamed to forbid our Clergy to discourse of Political affairs whilst the Gentlemen of the Bar take upon them to teach Divinity to the Clergy and by infinite Booâ—s as processes stir up the people to Rebellion by Reasons of Religion and to uphold staggering Consciences in the duty of Obedience and Christian Concord and to defend the Truth of God by our sufferances as we have endeavoured to do It 's not to meddle in the affairs of State but to discharge our Consciences and to keep that good thing which God hath committed unto us We cannot be accused to intrude our selves into the Civil Government as their Ministers who serve as Agents and Factors in publick affairs It s henceforth the duty of Divines to handle this point of State for the Lawyers and States-men of the Covenant who having lately built their New Policy upon a New Divinity of their fashion have forced the Divines to become Polititians at leaâ—â—o far as to defend true Divinity from the crime of Disobedience since they press us for Conscience to joyn with them to resist the King they must satisfie our Consciences that the fundamental Laws of the Kingdom require us so to do But if they would that Divines rest themselves upon the faith of the Lawyers in the point of resistance upon which there is no less penalty than damnation it is to press an implicit Faith and blind obedience upon those that preach the contrary Without exceeding then the limits of our vocation we do acknowledg that the Apostle requires an obedience according to the Laws of the State not only of the State of Rome but of every other form of Government and we deny that there may not be found in Scripture a Rule of Obedience which serves for all sorts of Estates for such is that of the present Text That every Soul should be subject to the Higher Powers and that he that resisteth the Powers resisteth the Ordinance of God and thereby shall receive to himself damnation the reason inserted between these two sentences do manifestly regard all forms of States that there are no powers but they be of God and the powers that are are ordained of God therefore the Command that goes before and after appertains to all sorts of Government Let every one be subject to the power and let none resist the power and threatnings also which is the terriblest of all threatnings that those that resist the Powers shall receive to themselves damnation Saint Peter wills us to be subject to every Ordinance of man for the Lords sake that is we are to subject our selves to every form of Government lawfully established and to perswade our selves that that Ordinance is of God Generally the Scriptures before alledged oblige all persons of all Estates to yield Obedience to him and those in whom the Supream Power resides and there cannot 〈◊〉 brought any valuable reason why it is more lawful to resist the Supream Power in England than in Israel or in Rome Indeed if they could produce a fundamental Law of the Kingdom that did permit the people of England in certain cases to take up Arms against the King they had some reason then to say that Saint Paul did not forbid the English to resist their Prince beyond the nature of their Laws as the Princes of Germany when they took up Arms against the Emperor produced the Golden Bull of Charles the fourth and the Emperial Capitulation for by it they were expresly permitted to make war against him if he attempted any thing against their ancient composition although I account that this Capitulation could not be made without contradicting the Command of the Apostle for Histories mention that the Emperour was reduced to it by the threatnings and Menaces of the Pope but now by long prescription the Empire is not that it was and it 's a point disputable what is the Supream Power in divers States of Germany 'T is that which but of late hath been put to the Question in England and was never disputed before the year 1642. where the Supream Power of the Kingdom resides unless when the Crown was in dispute between two Princes The Kings enemies employed all their forces to prove that the Soveraign Authority appertained to the people to evade the Text of Saint Paul and other Texts of Scripture which did marvellously incommode their affairs imitating those that alter the Lock of their doors when the Key is in possession of their Adversary for beholding to their great regret that the Scripture is wholly ours commanding obedience and strictly forbidding resistance to Soveraigns yea under pain of damnation they labour with all their might to change the nature of the State that thereby the rules of subjection contained in the Scripture might be of no use One of their Authors of whom they make great account affirms boldly that the passages in Scripture against resisting the Supream Power are of no force but in simple and absolute Monarchies as that of the Jews and Romans and do no waies touch ours This is a clean shaver who cuts the knot that he cannot untie wherein he imitates the ingenuity of Buchanan who having taught Subjects to punish their King and feeling himself pressed by Conscience which suggested to him that the Scripture was wholly contrary to it prevents the Objection that might be made by maintaining that it 's ill inferred to say that the thing
condition they would commit new ones But when the honest and most understanding of the City came in a good number to petition the two Houses to hearken to peace and satisfie the King they were severely rebuked as seditious and these Gentlemen let them know that they loved no noise but of their own making Behold here the waies whereby the Parliament of London obtained their absolute power Behold the Foundations they laid for a most holy Reformation Posterity will be ashamed of the Actions of their Fathers all Forreign Nations will abhor these proceedings remorse and sorrow may in the end enter into the hearts of the Londoners when they shall behold themselves the sole object of publick Execrations and curses Those of Gaunt and Paris have only reason to pardon them when they shall remember their Baracado's and the estate of the Nobles during the holy League CHAP. X. A Parallel of the Covenant with the holy League of France under Henry the 3d. WHo so shall compare the holy League of France with the English Covenant shall find that they are sisters daughters of the same Father and that the younger is to the life after the Image of the Elder in both you shall find an Oath of mutual assistance to extirpate Heresie without the Authority of the King and which at last is turned against the King himself A Jealousie without ground of the Religion of their Soveraign and a War of Religion against a King of the same Religion which they would make the world believe was a Heretick A League with strangers and Armies raised in the Kingdom against their natural Prince who gave them no other occasion of the War but his too much Gentleness A King submitting himself to reason offering himself to remedy all the grievances of his Subjects and a people refusing to admit him to bring a remedy and resolved to give order without him the King driven from his chief City which he had honoured by his ordinary presence The fire of civil war blown about by seditious preachers The superstitious people tributary to the ambition of some particulars weak Conscience instructed to cut the throat of their King for the love of God and to gain Paradise fastings frequent Devotions doubled Prophetical Inspirations Examples of Angelical Holiness and all this to perswade the superstitious people that God favoured their Seditions as his cause and that their Leaders took Counsel of none but the Holy Ghost and had no other aim but the setting up of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ Writers under pay to write scandalous libels against their King the people fed with lies to drain money out of their purses one while amazing them with fears where there was none another while flattering them with false hopes and with forged news A Parliament in the principal City but in it a smal number who wanting the Royal assistance support themselves by granting liberty to an inveagled people and by power of rich and foolish Citizens Nobility scorned Artificers and Banquerouts bearing the sway all Order Divine and Humane overturned the ancient Laws and Customes broken and new fundamental Laws never heard of before in their places In brief it appears at this day that the Devil marches abroad and walks in the same paths he did about fifty years since CHAP. XI The Doctrine of the English Covenanters parallel'd with the Doctrine of the Jesuits SInce the League of France and the English Covenant were both made upon pretence of Religion it 's not unworthy our paines to consider the conformity of the Doctrines they employed to maintain both the one and the other and how the Jesuits Maximes were the chief support of the Covenant Both in the League and Covenant the people were encouraged to take up Arms against their King by this opinion of Car. Bellar. who teacheth that in the Kingdoms of men the power of the K comes from the people because it 's the people that makes the King and that the people do never so transfer their power over to the King but they retain it in habitu and so that in certain cases they may in effect re-assume it again which was also the judgment of Navarrus whom the Cardinal highly extois And thus also the Author of the Observations upon the Kings Declarations who is the Master of the Sentences with the Covenanters teacheth us That originally the power is in the people who are the fountain and efficient cause and that the Authority is not in the Prince but secondarily and derivatively All these State Philosophers are full of School terms but little reason and he adds That this Authority founded by the people cannot be dissolved but by that power which gave it constitution Which is as much as to say That the people may take away the Kings power and authority when they please Another of the Sect but more antient tells us That Princes and Governours have their authority from the people who when they find it convenient may resume and take it from them again as every man may revoke when he please his own procuration or warrant but this reason shall by and by be examined and refuted The Cardinal explains himself more clearly in that which before he had written in covert Terms saying That a King such as he there describes may yea ought by the consent of all to be deprived of his Authority and Goodman is of his opinion That evil Princes ought to be deposed and that this alone belongs to the inferiour Magistrates to put in execution We learn from Doctor Charron that the French Leaguers eluded the strength of S. Pauls Texts which forbids the opposing of Soveraigns in saying That the commands had regard and respect only to the State of the Christians of those times because they were not then strong enough to make resistance I have before shewed how Bellarmine Buchanan and the Champions of Covenant make use of the same reason and exposition But to clear the way and make it smooth to come to deposing of Soveraign Princes These two parties are wont to absolve their Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance Emanuel Sa the Jesuite saith That the people may depose their Prince even after they have sworn perpetual obedience to him And Mr. Knox saith That if Princes prove Tyrants against God and his Truth their Subjects are free from their Oaths of Allegiance c. To the excommunication and deposing of the Prince ordinarily there follows execution according to the Authentick Bull That it s not Homicide to kill an excommunicated person The French League produced two examples in the persons of their Kings and this accords with the Doctrine of Buchanan That Ministers may excommunicate Princes and that a King after he is cast into Hell by Excommunication is unworthy to live or to enjoy life upon earth But observe in passing the Reformed Churches do not teach that the Excommunicatio Major do cast any person into Hell but onely excludes
him that spake them like unto the bitings of the weasel who consumes his teeth by gnawing of steel Certainly when the Divines of France defend in their writings the Confession of Faith of his Majesty against the Doctors of the contrary Religion they account not that King a most mortal enemy of the Church That most holy Confession confirmed by the practice of that great Prince will serve as a bright shining light in the Church in after Ages and cover the memory of them who injured and reproached him with perpetual shame But for the present thâ—se rare Adages which curse the best of Kings and Royalty in general are gather'd as choice and golden sentences Witnesse this other which comes from the Authority of his Companion as great a liar as himself who hath this passage He erres not much who saith that there is in all Kings a mortal hatred against the Gospel they will not suffer willingly the King of Kings to govern in their Kingdomes yet God hath some amongst the Kings who pertain to him but very few it may be one in an hundred But since he is upon the number instead of counting a hundred Kings one after another let him account only a hundred years without going out of England and we intreat this good man to consider what Kings have raigned over this Kingdome within this hundred years and let him in good earnest tell us which of them he would leave to God and which he would give to the Devil let them consider the piety of him whom God hath made a Saint and they a Martyr let them find if they can in all his Kingdome a man more just and meek more temperate and religious and let envy and rebellion who finding nothing to bite at in the life of this Monarch burst asunder at his feet and hide themselves in their own confusion Let us say the same to the Observator upon his Majesties Declarations who speaking of all Kings now raigning but with a particular application to his Soveraign saith That to be the delight of mankind as Titus Vespasian is now a sordid thing amongst Princes but to be tormentors and executioners of the Publique to plot and contrive the ruine of their subjects which they ought naturally to protect is now accounted a work worthy of Caesar If reviling and speaking reproachful words against the King were blasphemy according to the stile of the civil Laws of Israel 1 King 21 10. then this impious person is a Blasphemer in the highest degree against the sacred Majesty of Kings and moreover exceeding ridiculous as well as wicked to appropriate this description to his King whose known piety justice and clemency deserved rather the title of the delights of mankind then that Emperour upon whom the love of the people conferred it The like I may speak of the Kings of France within these fifty years all the Lists of the French Kings furnisheth not such excellent Princes wherefore Aphorismes of Rebellion could never have been pronounced in an age more proper to give the Authors the lye The Lord rebuke these black souls who curse God in the person of his Anointed their sentence is written and their qualities painted out to the life by St. Peter 2 Pet. 2.10 11 12. who despise Dominions presumptuous self-willed they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities whereas Angels which are greater in power bring not railing accusations against them before the Lord but these are natural bruit beasts made to be taken and destroy'd speak evil of things which they understand not and shall utterly perish in their own corruption I might heap up many more passages of our enemies which teach murther rebellion and hatred of Kings in which they seem to dispute with the very Jesuites themselves this description of their devotion A seditious piety a factious Religion which would be Judge of the consciences of Princes who abhor their Religion because they hate their Government who make good subjects and good Christians to be things incompatible Whosoever would weary his patience and behold how ingenious the Covenanters have been even to exercise the patience of God and insult over the persons and authority of Kings let them read their Sermons which were daily printed by authority after they had preached them before the House of Commons wherein the filthy Torrent of seditious Eloquence and the fantasticalness of a Bastard Devotion were imploy'd to tear apieces the King to disfigure him in odious colours and stir up the people to all cruel and bloody courses against him out of which books we might collect thousands of Modern Authorities in favour of the wickedness of these times which passed from them as Doctrines of Religion but we esteem our selves worthy of a better imployment then to be poring on Carrion and stirring in sinks and puddles That which we have cited out of known Authors shall suffice to let the world see with whom we have to do and that we are call'd to the condition of S. Paul to fight with beasts CHAP. XII How the Covenanters wrong the Reformed Churches in inviting them to joyn with them with an answer for the Churches of France AS 't is the vice of those who are strucken with the Leprosie to endeavour to infect others so the Covenanters like to them labour by all means possible to spread abroad the poyson of their impiety Those who have preached and published their most infamous Doctrines which renders Christianity hateful both to Turks and Pagans were so bold as to address their publike Declarations to the Reformed Churches of France the Low Countryes and Switzerland as if they made profession of the same Doctrines they had the impudence to invite these so pure Churches to have society with them and to pray them to esteem the Cause of the Covenant that of all the Churches In this the Assembly of Divines at London were imployed by their Masters That which makes this Temptation less dangerous is That the Letter they wrote upon this subject to their Neighbours could very hardly be understood This Venerable Company of Divines of Consummate Knowledge and the Flower of Eloquence of that Party writ a Latine Letter to the French Flemens and Switzers wherein there wants nothing in the Outward but Language and Common sense a most worthy Cover for the Inward for so evil a drogue there needed not a Better Box. This Epistle amongst a ridiculous affectation of Criticismes Greek and Poetical phrases and many Rhetorical Figures is here and there fill'd with Solecismes Barbarismes and the like Grammar Elegancies like a foundred horse that goes up and down and it 's pity to behold hâ—w their Eloquence stumbles in Capriolinge This piece of Latine was much admired and many praises heaped upon the Authors and publick thanks by special command given to them by the House of Commons so much is knowledge valued in this Reformed party It 's likely many hands contributed to the composing of it for
