Heathen yet would he be as much King and have as much right to the Crown and Rule as if he were Presbyterian 'T is not the Religion of the Magistrate but that in me be what it will that I do call Religion or Conscience which obligeth my obedience to him The Roman-Catholick had as much Reason and Law for their Gun-Powder Treason as the Scotch and English Puritans for their many Rebellions and may as to themselves as much rejoyce for their delivery from the Presbyterian Tyranny as they from the others intended cruelty but in this they may both shake hands and cry quits Brother which hath made me smile as often as I hear a Disciplinarian rail against the Romanists for that wicked design since themselves have been as guilty only some difference in the method one putting their confidence in Fire and the other in the Sword The many Rebellions of these