from Whom they take the use of their holy prayers have great cause to fear they will also take from them their Religion whereupon some have Fallen into a desperate Melancholy if they deal thus with us because they have a greater measure of light then we it is much to be desired that they had a little more that they fall not into the offence condemned by S. Paul and through thy knowledge shall thy weak brother perish for whom Christ died but when ye sin against the Brethren and wound their weak conscience ye sin against Christ 1 Cor. 8.11 12. Heretofore this faction would be spar'd in their disobedience to the Ecclesiastical Laws pretending tenderness and weakness of Conscience but now that they are become Masters of the Laws they regard not our weakness but force us to follow their fantasies without considering our doubts and scruples The King by the Articles of Uxbridge offered them liberty of Conscience but they will not give neither the King nor his subjects the like liberty Either take the Covenant or leave your Benefice was the choice they gave many Ministers Alledge to them the great and deep affliction of the people because they had taken from them their Common Prayers their Forms for the celebration of the Sacraments and of Marriage their customs of receiving the Sacrament at Christmas Easter and Pentecost and the decent manner of burying their dead with some Prayers and Texts of Scripture which put the living in mind of their mortality and raised up in them an assurance of their resurrection They will answer you that these observations are not necessary and mock at the affliction of the ignorant people But we hold that it is necessary to obey God who hath commanded us to do nothing whereby thy weak brother stumbleth is offended or made weak but be such as give none offence neither to the Jew nor to the Gentiles nor to the Church of God Rom. 14.21 Also the imaginary danger which they fear of things that may come to passe is a thousand times less then the present scandal and offence done to pious souls to behold all Ecclesiastical order overthrown and Liberty given to prophane and fanatique spirits to whom any thing is permitted unless to obey the King and the orders established by Lawfull Authority But let us pass to other offences There are many more besides the violation of Orders the very substance of Religion is endamaged What care do many people take to Baptize their children How do they reprove them that Baptize no more in the Name of the Father the Son and the holy Ghost Is it notpermitted to every one to Baptize or not Baptize their children and Baptism is it not refused to many Infants which are presented to be Baptized These new Reformers find so many difficulties in the capacity of their Parents that they are constrained many times to carry their children far from their dwellings to be received into the Christian Church for 't is one of the Errors of the Times that if the Father hath not Faith that is to say a Faith after their mode the Infant must not be Baptized In stead whereof the Reformed Churches in Baptizing Infants consider not the Faith of the Parents but of the Church in which they are born and the Doctrine not according as it is believed but according as it is taught Fidem non subjectivam sed objectivam For if they must be certain whether the Father hath Faith they should also be certain that he is the Father of the Infant which the Charity of the Church questioneth not Also it is an ordinary custom amongst them to rebaptize aged persons and to plunge women naked into the Water untill they say they feel faith The abuse of the blessed Sacrament of the Lords Supper is yet worse because it is more universal and maintained by the body of their Divines We beseech all lovers of the Christian Religion to enquire themselves of these Ministers how long time they have forborn to receive or administer this holy Sacrament when was it that the heads of the Covenanters received it when is it that their Souldiers were partakers of it those zealous murtherers whose assassinations and plunderings are steeped in piety Is it because they dare not receive the body and blood of our Lord with hands defiled with rapine and innocent blood But this reason cannot serve for the Churches where the Ministers are laid hold on and forbidden to administer the Sacrament where they are Ministers How many Churches are there where there hath been no speaking of a Sacrament these fifteen or sixteen years And is it not for them to mock God to make a Directory of the manner of receiving the Lords Supper and not to make use of it yea by force to hinder execution and performance of it Our Lord Jesus hath commanded us To do this in remembrance of him 1 Cor. 11.26 But behold here persons who impose a necessity not to do because they know not those who are worthy and therefore they hinder others to obey Jesus Christ taking by force the Bread and Wine from the people who were assembled to communicate and carried away the Minister out of the Church for fear he should administer the Sacrament These actions cry to heaven and will one day draw down a just vengeance These proceedings make us fear least they rank the Lords Supper amongst the superannuated ceremonies which must be abolished for in many Churches where the Covenanters are it 's not used which is a horrible thing to hear the Church of God since Christs time never before brought forth such examples Certainly since Jesus Christ would that we should do this in remembrance of him until his coming again if he should come now he would find it very strange that they had left before his coming this celebration of the memory of his death which he had so expresly commanded and it is to be presumed that he will receive no reason against his Command for the coming of Jesus Christ is the only reason which ought to make this holy Ordinance cease By this scruple that they dare not administer the holy Supper but to those alone whom they know to be worthy which is the general pretext of their party for their total abstinence they condemn not only the Reformed Churches who exclude none from the holy Communion unless they be ignorant and scandalous persons but also Jesus Christ who administred to the Disciple that betrayed him even then when he was plotting his treason in his heart By this also they even bind themselves not to celebrate the Supper of the Lord until they be inspectors and lookers into Conscience that is to say Gods For otherwise they cannot be fully satisfied of the worthiness of persons and all those who have a holy desire to partake of the Lords Table shall not be admitted until these principal Clerks of the Councel-Chamber of God have formed a Church which consists
Humane the King alone hath the power of the Sword whosoever strikes without him is a murtherer Saint Bernard preaching to the Knights Templers of Hierusalem to perswade them from Duells saith that two things are required to make a combat just and lawful The defence of a just cause and obedience to a lawful power The last of these is the principal and that alone which gives to Souldiers a just call for in wars ordinarily the interests of Princes are only known to themselves and often the right and wrong being of two sides we esteem it not necessary that every Souldier be perfectly satisfied of the Justice of the Armies of his Soveraign but as for obedience to a lawful power it s a condition absolutely requisite to justifie the taking up of Arms of a Souldier and there is no exception nor modification that can be brought against it Saint Augustine saith That a just man bearing Armes under a sacrilegious Prince may justly obey his commands if he knowes not the war wherein he serves is against the Commandment of God or if he be doubtful of it So that the Prince may be faulty in commanding and the Subject innocent in rendring the duty of his obedience According to this wise Councel if it be not palpably manifest that the commandment of the Prince do transgress the Laws of God whom we must ever obey rather then men the subject in matter of war be it forraign or civil hath but one thing to consider for conscience namely where the lawful power is Who he is to whom God hath committed the sword and who hath power to give it to others and to whom God hath subjected him in taking up the sword at his command we cannot do amiss This gives full satisfaction to their consciences who took up Arms and fought for the King for besides the goodness of his defence which is just and necessary if ever any were they learn that it is possibly to fight justly for him even when his cause may be unjust but without him it is impossible to draw the sword justly much less against him how just soever the complaints and fears of the contrary party that draws the sword be All lawful demands religious intentions specious pretexts pretended necessities the publick good the Masque of all Rebellions prayers fastings Covenanting with God all this and much more can never make a war just which receives the sword from him to whom God hath not given it and draws it against him to whom God hath committed it Therefore the principal of the Covenanters well perceiving this endeavoured from the beginning to make the King either give them or lend them the power of the Militia In doing whereof they did much wrong to their cause for if they had the lawful power of the sword why did they then so often demand it of the King And if they had it not why did they draw the sword without the lawful power and against him to whom the power appertained by their own confession Why else should they ask it of him They either did injustice to the King to take from him the Militia or else they did injustice to themselves to demand it Certainly by their importunity for the Militia they manifestly condemned themselves and acknowledged that the Militia belonged to the King and that they made the war without his authority and therefore they had great need of many Sermons fastings prayers protestations Oaths upon Oaths to bind in many knots this Covenant which otherwise held by nothing and to perswade the people that instead of the Lawful and Ordinary Power they had an Extraordinary one which was conducted by Revelation Rebellion is against nature Samuel saith It s as the sin of Witchcraft or Divination 1 Sam. 15.23 It is composed of such charms which for a time corrupts the use of reason but cannot destroy the faculty but at last the cloud will vanish and they shall retain nought but the impression of shame and astonishment for their past errors and an earnest desire of an acknowledgment This natural notion is imprinted in the hearts of Subjects That they ought to obey the King and that to him pertaines the Power of Peace and War The very Name of King will make even Souldiers spring from the ground to serve him the Plow-shares shall furnish him with Swords and the Flayls and long Staffes shall fight so his Crown The Arms which they have ravisht from him shall acknowledge their Master and return of themselves to him as those which were unjustly taken from Ajax It 's a very hard thing to fight against nature This appeared in the Counties of the Covenanters wherein whilst the King was Master he raised Ten Thousand men in Eight Daies but after the Covenanters commanded in them although they levied Souldiers continually their Forces ever decreased and those they listed in the day disbanded and run away in the night That if the secret judgment of God which would chastise us had not rendred the people fearful and dismayed for a time such was their number and hatred against the Party of the Covenanters that they had easily dispatched the Countries against the King though themselves were disarmed And it must be in the end that Nature surmounts the constraint for the King is the center of the State whither all parts tend by their own proper weight and wherein all the lines of the common interests terminate Their complaints of violence by the Kings Forces are of no consideration the Armies of the King as well as those of the Covenanters were not composed all of Saints but these complaints sound ill in their mouths who lifted up their hands against their Soveraign those who had so often planted their Artilery against the Squadron where the person of the King was and had shot fifty Cannon shot against the Queen in her bed and after all this cut off the Head of their lawful Soveraign can they assume the impudence to complain of our Souldiers taking away their poultry and killing their sheep If those who were in actual Rebellion against their King had been punished by our Souldiers as they deserved they would never have had the power to complain that their houses were plundered or that they spoyled and destroyed their Goods We dare maintain that those amongst the Covenanters that suffered less than death have suffered less than they deserved we do not desire that every one should be punished according to his deserts for we would not that God should so deal with us but that our enemies may know both by the divine Law and the Law of Nations every person that rebels against his Prince is guilty of death Josh 1.18 and loseth his propriety in his Goods and Possessions Let them know also that being destitute of lawful Authority for the war and drawing their swords against him that bears the sword by Divine Authority every stroak they struck against the faithful Subjects of the King
directly nor indirectly assist the King in this war And thus behold in fine the mask taken off and the intention of their former oaths uncover'd There can be no greater symptome of a desperate sick State then the multiplication of oaths to form parties and factions and we may say after the Prophet Jeremy 23.10 The land mourns because of Oaths As for the principals who imposed the Oaths they made use of them to halter and intangle the consciences of the people for to serve their ambition practising the Doctrine of Lysander who taught that men ought to be amused with oaths as children with bables and as for the people upon whom the oaths were imposed for the most part they took them rather for imitation then knowledge or for fear or from a blind zeal or an implicit faith Moreover the multitude of Oaths do imbase the dignity and a people accustomed to them respect no more an oath then their old shoes Those also that swear often are often forsworn overthrowing one oath with another But the Oath of the Covenant hath this singular wherein it surpasseth all Chymera's Centaurs Hypogriffâ— in extravagance and contradiction for in taking it in the sense of the Covenanters they overthrow this Oath by the Oath it self and they forswear that which they had sworr for in sweaâ—ing that they would defend the Person and Authority of the King and make the world behold their fidelity according to their opinion they are bound to make war against him and by virtue of this Oath they persecuted rob'd and after all deposed him Oh supreme degree of perfidy and frantick blindness Have we not whereat to mourn and lament to behold these illuminated Reformers so plunged in the gall of bitterness and bonds of iniquity for to persecute their good King with all rage and violence because they had sworn to defend him and to be faithful to him This Oath was called Covenant that is to say Alliance or confederation because those that took it for at present its forbidden to be taken pretended to make an Alliance and Covenant with God This Oath is yet in vogue in Scotland It 's their New Covenant besides that of the New Testament and the modern Canonical Scripture which is Judge in all cases of conscience and from which there is no appeal Their ill faith is moreover evident in the composition of this Oath and certainly it 's the only thing evident in the third Article which is a discourse so twisted and interwoven composed expresly not to be understood There they swear to defend the Person and Authority of the King in defence of Religion and the publique Liberty It 's very hard to say what that signifies every good soul who suffer'd himself to be perswaded to take this Oath understood thereby that to defend the Person of the King was a necessary point both to preserve their Religion and Liberty and that they could not fear God as they ought without honouring the King and those that took the Oath in this sense were bound to fight against the Covenanters for the defence of their Religion and Soveraign But the unworthy companions of the Covenant interpreted it thus that they bind themselves to defend the Person and Authority of the King so far forth as it is compatible with the defence of Religion and Liberty Now say they we find that the defence of the Person and Authority of the King is incompatible with the defence of Religion and the Publique Liberty and therefore we are bound to oppose and ruine the King for the defence of Liberty and Religion And thus it appears that this malicious obscurity is a fold of the Serpent and a lurking hole of the evil spirit even the rather when we narrowly consider this construction to defend one thing in defence of another which signifies nothing and wants both true Logick and common sense The Oath being a profession before God and the strongest affirmation of all had need to have been clear and couched in such terms that every one might have understood it in the same sense they took it but to insert such equivocations was to abuse the Name of God whom they took to witness and the simplicity of the people He that takes a forked Oath and understands it not in the sense that he that gives it or understands it not at all swears not in Truth in Righteousness and Judgement which are the qualities required in an Oath for he calls God to witness his hypocrisie blindness and temerity The same Article makes profession of fidelity to the King and to diminish nothing of his just Authority and greatness It 's no new thing for Rebels to take the Oath of Allegiance to their Soveraign to combine a faction against him The Mutineers in the time of Richard the Second took an Oath to be faithful to the King and people and yet nevertheless made use of this Oath to stir up the people to ruine the King And these did the like and when hereupon we tax them with unfaithfulness and breach of their Oath they answer and pay us with a distinction betwixt the politick and personal capacity of the King and they tell us that it was against Charles they made the Warre and not against the King making the King a pure Idea an Accident without a Substance It 's very hard for them to say what became of the politick capacity of the King then when they beheaded him in his personal capacity for they so long honoured him in Idea that at last they massacred him in substance But they forget that in the same Article they had sworn to be faithful to the Person of the King and protested to defend his Person and Authority as things conjoyned and inseparable So strong is truth and respect due to Soveraignty so natural to Subjects that even in the Oath which they formed to confederate against him their duty is couched in express terms which will one day be produced in judgement against them But in good earnest have we not much to wonder at and to acknowledge the wrath of God in the blindness of these men that so many millions of men should think they were bound to persecute the King to all extremity and to take away his goods honour liberty safety and at last his life because they had sworn to defend the Person and Authority of the King and make the world behold their fidelity and that they would diminish nothing of his just Power and Authority Is it possible that their by-got zeal could so dislocate their brains and a-brutish their spirits as to make them commit so many crimes and enormities upon so unreasonable a consequence Oh Lord create in us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us In the fourth Article of this Oath they promise to endeavour with all their power to bring to condigne punishment all those who were the cause of separating the King from his people and according to this
it was they made the people believe a long time that the occasion of their taking up Arms was to bring the King to his Parliament but the hypocrisie of protestation is now clearly manifested for when the King offered to return to his Parliament they utterly refused to receive him telling him plainly if he came he should come at his peril Forbidding all persons whatsoever under pain of death to receive or entertain him in their houses Let all good subjects who have taken this Oath open now at last their eyes and acknowledge that the intentions of their Guides was quite contrary to their professions The Sixth Article required every person to swear That this cause touched the Glory of God the happiness of the three Kingdomes and the Dignity of the King Indeed this cause touched the Glory of God with such fowl hands as have defiled it as much as possible men could and it touched the happiness of the three Kingdomes with such malignant claws as have torn them to pieces But if they will that we take them in their sense namely that their cause defends and advanceth the Glory of God the happiness of the Kingdomes and the Dignity of the King we behold and feel the contrary But grant that this should be true 't is not a thing for which we must swear Oaths are of two sorts the one sort are to affirm the truth of a thing present or past the other for to promise and oblige our will for the future these two sorts of Oaths cannot be taken together The Oath of the Covenant is of the latter and therefore it is very ill done of them to confound it with the first which is altogether of another nature and usage and in a promise for the future to thrust in an affirmation of a thing present yea of a thing false or at least doubtful and whereof they of their party are not accorded But suppose that this Oath were of the first sort the things which we should affirm upon Oath are such as require the testimony of the person who swears Such are all questions of fact But as for questions of right they ought not neither can they be decided by Oath and it is to want common sense to make his neighbour judge to know which is the true Religion and to judge whether the Cause of the Parliament is better then the Kings There the Oath loseth his use for it s made to perswade and give Authority to the thing by the witness of the person If the Cause of the Covenant be the Cause of God there is no need to swear it but to justifie it by reason and practice And although we should even believe that it searcheth and advanceth the Glory of God the happiness of the Kingdome and dignity of the King it were unjust and ridiculous to press us to swear it for moral truths and even also Theological ought to be believed not sworn Civil things only and those amongst them which are matters of fact ought only to be affirmed by oath we have a very firm belief of the truth of many points of Religion and of the honesty of divers persons and yet nevertheless for all the world we would not swear to them all who have any ingenuity or good sense acknowledge that to force us to affirm the goodness of the Covenant by Oath is an extreme tyranny and full of ignorance and absurdities And also seeing we are very ill satisfied of the goodness thereof it s another tyranny to make us swear to defend it and a most barbarous cruelty to confiscate our possessions and sequester our Ministers of their benefices because they refuse to take so unreasonable an Oath and yet all this was practised during the Presbyterian Reign The Articles of the Covenant were assisted with a Religious Prologue and Epilogue full of protestations of zeal and repentance and therefore it was almost impossible but the most part of them that took it should be perjured considering the generality of the people are evil And this should have prevented the Gentlemen to impose the Covenant indifferently upon all under such great penalties For as they will not suffer the Sacrament of the Lords Supper to be administred to the people for fear to encrease their condemnation They should have by the same reason according to their principles have withheld to administer these protestations of zeal and repentance to their consciences whose disposition they were ignorant of Now a great evidence of their depraved and evil Faith consists in their protestations of sanctity and superlative expressions of zeal in which the Independent party who rejected the Covenant without comparison fly higher then their Predecessors All their Ordinances and Declarations yea even their Letters of News were sallies of zeal All their murthers and robberies were to establish the purity of the Gospel to conquer a Kingdome for Jesus Christ and that godliness might reign and flourish If they speak of the abominable parricide committed against their Soveraign they say that God made bare the Arm of his Holiness that the Lord is on their right hand that he hath smote Kings in the day of his wrath and that they may wash their feet in the blood of the ungodly Thus they made their horrible crimes march disguised in terms of Scripture and the devil borrowed the language of the Spirit of God Whosoever shall well consider the use they made of the Scripture and whereto they imployed their great shew of holiness shall find an Answer to the Question in the 50 Psal 16. But to the wicked God saith what hast thou to do to declare my Statutes or that thou shouldest take my Covenant in thy mouth Behold here the work of the Covenanters they declare the Statutes of God and take his Covenant into their mouths to put on rebellion the mask of Religion and to invest themselves without trouble of the Authority and Revenues of the Crown the goods of the Church and without suspition to grope the purses of the people for the outward shew of devotion doth much amuse the assistants and gain their belief for who can fear any evil from those who so piously invite them to repentance and the advancement of the Glory of God who would not confide and trust in them that declare the Statutes of God and take his Covenant in their mouth Satan in all forms is dangerous but he is never so pernicious as when he clothes himself as an Angel of Light and it is ill going Procession when the Devil carries the Cross Moreover by their fruits ye shall know them How often abused they the credulity of the people when they conjured them to help to fetch the King from his evil Councellors and to bring him gloriously to his great and faithful Councel that is to say to themselves but their faithfulness appeared then when he departed from them whom they called his evil Councellors to yeeld himself up to them for then their terrible
had promised was most expedient for his glory he presently forgot all his Promises Therefore when he had the K. in his power at Hampt Court and often conferred with him his Majesty expressed his perplexity to persons of Honour telling them I cannot saith he treat with these people upon any foundation who refer me to their inspirations for that which they promise me to day they contradict too morrow if the Spirit dictate to them but you must note that the Spirit never dictates any thing to them but for their profit The wrath of God is great against us in suffering us to be ruined and destroyed by fraud and hypocrisie but verily his indignation is yet greater against those who are seduced for it is a lesser evil to be persecuted by the Devil then to mistake him for the Spirit of God But let us consider other Acts of the evil faith of the Covenanters How have the Members of Parliament answered the intentions of those that sent them Was it the desire of those Countries and places for which they served that the Divine Service so much loved by the people should be taken away and their Ministers driven from their Benefices and Anabaptists and such like without knowledge and call established in their places Did they give them Commission to levy and make War against their King to cut off his head And were they not sent and departed to councel and advise the King and to succour their Counties â—nd have not they done the contrary When their fellow Citizens chose them did they chuse them to be their Soveraigns Was it their intentions that they should â—it in Parliament to perpetuity and place in their children to perpetuate their Raign in their Families whereby they have gained more in a few years then the house of Austria which hardly in two hundred years of an Elective Empire have made one Successive for these people have in a few years turned into succession an Empire in which they have no Election And it would be very hard to tell who gave them the power to dispose of the goods and lives of the people and to govern the Kingdome by an Army of which England hath never hope to be delivered but by an absolute victory obtained by the King Of these high actions of Presumption and Tyranny warranted by no Authority and upheld onely by the strength of Arms they must render account to God and since they maintain that the Soveraignty resides in the people they must also one day give an account to the people of their administration They made an Ordinance That no Member of Parliament should exercise any Office in the State but how well did they keep it Did they not make amongst themselves a Monopoly of all the gainful Offices They gave out they would give an account of the Treasure expended of the State but in the mean while they followed the Councel of Pericles which was to studie how never to give any They invited the people to present their plaints against their own Members but those who dared to do it were ruined in the prosecution and served as a sad example to all others to beware and keep themselves from so dangerous an enterprise for the future They have also forced the Consciences of men to break their Faith witness the breach of Articles subscribed in the Counties of York and Chester whereby the Gentlemen engaged on both parties were mutually obliged to lay down their Arms and live in peace but the Gentlemen at Westminster frighted with this Hideous name of Peace declared this accord Null as destructive to their affairs for both the Devil and the Covenanters maintain themselves by dissention They forced the Londoners taken and released by the King at the Battel of Brainsford to take up Arms against him the second time against their Faith sworn to his Majesty who most graciously gave them both their Lives and Liberty releasing them without any ransome But as for them they wickedly massacred those who yielded themselves upon their promise of life and liberty as Duke Hamilton the Earl of Holland and the gallant and noble Lord Capel Sir Charles Lucas Sir George Lisle and many others They being thus habituated in disloyalty and unfaithfulness their great quarrel against the late King of blessed and glorious memory was That he would not break his Faith nor falsifie his Oath he took at his Coronation to maintain the Rights and Priviledges of the Church and to defend the Laws of the Land And as they were perfidious to us so were they also to one another they falsified their faith to their Army which had too well fought for them under the Command of the Earl of Essex and disbanded them without their pay But another Army paid them for this perfidiousness by another The Independent Troops were those which professed to them fidelity with the greatest zeal And these were they which unroosted them at Westminster and pull the Gentlemen out of their Thrones leaving there only such as pleased them And in passing let us mark another seat of activity of Cromwel he perswaded the House of Commons to casheer this Army promising them that he would lay down his Arms at their feet but he gave them this counsel only for to provoke and irritate the Army against them and to ruine them as indeed it did Then when the Army began to present criminal informations against the King they sent an Embassie of six Collonels to the House of Lords to keep them quiet promising to maintain their priviledge of Peerage but as soon as the King was beheaded they casheered the House of Lords and those Lords having basely abandoned their Head to the slaughter presently lost the Life of Honour which flowed from thence upon them and were most justly laid aside as dead and unprofitable members The Scots also for having been too faithful to their Brethren in Rebellion were paid with the like treachery for all that power and interest which they ought to have had in the affairs of both Kingdoms according to the Articles of their League was denied them with scorn and insultation Amongst our miseries this is a recreative spectacle to us to behold the Thieves who pillaged us to pillage and rob one another and to deal treacherously amongst themselves after they betray'd us To their disloyalty let us joyn their falshood wherein consisted the Foundation and Building of all their Fabrick This appeared singularly in the beginnings of the Covenant Then the Gentlemen discovered daily some Treason or other with as much facility as the Labourer finds his work News of England written from Spain France Italy Denmark Politick Discourses of a Dutch Mariner to an English Hostler of Armies kept under ground by the King to cut the Throats of all the Protestants in a night and the greatest danger of all which caused the chiefest fear to the subtle spirits of London was a design laid for a mine of Powder under the Thames
suit or cause might come unto me and I would do him justice 2 Sam. 15.4 In publick grievances good Subjects are wont to cast the blame upon the Ministers of State and rest satisfied in seeing some of them punished accounting it their principal interest to preserve the honour of their Soveraign and good Princes when they are informed that the Ministers of State have abused their Authority to the damage of their Subjects which is theirs are wont to examine them and judge them according to the Laws And in this the King did as much as possible they could require of him having submitted the persons of those whom the Covenanters complained against to be judged and tried by lawful and ordinary waies But whilst they tread under foot the Royal Authority the Power of Parliament and the Majesty of the Laws and that they were in open war against him what reason had he to submit his Servants and Ministers to the judgment of his enemies Being certain that whilst the War continued they would aim most at them who served him best Then when the Parliament was whole and entire there passed a Vote worthy the gravity of that great Court That the King could do no wrong and that his Officers and not he were guilty of the evil which was done in the publick Government But since those who loved the King departed and withdrew themselves to him those which remained at Westminster followed a way quite contrary for they cast upon the King all the faults of his Servants and made use of them against him whom they ought should have punished for having ill served him Then when they took in hand to examine the Ministers of State in stead of punishing them which were guilty they received them into favour yea after their â—aults proved against them and turned all the discontent of the people upon the King What a great noise was there in the House of Commons against the forgers of Monopolies One would have thought that hardly any should have escaped with their lives but there happened altogether the contrary For because the Monopolists and other accused persons made a considerable number in Parliament they made use of their faults to make a strong faction against the King terrifying and making them understand there was no way left to preserve them from utter ruine but to joyn with the new party which was forming and hereupon they were promised impunity for what evils they had done on condition they should do greater Some of these were sent to the King to Newmarket in the behalf of their companions to whom his Majesty said these words capable to convert them or to make their Indiâ—emenâ— at the day of Judgment Gentlemen lay your hands upon your Consciences Who are they which invented those Taxes by which you have so provoked my people against me For whose advantage and profit were those Imposts â—â—â—ied Were my Revenues encreased by them It was you that induced and moved me 〈◊〉 them for your own particular profit and now you return me a worthy recompence Other Parliament men guilty of many crimes were kept in the Parliament in hope of impuâ—ity the holy Covenant 〈◊〉 a Garment which covered a multitude of sins even to the violating of a great Lady and abusing her by own of their Members almost in the sight of the Parliament Behold these the Reformers of Church and State Others which were not of the Parliament but under censure for having been Councellours or Instruments in the Imposts and Taxes of the people were released by them and employed for the same business as persons who well understood the Trade who pillaged then with a good Conscience for the advancement of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ Those whose infamous life was the shame of the Royal Court were the honour of the Court at Westminster and the Pillars of the Covenant Likewise the Judges accused of corruption and the Ministers of a scandalous life in taking the Covenant obtained a plenary indulgence of all their sins for after that there was no more to say to them for those who washed themselves in this water returned as white as if they had been washed with Ink or with the second Baptism the Anabaptists use at this day But now let us look upon the Armies Our enemies cry aloud that the King made use of those of the Church of Rome to serve him in his Wars Upon which an excellent Writer makes this gentle Question to them How many were in their Armies or how many they would have had For if the common report do not much wrong them they employed divers persons of that Religion there were persons of Honour and Quality who assured us that they Prisoners of the same Religion served the Covenanters We refer our selves to their own Consciences if they gave not a Commission to my Lord Aston to levy Forces The Relation in notable the King being at York this gallant man accounted the most experienced and best Commander of War of his time came to present his Service to his Majesty the King gave him thanks and withal told him he was resolved to employ none of his Religion in his Army Well saith he I will go then to those who will employ me and indeed went presently to Westminster where he was received with open Arms and a Commission given him written and signed which he carried to the King Ye cannot wonder then that the King made use of him and others of his Religion whom before he was resolv'd not to employ although he had to take away all shadow of occasion from his enemies who sought somthing whereat to quarrel with him made a Proclamation that none professing the Religion of the Church of Rome should come neer his Court. After this the Covenanters used all their power to make them draw to the Kings Party well considering their party being so small would bring more hatred than help to the King and for this effect they treated them with great inhumanity forcing them to forsake their Houses and Lands and run and hide themselves under the Kings Protection and this the King could not refuse them for as they owed him their Subjection the King owed them his Protection so long as they governed themselves according to the Laws and accomplished the Conditions whereby they were permitted by Act of Parliament to live in the Kingdom By this reason of Reciprocal duty the King protecting them as his Subjects they were bound to defend him as their King and ye shall not find in all the Statutes which concern them that they are exempted to serve the King in his Armies neither is it reasonable that they only should be free from the perils of war whilst thâ—ir fellow Subjects venture their lives and are shedding their bloud for the defence of their Country The Covenanters made it appear sufficiently to the world that they judged that Religion ought not to exclude any from bearing Arms in the publick danger for
Scripture where it 's commanded for Subjects to take up Arms for Religion against their Soveraign He returned this Scripture Stand fast therefore in the Liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free Gal. 5.1 But we maintain against him that both Saint Peter and Saint Paul preserved themselves more stedfast in their Christian Liberty in suffering death than all the Armies of the Covenanters in fighting and that they take the waies not to establish but to shake and overthrow their liberty in Christ We need not prove that Saint Paul in this Scripture never meant to speak of fighting but to preserve the spirit free from superstition Christian Liberty consists not in shaking off the yoke of Superiour Powers but of that of Error and vice and that liberty which our enemies have assumed to present their Petitions to their King upon their Pikes point and in the end to kill him was not the liberty from which Christ had made them free Let them learn the Lesson of Saint Peter to carry themselves as free and not using their Liberty for a Cloak of Maliciousness CHAP. IV. The Evasions of the Covenanters upon the Texts of Saint Paul Rom. 13. And how in Fine they refuse the Judgment of Scripture THE Apostle commands Rom. 13.1 That every Soul be subject to the higher Powers for there is no power but of God The Powers that be are ordained of God To this Scripture some of them answer that evil Kings are not ordained of God having learned this Doctrine of Goodman but therein they directly contradict Saint Paul who spake of the Powers then in being they that were then when Saint Paul wrote this Epistle were one of the three Nero's Successors of Tyberius the best of them were nothing worth a child is capable to distinguish betwixt the wickedness of a Prince and his authority the first whereof is of himself the second is of God and it 's of the power that Saint Paul speaks of without distinction of persons As for the following verse where Saint Paul infers thus Whosoever therefore resisteth the Power resisteth the Ordinance of God and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation Buchanan and his followers answer that this Command was but for a time whilst the Church was in it's Infancy weak and under the Cross incapable to resist their Prince but if Saint Paul had lived now and were to write a body of Common-wealth he would speak far otherwise and would leave Kings to be punished of their Subjects and this is that Buchanan assures us upon his word Likewise one of the best writers of the Covenanters affirms that Saint Paul spake to some particulars dispersed in the condition of the Primitive Church who had not means to provide for their safety if this License were lawful men might reject all the Doctrines of Saint Paul's Epistles as written to particulars and the Masters of the Covenant would make a way to exempt themselves from many duties commanded by Saint Paul which would very ill accord with their intentions So when the Apostle saith Rom. 12.9 10. Let Love be without dissimulation abhor that which is evil cleave to that which is good be kindly affectionate one to another with brotherly love preferring one another there is some appearance that they take this Command addressed to some particulars and not to them since they give themselves the liberty to do the quite contrary There is in these Epistles some Commands provisional moveable according to the times and persons as those which concern the outward Order others which are purely personal as the Command made to Timothy to come to him before Winter but the Moral Doctrines are immoveable and vary not according to the Times since that reason of Saint Paul given that the Powers that be are ordained of God is a Truth perpetual and universal and the Command not to resist the Powers ought also to be general for all Ages and all people so likewise this reason is perpetual That the Magistrate beareth not the sword in vain but to do justice and this other ye must needs be subject not only for wrath but also for Conscience sake Wherefore the Command grounded hereon to be subject to the higher Powers not resist them is of perpetual necessity and obligation And since to resist the powers is to resist the Ordinance of God may we not ask of our new Divines why the strong and not the weak are permitted to resist the Ordinance of God It 's enough to have a good sword to exempt a man from the Commands of the Gospel The Covenanters might defend this interpretation of the Text of Saint Paul by the authority of Cardinal Bellarmine who saith that if the Christians long since did not depose Dioclesian Julian the Apostate Valens the Arrian and others it was because they wanted temporal forces otherwise of right they might which is the language of our Covenanters but this opinion draws along with it three inconveniencies First That it blasts the primitive Church and deprives the Martyrs of their honour for it 's little worth praise to suffer for the Gospel when a man hath a will without means to rebel their obedience to their Soveraigns was then nothing worth since it was forced and all their protestations of subjection in the writings of the Fathers of which they are full ought to be imputed to weakness and hypocrisie This likewise is to accuse Saint Paul of want of sincerity as if he taught patience and obedience to Kings only to accomodate himself to the Times and not to obey God but he clears himself sufficiently of this accusation saying that we must not only be subject for wrath that is to say for fear of punishment but also for Conscience Moreover this Doctrine is pernicious to the Church for if it were embraced it would render Christians suspected and hateful to their Soveraigns as persons who would subject the Conscience of their Prince to theirs and submits to them only out of weakness and wait only an occasion to cast off their yoke which would oblige Kings ever to keep them weak and to impose heavy burdens upon them and so prevent their rising Also this Doctrine is pernicious to the profession of the Gospel for it would much hinder the conversion of Pagan Kings since that turning Christians according to the Mode they should lose their authority there being no Pagan Religion which teacheth Subjects to resist their Prince by Arms which would also indure Christian Kings of a diverse Religion to hinder with all their might the Conversion of their Subjects Blessed be God that there are none but the Jesuits and Covenanters that maintain so destructive an Opinion The Reformed Churches and the most part of the Roman Church give no jealousie to their Princes hereupon The holy prudence of the Apostles saw well that even besides Conscience the Counsell the most profitable for the conservation of the Church and the propagatiâ—â— of the
Gospel was to subject themselves wholly to their Soveraigns and without any reservation but to suffer for righteousnesse sake rather than disobey God for hereby the principal hinderance was removed namely that shadow which the enemies of the Gospel made the Emperors to apprehend that this Doctrine which spread so fast would bring along with it an alteration in their Estates and that the Christians waâ—ted but the coming of a King that would break in pieces all other Kings and have for his possession the ends of the earth it 's that which Saint Peter had regard unto where he exhorteth Believers 1 Pet. 2 13 15. To submit themselves to every Ordinance of man for the Lords sake that in all well-doing ye may put to silence the Ignorance of foolish men By this manner of subjection whole States were converted and in the end patience overcame For the Christians of the first Ages have made appear by their piety and moderation that the Kingdom whither they aspired was not of this world neither did in any thing diminish the rights of Monarchs but rather strengthened their authority binding their Subjects anew by Conscience yea so far as to make whole Armies of valiant mâ—n that had power in their hands to lay down their necks rather than to draw their swords against their Emperor so did the Christian Souldiers under Maximinian who would have constrained them to sacrifice to his Idols The Armies of the English and Scottish Covenanters are not capable of this Doctrine these Northern people are impatient Libertines and haughty they will form a Gospel according to the Ayr of their â—â—â—mate Their other crafty Evasion is not much better that Saint Paul forbids to disobey the power of the King but not to his person but the Text is formally against this for the Apostle by Power doth not understand a Quality without a Subject but fastens it to the Person saying in vers 6. That the Prince is the Minister of God and that he bears not the sword in vain and that they are ordained of God to do Justice And he speaks vers 6. of Princes in the plural number they are Gods Ministers attending continually upon this very thing 'T is the style of Saint Paul to call the Angels who excel in power Principalities and Powers When he speaks Eph. 3.10 That the manifold wisdom of God might be known to Principalities and Powers in heavenly places It appears that he speaks not of Accidents but of Persons for they are the Persons and not the Titles that are capable of knowledge Now I would fain know of these men what this Person is that it is lawful to resist If it be the person of the King or supream Magistrate whilst it is joyned to his power they resist the power in the person and if it be the person separated from the power they must needs before resist either the one or the other for to mâ—ke this violent separation And seeing that the Covenanters maintain that the authority of the King resides in their Chief those that draw the sword against them may return the same answer and say that they resist not their authority but their Persons but the Oath of Allegiance and that of supremacy which are imposed by Act of Parliament cause all these subtilties to vanish for men take these Oaths to the person of the King and not to his power or to his supremacy separated from him Moreover this distinction is contradicted by another which hath been frequent a long time in their mouths that they resisted not the King but his Armies which signifies in effect that they resisted not the person or King but his power for his power laid in his Armies and as it is the nature of a lie to enter far these people who say they are licensed by Saint Paul to oppose the person of the King and not his power were marvellously impatient when they were told they fought against the King and affirmed that they fought for him and defended his person which doubtless seems to be spoken to move laughter and indignation but God cannot be mocked nor Conscience wholly blinded by their impatience hereupon they testifie that their Conscience makes their process and dictates to them within that to bear Arms against the King is to sin against God and Nature It 's a notable Symptome of a desperate sick State where the reason of a people is smitten with astonishment whereof we have a most lamentable example for was there ever such a capricious madness to accuse the Royal Majesty of Treason to make Edicts by the King against the King to swear a Covenant for defence of the King which nevertheless obligeth them to make war against him and the King being alive to forge a Platonick Idea of the same King residing fifty miles from himself that so they might fight against the Person of the King There is no Cymera nor fantastical humour like this Behold the work of the Spirit that now works efficaciously in the children of disobedience Behold another Evasion The Apostle say they doth not teach us who is the Superiour Power but that it is the Superiour Power that we must obey and therefore they strive to form in the Kingdom a Superiour Power above the King a thing contrary to the Constitution of this Monarchy as I hope to make appear It 's easie to gather which is the Superiour Power which Saint Paul understands for he expresses it himself It s the Power which bears the Sword ver 3. And he to whom Tribute is paid Psal 7. Rights that appertain to the King alone and which were actually possessed by the Emperor where Saint Paul wrote this Epistle That which they alledge against this that the Emperor then was more absolute than the Kings at present is false but he was much more limited Suetonius that lived under Trajan puts amongst the enormities of Caligula to have been very near changing the form of Government which was a Principality into a Kingdom and to place the Diadem upon his head And the Learned called not the power of these Emperors Regnum but Principatus and were this allegation true yet it would be far from the purpose for be it that the Emperor should be more or less absolute than our Kings the command of Saint Paul is alwaies the same That we must not resist him that bears the Sword and to whom Custome is due because his Authority is of God This other starting hole is of the same stuffe they say that the defence not to resist Supream Powers obligeth only Particulars and not the States of a Kingdom this is to make another Gospel for the General than for the Particulars as if they should say the Commandments of God are directed to every one but not to all which is to overthrow common Sense since the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy are imposed upon all the States of England whereby they are bound also in General none sit
is unlawful because there is no such thing or the like found in Scripture These their Confessions are very remarkable and indeed most strange coming from Christians who should rather frame their policy to Scripture than reject the Scripture because it contradicts the policy they would establish They have found out an invention to cast off the yoke of their King which is to cast off that of the Word of God After this so open a profession it 's against all equity they should make use of Scripture for their cause either in their Writings or Sermons They alledg nothing but examples but there is no reason that the examples should be made use of by them who reject the Commands but after they have turned themselves into as many postures as a Fencer to defend themselves against the invincible Text of the Apostle in the end hither they are driven to refuse wholly to debate the difference touching their duty to their King by the Commands of Scripture The last Figure of Proteus is the Natural and after all their tricks of Lying and Hypocrisie at last their Nature shews it self In fine when all is said this is the only answer on which they rest that the Commands of Scripture cannot determine the point of their resistance and that we must have recourse to the Lawyers This speech is commonly in the mouths of all the wisest of their party and let all Christian Churches take notice of this their most shameful Evasion The Covenanters of England who pretend to establish the Kingdom of Christ according to the Word of God refuse to be judged by the Commands of Scripture touching the War made against their Soveraign CHAP. V. What Constitution of State the Covenanters forge and how they refuse the Judgment of the Laws of the Kingdom TO elude the strength of humane Laws as well as divine they forge a primitive and fundamental Constitution of this Estate destitute of all authority both of God or man And here we must distinguish between their doctrine they taught in the beginning of their Covenant and that which they taught afterwards for then when they were to fight with the King in the field and were not yet capable oâ— so high hopes as afterwards they effected they forged a form of State suitable to their possibility then which was to constrain the King by the Terror of their Arms to accord to all that should please them and wholly to put the Government into their hands notwithstanding their Principles then led them to those Conclusions which since followed for they supposed that the Soveraign Power was inherent in the People that the People elected the King and had committed to him the Authority that he exercised reserving to themselves the Power to assume it again when the State should judge it most convenient and to take away the sword of Justice and the Militia to make use of it against him if there were need That the King had not the Supream Power but by Paction which being once broke by him the Subjects were exempted from their Obedience That he was onely Depository of the Supremacy but when the Estates were assembled the Supremacy was joyntly possessed by him and the two Houses so that the King had but the thirds and that but very hardly for they held that the States had a Negative voice and the King could do nothing without their consent and whether the King had the Negative Voice of right they were not agâ—eed but all accorded to take it away from him in effect that is to say after their account That the People might refuse the King what displeased them but if the King denyed what the People propounded to him they esteemed that the two Houses might and ought to do it without him and force him to it by Arms and this Doctrine hath been confirmed by their practise or to speak the truth this their practise hath occasioned this Doctrine Now since God through his secret and incomprehensible Judgments hath suffered the wickedness of this Age to have success above their desires they built upon these principles this Conclusion that the People may judge and execute their King dissolve the Monarchie for ever and turn it into an Aristocracy or Popular Government for yet they cannot agree to which they should hold themselves since then they would perswade us that the Constitution of the English Government exempts us from these two great dangers Disobedience to God and damning our Souls in resisting the King and since they would oblige us for Conscience sake to oppose the King in obedience to God and the higher Powers and that our Clergie are commanded to exhort the people that God hath commanded them to draw their Swords against their Soveraign there is a necessity to satisfie our Reason and resolve our Consciences hereupon to enquire whether the Nature of the State be such as they have painted it out to us And for this we have not referred our selves to those of the Royal party but have consulted with the most Judicious Writers of the Covenanters who pass amongst them as Oracles of the State expecting that for proof of this form of Government they would have produced the old Records of the Kingdom which are now in their Custodie the ancient Statutes of Parliaments and the Testimony of their old Historians but they alledge no such things though much pressed thereunto by their Adversaries onely they make a Discourse in the Air upon the Law of Nature that hath given to every person and by consequent to every Estate a power for his preservation troubling the Ignorant Readers brains with barbarous terms and thorny distinctions and extracting the Quintessence of the State into an invisible substance They tell us that the Parliament was coordinate and not subordinate to the King That the three Estates of Parliament whereof the King made one being fundamental admitted not of the difference of Higher or Lower That the power of the King in Parliament was not Royal but Political That this Fundamental Law of the kingdom was not written for if it were it should be superstructive and therefore Mutable and not Fundamental That the mixture of the three Estates in Government was not Personal but Incorporate Those that understand not these Mystical sentences ought to be nevertheless content it being not reasonable that they should understand them better then the Authors themselves An affected obscurity amongst Ideots passeth for knowledge and ye shall find that the Discourses that have least reason in them are most difficult like Olive stones which are very hard because there is nothing in them Now is it not requisite to subtilize upon the virtuality and actuality of the Peoples power for to inform the Conscience of the Subject touching the Justice of his Arms against his King but for that there is indeed need both of Divine and Humane Authority and such as is easie and to be understood of all But the observation of Mr. du Moulin
was under age caused the Father to be most cruelly put to death in prison yet the authority of the young K. must be made use of to make the resolution of the Parliament pass into an Act for without the King the Parliament can no more act than a Body without a Head But when the young King came to age he caused the Authors and Complices of his Fathers death to be executed and caused all the Acts of this Parliament to be broken by another And less than these to the purpose is which they alledg concerning the accord the Barons extorted from King John by which this unhappy and imprudent King being reduced to a straight promised to put himself into the power of twenty five of his Barons and submitted himself to divers other dishonorable Conditions and this accord was not made in Parliament but in the field by force of Arms there being no Parliament then sitting and therefore was of no force nor was ever kept These Articles of the Barons were much like those the two Houses sent the King to Beverly Oxford and New-Castle the Covenanters imitate these Barons in their affectation of Piety for they called their General the Marshal of the Lords Army and of his holy Church and these perswaded their Chiefs that they led the Battels of the Lord of Hoasts but these transferred not the Crown to another Prince as the Barons did but have taken away both his Crown and Life having long before declared by writing to their King that they dealt very favourably with him if they did not depose him and that if they did they should not exceed the Limits of Modesty nor of their Duty This Judgment was pronounced in the House of Commons without contradiction that The King might fall from his Office that the happiness of the Kingdom did not depend upon him nor the Royal Branches of his House and that he did not deserve to be King of England The Authors of these Opinions are declared in a Declaration of his Majesties In one point the Barons and Covenanters are very different for the Lords that remained with the Covenanters were without power all places of Honour and Trust being taken out of their hands by their Inferiours and at last their House abolished by the Commons so that in stead of producing this War of the Barons the Covenanters should rather have alledged the Seditions and Commotions of Watt Tyler and Jack Straw poor Artisans and followed with people of the same rank for these persons and the Cause of the Covenanters are far more alike Behold here with what authorities the Margins of their Books are stuffed Behold the Examples which the polititians of the times present to the Gentlemen of the Parliament for to teach them what they ought to do those infamous actions which were abhorred by the ages following them are become the supporters of ours and despair which makes men snatch up any sorts of weapons forceth our enemies to justifie their actions by the examples of Rebels and Paricides 't is not for nothing then that these Histories are so often alledged though nothing to the purpose and it 's not without cause that they print them apart for not being able to justifie their actions they have declared their intentions and made the King to see what he sholud trust to if he fell into their hands Certainly if there had not been a design laid to come to that both to prepare the people and intimidate the King those incendiaries who by these horrible examples and their Maximes of State grounded thereupon teaching the deposing of Kings should have been hanged long since with their Books about their necks For so many men which are studied in the Laws of the Kingdom and are at the helm of affairs cannot be ignorant of that which King James of happy and glorious memory marks in his Book of the Right of Kings that in the time of Edward the Third there was an Act of Parliament made which declared all them Traytors who imagined it's the word of the Law or conspired the death of the King â—on which Act the Judges grounding themselves have alwaies judged them for Traytors who dared but to speak of deposing the King because they believed that they could not take away the Crown from off the Kings Head without taking away his Life It was heretofore a crime worthy of death to speak yea to think evil against the King and moreover the Word of God which is to be obeyed forbids us to speak evil of the King no not in our thought but now it 's the exercise of devout Souls to write Meditations upon the deposing of their King CHAP. VII Declaring wherein the Legislative Powers of Parliament consists HAving no better Authorities in all the Examples of the Ages past they establish a New one which by the unlimited largeness supplies what it wants of length of time for when we require to be governed by the Laws they answer us that the Parliament is the Oracle of the Laws that it is for that great Court to declare what is Law and what is not to interpret the Laws to dispense with them or to make new ones That themselves are the Parliament excluding all others and that since they have declared that this War is according to Law and that such Maximes as they give us are fundamental Laws of the Kingdom we must remit our selves to them and receive for Law what they ordain But because strangers may read who have no knowledge of the Government of England for to examine this Imperious reason we are obliged to declare here what we know touching the present affairs We have learned to acknowledg the Parliament 〈◊〉 England for the Supream Court of the Kingdom that can make and unmake Laws and from whose Judgment there is no appeal But of this Court the King is the principal part and it 's he that renders it soveraign the two Houses in all their Legislative Acts acknowledg him their true and sole Soveraign the House of Lords only can evert the Judgment of the Courts of Justice but not their own without the consent of the King and the House of Commons the House of Commons is not a Judicial Court having not power to administer an Oath inflict a Fine or imprison any but those of theâ—r own House and these two neither apart nor together cannot make a Law but when they would enact any thing they both together present a Writing to the King in form of a request if the King approves of them the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal answers for the King in these French words Le Roy le veult and then it is made an Act but if the King refuseth it he returns answer Le Roy S'avisera and the business passeth no further Before the consent of the King the proposition of the two Houses contained in the Writing is like unto that which the Romans called Rogatio but when the King grants it
Empire and for such hath been known in the world governed by one Soveraign Head having the dignity and Royal greatness of the Emperial Crown to which there is a Body Politick joyned composed of all sorts and degrees of people as well Spiritual as Temporal who are bound next to God to render unto him Natural Obedience If the Body Politick be naturally subjected to him as to its Head it 's contrary to Nature that it should be subjected to the Body Politick and his maxime Râ—x est universis minor is condemned as false by the Parliament they knew not in those daies what it was to make the Body of the State march with its head downward and feet upward but they were careful to maintain the Head in that eminent place where God had set it and hither also tend the words following That the chief Soveraign is instituted and furnished by the goodness and permission of Almighty God with full and entire Power Preheminence Authority Prerogative and Jurisdiction to execute Justice and put a final determination in all Cases to all sorts of his Subjects within this Kingdome and that many Laws and Ordinances had been made in preceding Parliaments for the full and sure conserving of the prerogative and preheminence of this Crown These good Subjects could not find words enough nor consult of means sufficient according to their mind to defend the Authority of their King esteeming and well they might that the happiness and liberty of the Subjects lay in the inviolable power of their Soveraign that the greatness of the State consisted in that of the Prince and that there is no other way to crown the Body but to place the Crown upon the Head This stile is very far from that of the nineteen Propositions presented to the King by the Two Houses in the beginning of the War which required that all matters of State should be treated of only in Parliament or if the King would treat of any Affairs in his Councel this Councel should be limited to a certain number and the old Councellors cashiered unless such whom it pleased the Two Houses to retain and that none hereafter should be admitted without their approbation that the King should have no power in the Education and Marriage of his children without their advice that all great Officers of the Crown and the principal Judges should alwayes be chosen by the approbation of the Two Houses or by a Councel authorized by them the same also in Governours of places and in the Creation of Peers which hath since been denied to the King in effect And as for the Militia they would have the King wholly put it into their hands that is to say he should take his Sword from his side and give it them which he could not do without giving them the Crown for the Crown and the Royal Sword are both of one piece so also for the point of Religion these propositions take from him all Authority and liberty of judgement yea even the liberty of Conscience for they require that his Majesty consent to such a Reformation as the Two Houses should conclude upon without telling him what this Reformation is Let all the world here judge if these men speak like Subjects they had reason to present these Articles with their swords in their hands but the King had more reason to draw his to return them an answer All these propositions are founded upon one only proposition which passeth amongst them for a Fundamental Law That the King is bound to grant to the People all their Demands but this is a Fundamental in the Ayr and made void by the practise of all Ages since Eng. was a Monarchy and by that Authentical Judgement of the States assembled under Henry the Fift That it belongs to the Supremacy of the King to grant or refuse according to his pleasure the Demands that are made to him in Parliament And in stead of the House of Commons being as it is now the Soveraign Court a thing never heard of until this present Age The House supplicated Henry the Fourth not to employ himself in any Judgement in Parliament but in such cases as in effect appertained to him because it belonged to the King alone to judge except in cases specified by the Statutes The same House under Edward the Third acknowledged that it did not belong to them to take Cognisance of such matters as the keeping of the Seas or the Marshes of the Kingdome yea even during the sitting of Parliaments the Kings have alwayes disposed of the Militia and Admiralty of the Forts and Garrisons the Two Houses never interposing or pretending any right thereunto they declared ingeniously to Edw. the First that to him belonged to make express Command against all Force of Arms and to that end they were bound to assist him as their Soveraign Lord. They declared also to King Henry the Seventh that every Subject by the duty of his subjection was bound to serve and assist his Prince and Soveraign Lord upon all occasions by which they signified that it was not for them to meddle with the Militia but that their duty as Subjects bound them to be aiding and assisting to him The Learned in the Laws tell us that to raise Troops of Horse or Foot without Commission of the King or to lend Aid is esteemed and called by the Law of England to levy war against the King our Soveraign Lord his Crown and Dignity In this point all that is done without him is done against him and this is conformable to the general Right of all Nations As for the Royal Estate saith Bodin I believe there is no person that doubts that all the Power both of making Peace and War belongs to the King since none dare in the least manner do any thing in this matter without the Command of the King unless he will forfeit and endanger his Head If the Two Houses were priviledged to the contrary by any Statute we should have heard them speak it but for what they have done we see no other Authority then their practice Therefore none ought to wonder if this their new practice hath less Authority with persons of a sound judgement then these practises of all ages past and if we cannot perswade our selves that without the Authority of the King they cannot abolish those of Parliaments Authorized by the King let them not then make such a loud noise with the Authority of Parliament 'T is in obedience to that Supreme Court of Parliament that we so earnestly strive to preserve the Princes Rights those Acts of Parliament are in full force which have provided with great care to defend the Royal Prerogatives judging aright that the Soveraignty is the Pillar of the publick safety and that it cannot be divided without being weakned and without shaking the State that rests upon it But we leave the reasons of the form of this Estate to them who formed it contenting our selves
them from the outward communion of the visible Church and in this as in other things Buchanan hath shewed himself to be less skilled in Divinity then in Poetry The best excuse which can be alledged in his Defence is that which Mr. Du Moulin lends him which may also serve for Mr. Knox That if he hath written any thing which passeth moderation we must 〈◊〉 attribute it to his Religion but nature for its most certain both these were hot headed men and had a great Antipathy against Monarchy As for the doctrine of King killing which is a familiar doctrine amongst the Jesuits and is oft their shame and reproach they to render us as odious as themselves and by way of exchange alledge and quote in their writings the passages of Buchanan Knox and Goodman who together with them teach the same Doctrine That cunning Jesuite Petra Sancta is very curious in searching into their writings whom that excellent person Mr River answers and tels him that none amongst us approve or allow those wicked Maximes and imputes the cause to their supposed persecution which had exasperated their spirits and to the hot heads of the Nations of this Iland After this so wise and charitable a reprehension coming from a person of such eminency men of learning amongst them ought at least to have learned modesty since they refused to learn obedience of their Parliaments which condemned these Doctrines of Knox and Buchanan by their publike Acts or by the determinations of their principal Divines who have learnedly refuted them and also by considering what great pains Mr. Bloudil Mr. Valade and other judicious and learned men of Forraign Churches have taken to wash off the filth of their doctrines and behaviours which have exceedingly scandalized the Evangelical profession after so many Iterated saving advertisements one would have thought they should have preserved themselves from falling into the same offences and from giving new occasions of rejoycing to their enemies and of shame to their brethren but behold of late worse then ever their hot heads have produced such new effects of violence as gives a challenge of defiance to the very Jesuits themselves The Author of Sions Plea animates the people to war and to pull down the Bishops speaking thus Smite neither small nor great but the troublers of Israel wound that Hazael in the fifth Rib Yea if your father and mother stand in your way to prevent you dispatch them suddenly pull down the ensign of the Dragon set up the standard of Jesus Christ What If the father of the State stand in your way now when ye are busie in this holy cause must he be dispatched no doubt but they would tread upon him to make way and would serve the Son as they had done the Father 't is a point resolved on by the same Author They must strike the Basilike vein none but that can heal the Pluresie of State which is as much as to say in good English that they must cut the throat of the King for the publike good This Author were a good Scholler of the two Jesuites Guignard and Scribanius had he not too grossly borrowed their Terms for say they France was sick and they must cut the Basilike vein to heal her and Scribanius that they committed a great error on S. Bartholomews even that they cut not that vein That is that those of the Guisian Faction spared the lives of the King of Navar and the Prince of Condie Oh rare Flowers of Diabolical Rhetorick Oh the shame of Christian Religion Is this the simplicity and meekness of the Gospel Is this the way to guide Conscience into the way of peace and to set up the Kingdom of Jesus Christ or Christ on his Throne If S. Paul were alive doubtless these men would even maintain to his face that he understood not the nature of the spiritual Kingdome when he said Rom. 14.7 That the Kingdome of God is righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Ghost And when he read this lesson to the Christians Let the peace of God rule in your hearts to which peace ye are called in one body They would have taught him that the Kingdome of Jesus Christ ought to be set up by the murthering of Kings the destruction of the people and the oâ—erthrow of States and would have sent him to their Catechise to be instructed That the Parliament Souldiers at the present ought not to consider us as their Fellow-Citizens or their Parents or their companions in Religion but as Enemies of God upholders of Anti-Christ and therefore their eye should not pity us nor their sword spare us These are the words of that abominable Catechism published by Authority for the use of the Covenanters Army Oh behold the principles of Faith wherewith these dull souls are instructed Behold the Bread of Life wherewith their Divines feed the consciences of the poor people Jer. 23.4 I have seen in the Prophets of Hierusalem an horrible thing they commit adultery and walk in lies they strengthen also the hands of evil doers Israel the daies of thy visitation are come thy Prophets are fools and thy men of Revelations are mad To these prodigious Doctrines we will joyn that Aphorism in the book entituled Altare Damascenum That all Kings have a natural hatred against Christ If ye would believe this man every one that loves Christ must bear an irreconcileable hatred to all Kings was there ever a more seditious and execrable Maxime after such a Doctrine pronounced by an Author of such account should we ask who hath put weapons into the hands of this superstitious people against their Soveraign for these poor miserable people hate the King for the love of God yea many account him an Enemy of Jesus Christ even because he is a King That we may the better discover by what spirit this man is led observe how he deals with his natural Prince he calls King James of most happy and glorious memory Infestissimus Ecclesia Hostes the most mortal enemy of the Church without doubt these who read this will question what Religion this man is of who so qualifies the incomparable Defender of the Faith who hath so vigorously and sincerely maintained the truth that if there were a Christian in the world who knew not thar great Prince neither by his admirable writings nor by the Renown of his Piety and Wisdome and should hear him call'd the most spiteful and mortal Enemy of the Church he might well imagine that King James had turned Turk and changed the Churches of his Kingdome into Mosques and sold his Christian Subjects for slaves to the Moors It were to do wrong to the testimony that himself hath given by the Immortal Monuments of his Religious Wisdome and by his truly Christian and Fatherly Government to undertake here to defend him against so unequal an Adversary wherein the injuries spoken of this excellent King turns to the ruine and perdition of
must touch it But I am constrained to it by the frequent Declarations of the Covenanters who have nothing so strong nor so frequent for to move the people to take up Arms against their King as to propose to them the example of the French Churches as a pattern which they ought and are bound to follow Would to God that in leaving us there they would have given us liberty to hold our peace but since they will not give over publishing abroad and making all places ring with our calamities the remembrance whereof we rather desire should be for ever buried since they impute the actions of some few to the generality of our Churches and even to Religion it self and since that they alledge our errors for to exhort us to return to them again and since they change the subject of our repentance and sorrow into rules for their imitation and into precepts of the Gospel Is it not now high time to speak and prefer the Interest of Gods Glory and of the Truth of his Word above the credit of men whatsoever they be yea and of our own too Let God be true and every man a Liar Rom. 3.4 Confess thy fault and give glory to the Lord God of Israel Jo. 7.19 Mr. Rivet was not ashamed to call these our stirrings culpam nostrorum the fault of his Country-men and this was spoken as a Champion of the truth to confess it so freely that it was both to our sin and dammage wherein as he himself declares he agrees with Monsieur du Moulin who in his second Epistle to Monsieur Balzak makes the same confession in equivalent terms Such was the Piety and ingenuity of these godly and learned persons that all their care and pains was to defend the Truth only and not their persons It would be a great honor for the Churches of France with one consent publikely to declare that they judge all wars of Subjects against their Soveraign unlawful and to exhort their Brethren of England to Obedience and fidelity to their Prince then for to preserve the credit of some of their party and suffer their actions to serve as snares to the weak consciences of their Neighbours and of pretext to those who labour to corrupt the Doctrine of the Gospel My self being a member of the Reformed Church of France doubt not but I shall be owned and approved to give an Answer for them to the Summons of a strange Covenant It s a very great affliction to us to behold the famous Churches of Great Britain to destroy themselves for controversies without necessity and which might have been easily composed And that which toucheth us most is the danger of the Truth which is much weakned by these divisions for it s to be feared that in your contending and striving one with another you over-turn not the Candlestick of the Gospel and that God being provoked takes not away his saving Light which was not given to lighten you one to fight against another We will not enter into the causes of your quarrels and could wish that you had left out the remembrance of ours and had not imployed the unforâ—unate actions of your poor Neighbours which anguish and terrour produced to serve as example to your people to take up Arms against their King They were but the lesser part of our Churches that were involved in that party The signal testimonies of our fidelity to the Crown ever since the reducing of Rochel and other places which were moved in our hands do efface the memory of the troubles moved in their behalf and the cause of these motions being equitably considered by sober and moderate spirits would beget pity rather then hatred For if just fear could justifie Arms against their lawful Soveraign those of our Religion who bare Arms in this occasion could represent to you that when the King demanded back again the places that he had granted them for their security they had great occasion to fear that with these places they should lose the security of their consciences and lives in which they were happily deceived For the late King who was as gentle in making use of a victory as valiant in gaining one ever laboured more to comfort than to punish and compassion stifling his anger made them know that the strongest place for the security of Subjects is the Clemency and Justice of their Soveraign Oh these Royal Vertues were eminently manifest in him whom God had given you for your King Who being the Defender of the Reformed Christian Faith and publishing his most holy Profession with such protestations which gave us full satisfaction we cannot see how you can alledge the example of our taking up of Arms should they be the most just of the world having not the same subjects of fear The security of your consciences and lives were without question But you are not the first whom ease and long prosperity hath carried to the same impatience to which others have been driven by affliction And since then ye address your selves to us to give you advice We beseech you consider that to take counsel of your Friends it must not be when their swords are in their hands and their enemies before them but when they are quiet and at peace 'T is not from our Souldiers but our Divines that you should enquire whether you should draw your swords against your Prince if you refer your selves to them they will all conclude for the Negative For whilst our Wars continued whereof you have too good a memory not one of all our Divines maintained those dangerous Maximes which is now defended by your Sermons and Writings They that say most for their Party excuse it and lay it upon necessity 'T is not from any of our Books that ye have drawn these vile Maximes That the Authority of the Sovereign Magistrate is of Humane Right That the people is above their King That the people gave the power to the Prince and may take it away when they please That Kings are not the anointed of the Lord That if the King fail in performing the Oath at his Coronation the Subjects are absolved from their Oaths of Allegiance That if the Prince falls from the Grace of God the people are loosed from their subjection That for to establish a Discipline which they account to be the only Kingdom of Jesus Christ Subjects may take up Arms against their Prince That Kings are to be judged before their Subjects That the Civil Government ought to be formed according to the pattern of the Ecclesiastical which is not Monarchical This Maxime tends to the abolition of Royalty in all States In all the Writings of our Divines ye find no such matters but such as teach Subjects Loyalty Humility Obedience and Patience All agree together with the ancient Christians and say that prayers and tears are the weapons of the Church We never spake of deposing our Kings and do not believe that any man living
can depâ—se the King or dispense with their Subjects Oath of Allegiance If any of ours speak otherwise we are ready to disavow it Very often those that teach well are seduced to do ill being overcome by temptation and yet very few ever go so far as to teach ill to justifie their Actions God hath kept us hitherto from that And although it may happen unto us as unto others to break the Commandments of God Mat. 5.19 but we hope never so to be forsaken of him to teach others to do so Thâ—n is the evil desperate when vices become manners and yet more evil when the evil manners become Doctrines that poor souls are instructed to sin for Conscience sake Oh observe that there is not a more certain sign of a people forsaken of God than this Therefore with the same liberty you invite us to maintain your Opinions by a publike Association we earnestly beseech you to correct your own and condemn all your Maximes contrary to sound Doctrine Enemies to the peace of States Majesty and the safety of Kings taking heed of drawing reproach and persecution upon the profession of the Gospel and to render your neighbours suspected for the faults of others Also that you re-establish the use of the Lords Supper intermitted in divers places these many years that ye give order for children to be baptized and that there be no more aged persons rebaptized That they print not any more that all Churches which baptize Infants are a faction of Antichristians that none teach any more that the Sacraments are not necessary and that for a quarrel of State they dispossess not faithful Orthodox Pastors of their Benefices to put Hereticks in their places As for the quarrel ye have against Antichrist we should be very glad to joyn with you provided that ye observe these two conditions the one not to call Antichrist that which is not for we gather by your Epistles and Declarations that you give the Title of upholders of Antichrist to many of our Brethren whose confession agrees with ours and with whom you ought to bear and with Charity amend their faults on condition that they may deal the like with you The other condition is That ye fight against Antichrist by lawful ways prescribed in the Word of God namely by the Spirit of his mouth that is by the power of the Gospel for as they were not the warlike Engines of Joshua but the Trumpets of the Sanctuary that made the walls of Jericho to fall down so it is not the Cannon but the Trumpet of the Gospel which is required to pull down the walls of Babylon These are the weapons of our warfare which are mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds 2 Cor. 10.4 they are not carnal And besides Divine Authority experience should have have taught you that God blesseth not these designs of pulling down Antichrist by the Sword It was the Epidemical Phrensie of Germany now sixscore years since which turn'd into smoak and confusion Indeed if our King should Covenant in a just quarrel against Antichrist and Lewis the 14th assume for the devisoe of his Mony that which Lewis the 12th stamped upon his Crowns at Pisa Perdam Nomen Babiloniâ— we would with a great deal of cheerfulness follow him in this War but we cannot approve of a Covenant or League against Antichrist made and agreed upon in spight of the Supreme Powers who chuse Chiefs other then their Soveraigns For such Leagues or Covenants are the open Rebellion of Subjects againâ—t their Prince Upon which the Observation attributed to Bullinger is very remarkable and which should extreamly move you That the Anabaptists began with the destruction of Bishops accounting as you the Office and dignity of Bishops was an appurtenance of Antichrist but they ended with the destruction of Magistrates Our Churches look upon the predictions of the fall of Antichrist and the establishment of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ as objects of their Hope and not as Rules of their Duty They govern not themselves by Prophesies but by Commands and make Conscience of transgressing the Laws of God out of zeal to advance his Kingdom so leaving to God the execution of his counsels we keep our selves in a peaceable obedience to our Sovereign and in doing that we yield obedience to God who commands to submit to every Ordinance of man for the Lords sake 1 Pet. 2.13 and to pray for Kings and for all that are in Authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God and our Saviour 1 Tim. 2.2 If we embrace your Covenant or make one like it we cannot obey these commands of the Gospel for to Covenant without permission of our Sovereign would be to Covenant against him to take up Arms in the Kingdom without him or against him comes all to the same thing What Cannot our sufferings which you remember so often to us perswade you from following so dangerous a Councel for we retain and persevere in the Instruction given us that we must not remedy an evil by sin nor defend Piety by Disloyalty God hath no need of our sins to defend his cause the preservation of the true Religion is the Cause of God and his work which he will never forsake and even then when all humane means seems to fail he watcheth for the preservation of his Church which if he is pleased to afflict it s our duty to humble our selves and when he is pleased also to raise her up we need not carry to his help Sedition and Rebellion In fine We love the King that God hath given us by duty and inclination trembling at the mention of your Covenant and the younger his Majesty is the more we account our selves bound to endeavour to preserve peace in his State hoping that when he comes of years he will acknowledge the services we have done him in his Minority and that he will consider with what Fidelity and Integrity his Subjects of the Reformed Religion have cast off the instant solicitations of Strangers conceiving they can never be good Christians without being good Subjects and that to obey their King and to offer up their Goods and Lives to his service is a great part of the service they owe to God The English Covenanters may receive this Answer as the Answer of the Churches of France until they have disavowed it by a publick Declaration CHAP. XIII The preceding Answer confirmed by Divines of the Reformed Religion with an Answer to some Objections of the Covenanters upon this Subject TO the end it may better appear that the preceding Answer for the Reformed Churches of France is drawn from the Model of their Doctrine behold here some few passages Calvin speaks thus If we be persecuted for piety by a wicked and sacrilegious Prince before all things let us remember our sins not doubting but God sends
us these scourges for our sins by this our impatience will be bridled by Humility Moreover le ts remember that it is not for us to remedy these evils and that all that we have to do is to beg help of God in whose hands the hearts of Kings and motions in Kingdoms are He said a little before That the Word of God bound us not only to be subject to Princes that are worthy of our duty but to all Princes whatsoever and howsoever they came to the Soveraignty and although they do nothing less then perform the duties of good Soveraigns In his Commentary upon Daniel Let us learn saith he by the example of the Prophet to beseech God for Tirants if it shall please him to subject us to their inordinate pleasure for what though they be unworthy of all Offices of Humanity yet neverthelesse because it is by the will of God that he commands it s our duty to bear the yoke patiently not only because of wrath as Saint Paul admonisheth but also for Conscience sake otherwise we are not only Rebels against them but against God This Lesson is of the same Authors Let this be ever in our memory that the same Divine Authority that gives Authority to Kings establisheth also the most wicked Kings Oh let never these seditious thoughts enter into our spirits that we should deal with the King as he deserves and that it is not reasonable to yield the duty of Subjects to him who will not perform the duty of King to us Which is notwithstanding the arguing of the Covenanters Peter Martyr an Italian but a Minister in those Churches our enemies invite to associate with them is not less contrary to them Expounding that place of the Proverbs By me Kings reign saith That under the name of Kings the Text understands also Tyrants Whence he collects this consequence Therefore learning hence that thy K. is established by God beware thou never conspirest any seditious thing in the State all that thou must do when thou art oppressed is to appeal to the Tribunal of God there being no other superiour power to whom a Tyrant ought to obey He saith also very pertinently worthy our best observation That then when God Would chastise the Kings of Judah for their sins he did not do it by the Jews but by the Babylonians Assyrians and Egyptians shewing by the conduct of his justice and providence that it is not for subjects to take knowledge of the faults of their soveraigns but that they ought to leave them wholly to God who hath other means in his hand to punish them and reduce them to their duty Surely if Calvin and Martyr had lived in these days and were benificed in England they would eject them out of their benefices for this troublesom doctrine which hinders the progress of the holy Covenant and fils their consciences full of scruples whom they instruct to rebel against their Soveraign for the Lords sake And above all Monsieur Deodatâ— would be very ill dealt with by them for being Author of that excellent Epistle sent from the Church of Genevah to the Ecclesiastical Assembly at London in which your good King is highly prais'd for the justice and clemency of his proceedings in this present quarrel the popular tumults condemned which forced him to retire from his Parliament and these Gentlemen earnestly entreated to dispossess their spirits of all factious inclinations and to wash off this foul spot by which they have and do defame the pure profession of the Gospel giving occasion for the world to believe that the reformed Religion hath a secret hatred and antipathy against the Majesty of Kings and soveraign authority against this Epistle our enemies vomited out many outragious words in their books maintaining that it was supposititious and invented by some prophane Atheist Behold here the thanks that this great and learned person and the reverend Ministers his brethren received for their charitable and truly Christian counsel And this is further to be observed that the Assembly at London having sent their Epistle and Oath of their Covenant to seventeen forraign Churches whereof the Churches of France made but one they make no noise of the Answers they received which doth evidently testifie they did not satisfie them and that they durst not produce them for fear of making it appear that the generality of the reformed Churches were ashamed of their actions and condemned the insurrections of Subjects against their Soveraign under pretence of reformation This Divinity of Rebellion being founded upon one only Maxime that the power of Kings is of humane and not divine right and that their right to the Kingdom is but a paction between them and the people It s much to purpose to produce here what the Churches of France hold hereupon and how they refuse the reasons of the Jesuits which are the same with the Covenanters Behold the last Chapter of the Buckler of Faith which is a garment so fit for the size of both parties that after the one hath made use of it the other may put it on they need change nothing but the persons Thomas the Prince of the School Divines saith that the power of Princes and Lords is but of humane institution and comes not from God to whom we may joyn Cardinal Bellarmine in his Book against Barkley and Monsieur Arnoux who upon the second Article of our confession cals the power of the Magistrate a humane law conformable to the Apothegme of reverend Father Binet the Jesuit who told Mr. Casaubon that it were better all Kings were killed than a confession should be revealed because the power of Kings is but an humane right but confession is of Divine right The Reasons they bring for this opinion are 1. That the first King that was raised in the world namely Nimrod was raised by violence and not by the ordinance of God 2. That the most part of the Empires and Kingdoms that ever have been came by conquest one Nation overcoming the other or by some Prince whose ambition moved him to pick an unjust quarrel with his Neighbour 3. That Emperors and Kings are established by humane ways whether they come to the Crown by hereditary succession or by election since there is no extraordinary revelation nor no rule in the Word of God that a Nation are bound to follow rather Succession which is hereditary than that which is by Election 4. That there is no express command of God to obey Henry rather than Lewis or to acknowledge this man rather than that for King 5. That for these considerations the Apostle St. Peter calls our obedience to Kings an Ordinance of man saying Submit your selves to every Ordinance of man for the Lords sake whether it be to the King as supream or unto Governours c. 1 Pet. 2.15 These are the ordinary reasons of the Covenanters if they should disavow them their Books would witness
take a reciprocal Oath and in a paction of such importance there should also pass some publick contract things which are not practised so that hereby it evidently appears that this imagination of the enemies of Monarchy have not any foundation neither in Law nor Custome Some persons think they speak very finely in saying that the Authority of the King is an Usurpation of the Sword confirmed by Custome that if they could gain their liberty by the sword and confirm it by custome their Right would be as good as his and upon this they Phylosophy upon the Resolutions of States which are in the hand of God and teach us to follow the course of his Providence But by speaking thus they commit a double errour against conscience and against prudence As for conscience the antient constitution of the State confirmed by so many ages Statutes Oaths of Allegiance do suffice to learn all Christians that live under this Monarchy that it was God that established it and that by the command of God they are bound to defend the State under which they are born and whom the Body of the Kingdome hath sworn to maintain These discourses of following the Providence of God in matters of Revolutions of States are then only seasonable when the Royal Blood is extinguished or when Usurpation hath gained prescription through length of years but not when they are neer to overthrow the Estate and ruine the King these considerations are good when the evil is done and out of remedy but not when they are acting ill and when the obedience and loyalty of the subjects may remedy all The providence of God will never serve for excuse of the wickedness of men let us do that which we ought to do and leave God to do what he pleaseth and above all these moralities of revolution of States are worst in their mouths who labour to make this revolution in the State for it 's their duty to prevent this revolution with all their power posterity may excuse themselves by the providence of God in following a new form of State whilst those that introduced it shall be condemned by his Justice Besides all this there is a great want of prudence in this reasoning for in quarrelling the Rights of the King as usurpations of violence and custome they teach the King to quarrel at their liberties and priviledges for the same reason yea and by one much greater for the Priviledges of Parliament are much newer then the Royal Authority and the King may say they were obtained by force after many long and bloody wars he might cast off all prescription gained upon the unlimited power of the first Norman Kings and put himself into all the rights of their Conquests by another Wise subjects who would keep their priviledges ought by all means to preserve peace for there is nothing renders Kings more absolute then war Under a Royal Estate the principal means to preserve the peoples liberty is to maintain the only authority of the King dividing it amongst many they do but multiply their Masters For it s better to have one evil Master then many good ones CHAP. XIV How the Covenanters have no reason to invite the Reformed Churches to their Allyance since they differ from them in many things of great importance WE wonder exceedingly how our Enemies dare solicite the Reformed Churches to Covenant with them From whence comes this great familiarity Is it because of their great resemblance one with another It s that we cannot find As for obedience due to the King which is the principal point of the Covenanters we have made it already appear that the Divines of the Reformed Religion are as contrary to the Covenanters as they are to the Jesuiâ—es their Brethren and Companions in blood and war This point being denied them they care not much for the society of any Church in other points of Doctrine This is the first and great Commandment of the Covenant to obey the people against their King maintain but this their fundamental maxime and they will give you leave to chuse your Religion but in many other things this faction differ from the Reformed Churches Concerning the Doctrine of the Lords Day they have a great quarrel against Calvin who is so far from constraining the Church to a Jewish observation of the Sabbath that he accounts that the Church is not subjected to the keeping of the seventh day a passage which Learned Rivet alledgeth and approâ—â—s and to both these doth Doctor Prideaux since Bishop of Worcester joyn who in a discourse of the Sabbath complains that the English Sabbatarians lean towards Judaisme and go against the common received Doctrine of Divines never considering into what captivity they cast themselves in establishing the observation of the seventh day under Christianity by the authority of a Mosaical Precept Master Primrose Minister of Rohan hath writ a very Learned Book full of profound knowledge upon this Subject wheâ—e amongst other things he proves at large how all the Reformed Churches are contrary to this opinion Although God hath no need of the errour of men to establish his service we so much love the reverence due to that holy day that we would not lightly quarrel at any thing thereupon Let every one enjoy his Opinion so that God may be served and the day which is dedicated to him be not violated neither by prophaneness nor superstition But since the Covenanteâ— in this point are so contrary to the Reformed Churches and have so often condemned it by their writings the Assembly at London did very ill to plead conformity with these Churches in this Article and complain to them of the Liberty the King gave to poor servants to sport on Sunday after Divine Service So also for the Festivals although Mr. Rivet declares his desire that those daies which carry the Names of Saints should be abolished in England because of the abuses of these Festivals in the Church of Rome nevertheless he acknowledgeth and commends the Protestation of the English Church hereupon that they observe them not for the Service of Saints but for to glorifie God in imitation of the Primitive Church by the memory of those whom God was pleased to serve himself by to build up his Church and exceedingly blames those who accuse them of Idolatry for this observation King James of happy and glorious memory speaks thus in his Confession of Faith As for the Saints departed I reverence their memory in honour of whom our Church hath established so many daies of Solemnity as there are Saints enrolled by the Authority of the Scripture The Festivals of Saints scarce exceed the number of the Apostles and Evangelists Monsieur du Moulin his Champion defends this Confession of his Majesty Indeed saith he we condemn not this celebration of the memory of Martyrs and Saints we find the custome good of the English Church who have daies set apart for the commemoration of the Apostles
And a little after he gives the reason why the French Churches do not follow their example Because living in a Country where Superstition abounds the people would be easily drawn to abuse them and be tainted with the common contagion The Prudent and Religious acknowledge with him That in this the Churches have liberty to govern themselves according to the exigencies of time and place and that if in the English Calender there be some festivals which might well be passed by and whereof there might be some fear of the consequence these things ought to have been fairly represented with the humility of subjects and the charity of Christians and not defame the reputation of the English Church as idolatrous and a member of Antichrist nor reform the Church and the King by the Sword since the Reformed Churches in this point acquits them and the example of the Primitive justifies them But although they make a great shew of their agreement with other Churches they make but use of them in some points where they like and approve of and spare not to accuse them of idolatry as well as others when they please 'T is that which they do without naming them then when they reject as gross idolatry the observation of the memory of the daies dedicated to the Nativity Passion Resurrection and Ascension of Christ and the sending of the Holy Ghost into the Church Behold here the Opinion and Practise of the Reformed Churches declared by that Godly and Learned Festus Hominius It s a thing of very great profit to the edification of the Church to commemorate and press solemnly to the people at certain ordinary times the principal manifestations of God and his most signal Benefits to his Church since that the Primitive Church even in the times of the Apostles dedicated certain daies to the Anniversary Celebration of the Nativity Death Resurrection and Ascension of Christ and sending of the Holy Spirit It s very well done to retain the practise of the ancient Church in a thing which is not simply indifferent but singularly profitable to edification provided that none attribute superstitiously any Sanctity to be in the daies and impose not upon the consciences of Christians a yoke of absolute necessity contrary to the Liberty of the Gospel Our new Reformers cannot affirm in sincerity that the Clergy of England attributed any Inherent Sanctity to be in the daies or made use of them to impose a yoke of absolute necessity upon their consciences there was no need then to abolish them with such rigour not to scandalize so many pious souls nor resist a vain fear of superstition by insolence and prophaneness which is a remedy worse then the evil The day of the Nativity in the year 1644 was changed by an express publick Order into a Fast which was the first time since the Apostles that there was any Fast kept that day in the Christian Church and because many would not Fast they sent Souldiers into their houses a little before dinner to visit their Kitchins and Ovens who carried away the meat and eat it though it was a fasting day who were exempted from fasting provided they made others fast such insolencies were ordinary if we may call them insolent actions which were done by Authority And as for Easter day on which and the daies following the people are enjoyned by Act of Parliament to receive the Blessed Sacrament the devotion of the people in many places have been opposed by violence We have heard of a Parish where by main force the Bread and Wine was taken away from the people who were assembled at Church for this holy action Behold their wayes to change the times and to reform abuses which is to resist a supposed superstition with a true and manifest one and to make Sacriledge fight for Religion Le ts pass to other differences The Reformed Churches do not believe as they that all significant ceremonies excepting in the Sacraments are unlawful for then it would follow that to keep off the Hat and kneel at Prayer should be unlawful for these are ceremonies which signifie reverence whence many of the Covenanters for this reason refuse to put off their Hats or kneel at prayer without being taken notice of and reproved by authority Also the Reformed Churches do not believe as they that to be tyed to written prayers or forms of prayers in the Administration of the Sacraments is to binde the Spirit of God many of the Covenanters are come so far as to call the usage of forms of prayer idolatry yea even the use of the Lords Prayer which the most part of this faction refuse to say although by a special priviledge it s permitted the Minister by their Directory to make use of it if he please for it s not commanded him According to this Directory as they call it that is to say an instruction how the Minister should govern himself in the Church The Minister must not say the Apostles Creed nor repeat the ten Commandments of God whereby the people shall be without any form of what they are to believe or what they are to do therefore in the families of most part of this faction they reach noâ— their children neither the Creed the Lords Prayer nor the ten Commandments and as for the children which have learned these holy forms they teach them to forget them Above all things they take a special care that the Minister tyes not himself to any form of words as a thing of dangerous consequence and which hath a taint of Antichrist Henceforward then there will be no uniformity in the Divine Service nor no more help for the infirmity of aged Ministers nor for the understanding and memory of simple and dull Auditors who cannot comprehend at the first aboard what the Minister saith but had need to be well accustomed to him Also there will be no more bounds to devour phantastical spirits which is the principal vice of this Nation Every Church will have a particular Order or rather will have none at all for the Pastor hath liberty to alter it every time he pleases nothing being forbidden but to make use of the long established forms by the Authentical Acts of many Parliaments sanctified by the publick devotion of so many years and composed by the first Reformers persons excellent in piety and wisdome whose books these are not worthy to carry after them If these Directors had had any fear of scandalizing the Churches whom they invited to associate with them they would never have abolished the custome received in all the Reformed Churches and generally in all the Christian Churches of the World who have certain forms for the publick Service of God If they had born any respect to Antiquity and to the universal consent of the Christian Church in all ages and in all places they would not have begun in this age a custome so prodigiously singular as to banish out of the Church all forms
and orders of prayers the Apostles Creed and the ten Commandments There rests yet some Liturgies of the ancient Churches and Hymns used in the Publick Service as the eighteenth Canon of the Councel of Laodicea That the form or Liturgy of prayers Morning and Evening ought alwayes to be the same There hath not nor ever was there a Church who had not some forms of prayers but above all for the higher Powers but that being abolished in England by the Directors we need not wonder if many Ministers of the new Edition have long since forgot to make mention of the King in their prayers and those that pray for him do it in odious terms thrust on by a perverse and malignant zeal telling God a long story of the sins they impute unto their King as if they would poure all their choler into the Bosome of God If any amongst them should thus pray for his Father in the Pulpit Lord grant Repentance to my Father of all his extortions perjuries thefts murthers and adulteries they would account him a fool or exceedingly wicked but against their King all things were permitted Behold the fruits of abolishing the Divine Service and the liberty of the Prophetique Spirits of the times fomented by publick order CHAP. XV. Of Abolishing the Liturgy in doing whereof the Covenanters oppose the Reformed Churches AMongst their reasons for the Abolishing such good prayers in this time of Rebellion this none of the least because in the Liturgy there are divers clauses which â—each the people the Soveraignty of their Prince and the obedience they owe unto him There the King is called our most Gracious Soveraign This would give the Minister the Lie if after that he should call him a most cruel Tirant as it was their custom There they pray that it would please God to strengthen the King that he might overcome all his enemies which were to pray to God for the ruine of their holy Covenant there God is called the only Governour of Princes which would contradict the Doctrine and Practise of the times which gives other Governours to Princes besides God and subject the King to his Subjects There they pray to God that the Subjects of the King may duly consider whose Authority he hath namely Gods If his Subjects duly come to consider this they would lay down their Arms which they had taken up against him for fear of fighting against God and would reject the instruction taught them that the King holds his Authority of men There they pray that the Subjects of the King may faithfully serve honour and humbly obey him a prayer of a most dangerous consequence and would utterly spoil the affairs of the Covenanters if the Lord should hear them There they also pray the Lord would so bless the King that under him we may be godly and quietly governed but it is not under him but without him that they would govern us there being not according to their saying any means to live godly and quietly under his obedience In the same manner they pray for all those who are established in authority under him but according to the form of the State turned the bottom upward as the Presbyterians would have it they must now pray for all those established in authority over him 'T is also a most dangerous clause in that same Prayer which prays to God to punish all wickednesse and vice and to preserve true Religion and Piety For if this Prayer were once heard the Zealots of the State who draw their swords against the King and the Preachers of Rebellion would be constrained to make their Speeches to the people on the Gallowes and their hypocrisie would be unmasqued and they rendered the publick object of contempt and scorn and the Brownist and Anabaptist sent into the Islands of America Also the Prayer that God would give peace in our daies would be very unsuitable to the Intentions of the Covenanters who preach no other thing in substance then that Text ill applied Cursed is he that withholds his sword from shedding blood They have therefore voted it a point of prudence to lay aside the Liturgy out of their way which is so contrary to their politick intentions as for Conscience and the Government of the Church which is dislocated and dismembred by this Abolition of the Divine Service they will then consider of after these Gentlemen have served themselves of the general disorder to build themselves an Empire in the confusion It s most certain that in this change God is far worse served there are indeed some certain Ministers capable without the Divine Service to make prayers full of Edification and truly every Minister of the Gospel ought thus to be prepared but how many are there amongst them who for lack of being tied to certain prayers in publick abuse the patience of God and holiness of prayer If the Judicious Auditory at Charenton should but hear what tales and news these people tell God the insolent familiarity whereby they discourse and reason with him their Maledictions against their King their humorous mad and phantastical tricks which pass for sallies of zeal they would mark out lodgings for them in the petites Maisons with us here called Bedlam which might exempt them from the Chatelet but with us from New-gate Certainly as Liberty ought not to be a Cloak of maliciousness so it ought not to be a door open for folly The Libertine and capricious humour of the Climate in matter of the Service of God should have taught these Directors to have restrained this licentiousness rather than to have let loose the rains and the importunity of those that demanded this liberty should have the more induced them to refuse it But what those who accorded this most pernicious liberty were the same persons who only demanded it The prophane contempt wherewith they used this so holy Liturgy ought not to be imputed to the Insolency of the Souldiers but unto the Instructions which were given them The Parliaments Souldiers Catechisme published and recommended by special Authority teacheth them to tear it a peeces wheresoever they find it Pag. 22. Calling it a most Abominable Idol and a Nurse of Ignorance and blindness which foments an Idle Lazy and dissolute Ministry and that therefore they should reduce it to Ashes as Hezekiah did the Brasen Serpent as the occasion of much evil and an object of Idolatry But seeing in so great a change they oppose the general consent of their Church and that for one whom they please hereby they offend more than a hundred They labour to turn the eyes of the ignorant people towards the Churches beyond the Seas hoping as well they might that looking so far off they could not know what they did The Authors of the Directory affirm That by a long and sad experience they find that the English Liturgy is offensive to the Forreign Reformed Churches And they add a little after That it is to answer the
true and lawful Bishops and such as S. Paul writes of in his Epistles to Timothy and Titus and we deny not saith he but there hath been formerly such Bishops and that there are some now and that they elect such now in the Kingdom of England Beza writes thus to Archbishop Whitgift Archbishop of Canterbury In my writings touching the Ecclesiastical Government I have ever opposed the Roman Hierarchy but it was never in my intention to oppose the Ecclesiastical policy of your English Church nor to require of you to form your Church according to the pattern of our Presbyterian Discipline for whilst the substance of your Doctrine is uniform with the Church of Christ it is lawful for us to differ in other matters according as the circumstances of times places and persons require and is avowed by the prescription of antiquity and for this effect I desire and hope that the sacred and holy society of your Bishops will continue and maintain for ever their right and title in the government of the Church with all Christian equity and moderation Moreover the Churches yea the English Bishops render to their Brethren beyond the Seas the like charity Thus speaks Famous and Reverend Bishop Hall I most cordially respect and with me our Church their dear sister those excellent forreign Churches who have chosen and followed an outward form of government which in every respect is most expedient and sutable for their condition With the like charity an excellent Bishop whose Title of his Book being without name binds us not to name him Having proved that according to the antient Institution of the Christian Church the Bishops always gave the imposition or laying on of hands I write not here saith he to prejudice our neighbour Churches I dare not limit the extraordinary working and operation of the Holy Ghost there where the ordinary means is wanting without the fault of the persons God gave his people Manna so long as they were in the Wilderness necessity is a strong pleader many Reformed Churches live under Kings and Bishops of another Communion Others have particular Reasons why they could not continue nor introduce Bishops but it is not so amongst us speaking of the Church of his own Country A few lines after he adds As for my self I am very much inclined to believe that the Lord looks upon his people with pity in all their prejudices and that there is a great Latitude left to particular Churches in the constitution of their Ecclesiastical government according to the exigence of place and persons provided that the Divine Order and Institution be observed Now after these charitable judgements the Reformed Churches do not believe that which the Epistle of the Assembly of Divines would perswade them that the Bishops hate forraign Churches and reach that without Bishops they could have no Church nor lawful call of Ministers so that if any of ours have offended of late the Reformed Church in the point of Discipline they are disavowed in it by their Bishops Here is thanks be to God a Christian Harmony the Churches which have no Bishops say Let them that would and can injoy the Order of Episcopacy let them injoy it far be it from us that we should either proudly or rashly reprove them for it The Bishops respect cordially the Forraign Churches which have not the same Order and account the Government established amongst them in all respects the most expedient for them Let both the one and the other hold themselves there and let them grant one another the Liberty to govern in the outward according to prudence and exigencies and let them joyn brotherly together to maintain the substance of Religion constant and uncorrupted It is the councel of the Reverend Bishop before alledged There are some Plants saith he which thrive best in the shadow if then this form of government without Bishops agree best to the constitution of some Common-wealths we pray to God to give them joy in it and pray them to say as much for us Petimus damusque vicissim This is spoken Christianly and wisely if our enemies had the charity to have said so much there would have been no Covenant neither would they have pulled down Monarchy for to pull down Bishops under colour of pulling down the Kingdom of Antichrist But if they would that in this quarrel the Reformed Churches should joyn with them they should first have drawn from them a Declaration that they held the Episcopal degree unlawful and a mark of Antichrist and incompatible with the Gospel and that rather then suffer it they should overthrow the State and dispossess your Kings for lesse then this perswasion could not induce the Reformed Churches to espouse the quarrel of the Covenant We will proceed no further in this controversie only because the Covenanters build their rules of Reformation upon the example of the French Churches which the French Reformers never thought of we beseech all equal persons to consider the Christian prudence of those that put their hand to this great work in France having the Court and Clergy contrary to them The best that they were able to do in the matter of Discipline was to provide Pastors who should teach purely and leave them in a simple equality there being no question of governing in times of persecution but to instruct and suffer and it being a thing subject to danger and envy to erect new degrees which could not be done without quarrelling at them which were established Necessity contributes to prudence for the Reformation in France having begun by the common people and some few of the inferiour Clergy who were opposed by the Civil and Ecclesiastical Power we cannot wonder if the Government which they established according to the time was popular if the Reformation had begun by Bishops the Government had been Episcopal the Priests that were converted had not poweâ— to convert their Bishops as the English who began the Reformation helped by their Authority the conversion of their Clergy and people For the inferiour Orbs having a contrary motion to the superiour have not the power to make them follow their course But the superiour Orbs carry along with them the inferiour It was a great matter that the Reformed people could gain any retrogation against the rapidity and swiftness of the greater Sphears The discipline of the French Churches is most commodious to their present estate and hardly could there be found a more proper for a Church that lives under Magistrates of a contrary Religion in expectation of the reformation of them who possess the Ecclesiastical degrees The French Ministers in this humble and equal order keep themselves in a state of obedience proper to submit themselves to their Diocesans when it shall please God to convert them and we believe that their Fathers did chose this equality not as an opposition to the degrees of the Clergy but as a way to dispose them and as a
in the Assembly We could wish also that the power of their Consistories and Synods were a little more limitted for these Assemblies being Courts of Conscience which takes cognisance of all the offences of the Church they may enclose in their Jurisdiction all criminal and civil causes of the Kingdom there being no cause which hath not in it a point of Conscience And so hereby it may come that the sentences of Judges may be controuled in the Consistory and the Officers of the Crown questioned about their managing of publick affairs and so the Government of the State become purely arbitrary And the power of the Ecclesiastical Councel being such the most unquiet and ambitious will be ever pressing to be of it whereupon sidings and factions will abound revenge and particular interest will turn the ballance There they will form factions in the State and parties against the King for what is there that they dare not enterprise who have so vast a power which have no other limits than the extent of the flitting and moveable conscience of particulars which give account to none who pretend to have their authority only of Divine right and therefore are not subject to be controuled These are not conjectures nor suppositions but observations of long experience certainly that personal citation which was sent by the National Synod of Scotland to their King when he was in the midst of his Armies in England Feb. 1645. filled Forreign Churches with amazement and scandal And no less is the Authority they exercise even over their Parliaments which having demanded advice of the Synod concerning what they were to do with their King the Ministers concluded that they should not bring the King into Scotland and that the Kingdom of Scotland ought not to espouse his quarrel for to maintain his Rites in England and their advice passed for an Ordinance after this they cannot reprove the Bishops for being Councellours of State Monarchy which can endure neither Master nor Companion can hardly comply with this Court of Conscience which gives Laws but receives none unless themselves make them and limit the King but refuse to be limited by him but the Magistrates of an Aristocratick or popular Common-wealth will shift better with them for this Court pretending an Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction purely Soveraign and Divine yet nevertheless admit lay men to the participation of this power The Lords never fail to be Members of this consistory and to govern there And thus the question touching the Ecclesiastical authority is Eluded Now although above all we desire to enjoy an Apostolical and Episcopal Discipline where the Bishop assisted with the Councel of his Clergy governs the Church and admits other Pastors according to their degree and quality to the participation of the power of ths Keies yet nevertheless if the revolution of the State brings in another Discipline our Ministers submit themselves to it not to be Actors there remembring themselves of their duties and promise made at their reception of Orders but to surfer themselves to be governed remembring that they are call'd to preach the Gospel and whether there be a good or an evil Order in the Church or even none at all the vocation binds them to feed the Flock and to maintain the holy Doctrine But indeed its great pity to be reduced to expect a Discipline of those that have none and yet make the Kingdom of Christ to consist in it for which they made such clamours in their licentiousness and overthrow of all Order and lawful Vocation in the Church The Reformed Churches of France who employ all their Zeal and Industry to maintain the purity of the Gospel without contending with any about the outward Discipline look upon with contempt and compassion the impetuous weakness of our enemies who overthrow the holy Doctrine and ruine Church and State for points of Discipline which is to lose the end for the accessaries yea although these accessaries are not good in this regard there being but two things to reprove in the Covenanters their end and the meanâ— which they employ to attain that end CHAP. XIX That the Covenanters ruine the Ministers of the Gospel under colour of Reformation ONE of the points of Reformation for which they laboured so much with Cannon shot was to abase and pull down the Clergy which is a work already done without proceeding further As for their greatness the only thing wherein it consisted was taken from them in the year 1645. Which was the Bishops sitting and having power to vote in the Lords House the rest is a smal thing As for their Revenues they are confiscated and sequestred and even the Revenues of the Bishops were such as might cause rather pitty then envy except four or five Bishopricks the rest were so poor that for to help them to uphold their Degree and pay their dues to the King Tenths and first Fruits his Majesty ever out of compassion gave them some other Benefices otherwise very few would have hazzarded the taking of them the Bishopricks of England being like the ruined Monasteries in some Countries which have nothing remaining but the wals with nothing in them The children of those parents who had formerly fâ—tted themselves by the Bishopricks have now swallowed the rest and yet labour to begger the inferior Clergy This is that they call Reformation and in truth 't is the Reformation of Scotland where the Tenths of the Clergy are possessed by the Ruling Elders above all by the Lords some of them having the Tenths of whole Provinces Therefore ye need not wonder they fight with such Zeal for a Reformation which is so profitable In England ordinarily the great Towns and rich Parishes are impropriated and in the hands of Lay persons the rest of the Benefices have but to provide in a Mediocrity for Students in Divinity Those who Reform the Clergy are those who possess the Goods of the Church and besides the Tithes that are alienated many of them even make use of the Tithes of the Clergy with which they are lawfully invested terrifyâ—g their poor Ministers with Sequestration too weak to contend against them and force them to injurious and damageable contracts How many Patrons are there who sell their Benefices to them who will give most And by the infamous Simony of these Gentlemen who make a noise of Reformation the door of the Church is shut to the Clergy unless they have a golden key to open it and thus they prefer profit before conscience 'T is well done of them to mend that which they have marred and they of all other have reason to take in hand the Reformation of Ministers because themselves have done what possibly they can to corrupt them Of all Liberal Professions Divinity is the poorest and have most Thorns in her way and therefore Parents find it more profitable to put their children to a Trade than bring them up in the Study of Divinity and yet after all this their very poverty
of their evil opinions amongst men blame and praise take their force from him that gives them Those who accuse us of corruption in Religion should do well to tell us first amongst the scores of Religions that are what their Religion is for there are many Religions which are together with the Covenanters and live together as so many wilde beasts in the Ark who when they are gone out thence will devour one another or flee one from another but at present they all agree to tear us a pieces Now to these accusers of Corruption we present the thirty nine Articles of our Confession which they and we have sworn and subscribed and let their Consciences judge between them and us which of the two Parties have violated and falsified their Oath How have they observed the thirty sixt Article in which they acknowledged that the consecration of Arch-Bishops and Bishops used in England and confirmed by Act of Parliament contains nothing in it that is either Superstitious or Impious and yet now thunder out against this Order as a mark and branch of Antichrist Is this to want memory or conscience Can they upbraid us with any thing like unto this to have opposed in a Body and condemned an Article of our Confession The corruptions which they alledge against us are falsely so named or at the worst they are but faults of particulars But the Body of the Church hath kept and doth keep the Confession of their Faith inviolable If they produce any we would have brought in any new Doctrines or Customes who can produce others that have opposed them and that the Religion subsisted entire whilst they subsisted Let them not rob those Divines of their due praise who in the beginning of the Parliament laboured sincerely to confirm the Doctrine and to stifle the difference about Discipline We have before represented with what Wisdom Piety and Vigor many Bishops and Divines chosen by his Majesty had lead the two Parties to accord upon a certain number of Propositions which contained the Body of Religion and what great hope there was that the point of Discipline would be amiably composed and how a Faction enemies to the peace of the Church and jealous least any good should come by the means of the Bishops broke off that excellent accord which could never since be renewed persecuting the Prelates with all rigor never giving them rest until they had imprisoned them as Criminals although they were not guilty of any other crime then because they would have terminated the differences of Religion But this was to stifle the Covenant in the cradle and take away all pretext from this holy Rebellion It 's not then a wonder if this sin be not pardoned them it appears by the testimony of the Reverend Pastors of the Church of Geneva in what esteem our Religion was amongst our Neighbours for in their Epistle to the Assembly at London They beseech God that he would restore our Church and Kingdome to such a high degree of holiness and glory as it had shined in until that present By this they acquit us of the corruption which they impute to us and do obliquely accuse this Assembly and those that imploy them that by their means the Kingdom hath lost his glory and the Church her holiness Now put the case that the Corruption were as great amongst us as they make it yea put the case also that even in our Liturgie composed with so much piety and wisdome that there were something to mend as a Freckle in a fair Face and that the Discipline ought to be over-looked what could there be more expected of the King and the Clergy then to submit the Persons and things to be Reformed How often had the King offered to joyn his Authority to the Advice of Parliament and a National Synod to examine and punish the faulty and correct disorders yea and even the Laws themselves if there were need To these so reasonable commands behold here what obedience they yielded A part of the House of Commons having driven away the other by violence and popular tumults and put to flight nine parts of ten of the House of Lords besides the Bishops who represented the Body of the Clergy this small rest in lieu of a National Synod by lawful deputation of the Church chose some Ministers of their Faction for to make use of their Advice so far as it should please them These Ministers who had no Deputation nor Representation nor Authority from the Body of the English Church and having divers Lay persons joyned with them who wholly govern them mould a Religion all new defame the reputation of the Church and Confession to which they had sworn Obedience invite to their aid Forreign Churches as their brethren and ordain that which serves the intention of their Masters We know that amongst these Divines there were some men of Merit Persons which we know had it been in their power would have overcome evill with good but amongst pieces of gold there is many times a great deal of small money like unto our clipped half Testors they are the little heads without learning If the two Houses had assembled the body of the Clergy as was proposed to them by his Majesty they had found themselves filled with Orthodox Persons and they cannot complain if those persons whom they had most desire to received not the publike censure of the Clergy since they would not permit the Clergy to assemble themselves neither can they complain that any guilty hath gone unpunished for they have taken a sure course for by the universal ruine of the Deans and Chapiters they have involved the innocent with the guilty Hearken what the King said hereupon I was content to accord and render to the Presbyter that is to say to the Body of Pastors all the right which with reason and discretion they could pretend in their conjunction with the Episcopal degree but to suffer them wholly to invade the Ecclesiastical Power and to cut off altogether with the sword the Authority of this ancient Order for to invest themselves in it it was that which I accounted neither just in regard of the Bishops nor sure nor profitable in regard of the Presbyter himself neither any way convenient for the Church or State A right and good Reformation might have been easily produced by moderate Councils and I am perswaded such Councils would have given more contentment even to those very Divines who have been perswaded with much gravity and formality to serve the designs of others which without doubt many of them now acknowledge although they dare not make their discontent appear for finding themselves frustrated of their intentions I am very well assured that the true method to reform the Church cannot subsist with the perturbation of the Civil State and that Religion cannot justly be advanced in depressing Loyalty which is one of the principal ingredients and ornaments of true Religion for after the Precept
which was the way as he thought most proper for the designs of his ambition then privately to make him away but he durst not proceed thus far whilst the King was so neer the gates of London and in the heart of his Kingdome the hearts whereof he possessed I will not undertake to sound the mysteries of iniquity of this Agent of Satan but shew you a piece of his perfidiousness and profound hypocrisie The night before the King stole from Hampton Court Cromwell came to visit him causing all persons to withdraw out of the Chamber except Major Huntington in whom he only confided and taking the King aside had a long discourse with him which Huntington could not hear but could well behold his passionate gesture which witnessed a singular freedome and affection Cromwell at his departure cast himself upon his knees and took the King by the hand kissing it many times wetting it with his tears and at length lifting up his voice said to him Sir so God bless me and my children as I am resolved to endeavour to place you and your children in your rights and dignities after this approaching to Huntington Major saith he tarry with the King and 〈◊〉 there happen any thing now this night take a good horse and come with all speed and acquaint me This night then the King passed secretly the Thames and taking post cast himself into the trap they had laid for him in that retired place So soon as Huntington knew of the departure of the King and whether he was gone he went in all hast to give advice to Cromwell that the King had escaped into the Isle of Wight who beholding him astonished and amazed at this sudden change laughed at him telling him That the King was there where he desired and that there wanted nothing now to the satisfying of his desires but that all his children were there with him This history is attested by Huntington himself a person of credit and repute whose eyes this action and the like hath opened and turned his heart towards the King his Soveraign Now the King being confined into this little Island where all the avenues might easily be kept by the Creatures of Cromwell and the other Gentlemen of the Covenant the Mask was presently taken off at Westminster and in the Army and all their oaths and protestations to maintain the person and authority of the King were changed into loud cries in calling for Justice against him to which the Gentlemen at Westminster easily condescended and for this effect declared him incapable to govern charged him with all the crimes malice could devise forbidding all persons to make any more addresses to him But in this fair way they had some disturbance by those Parties that in the year 1648. rose for the King but God justly provoked against this sinful Nation suffered injustice to triumph through the disloyaly of persons who having until that time born Arms against the King took part with him expresly to betray and ruine him And thus from the beginning to the end of this Tragedy falshood hath plaid his part and at length this just Prince lost his life by the hand of those his Subjects who had called Heaven and Earth to witness their Loyalty and Affection and this is very admirable and memorable to all ages how the Conscience and constancy of the King took a way altogether contrary to that of the Covenanters for whilst the Covenanters swore themselves to destroy him he would do neither the one nor the other to save his life or Crown for its manifest that there was a time wherein if the King would have promised that which he was resolved not to have kept he had in a short time been put into such a condition according to all humane appearances as would have put him out of the power of all the discontented to constrain him to have kept his promise I cannot pass the last Act of this hideous Treason without letting the world behold another piece of the damnable Hipocrisie of Oliver Cromwel The day assigned for the Execution of the King being come the Councel of War sate which was then the Great Councel of the Kingdom A Letter without Name was addressed to this Councel to represeâ—t to them by Reasons of Conscience and Prudence the formidable consequences of so strange and hateful an Execution Cromwel seemed to be much touched at it which caused some suspicions as though he himself underhand had procured it and proposed it to the consideration of the Councel part of this company began to yeeld to the force of Justice and their duty and to lean towards compassion Cromwel beholding this made a turn to the door and sent one of his confidence to those to whom the Execution was committed to command them to dispatch the business Then returning to the Councel Table made a long Discourse shewing the inconvenience of this execution and advised them so to secure the person of the King for the time to come that he might neither do nor receive hurt This Discouse was seconded by others and then again re-assumed by himself with a great many words to lengthen the Consultation until that one briskly entring into the Chamber told them Gentlemen You may cease to consult the work is done the King is executed Upon this Cromwel suddenly fell upon his knees with signs of great devotion crying out That this was the work of God and a true stroak of heaven the Councel being disposed to save his life but the Divine justice would not suffer so much innocent blood shed by this Tyrant to pass unpunished and hereupon made an eloquent Prayer to give glory to God and acknowledge his providence And from this History I leave the Reader to draw a Character of this Person whose perpetual method was to make his Impostures to pass for miraculous and divine managements When he would make his Inventions pass into publike resolutions he would suborn a Prophet or Prophetess who should come and find him in full Councel or in the head of his Army for to enjoyn him on the behalf of God that which before he had resolved he caused all the Councels he proposed to pass for motions of the blessed Spirit therefore if his Councels and Actions did ill accord with his preceding professions his inspirations from above excused all and he laid all the fault upon God when any minded him of his Protestations made to preserve the person of the King and restore him to his Dignities He would Answer That it was indeed his Intention but that when he sought God to open him a way for the performance God had silenced him and shewed that it would not be acceptable to him His partie seriously give him this commendation That he was so affected with the glory of God that if he had promised any thing with the most solemn and holy adjurations and that afterward God should put it into his spirit That the contrary to what he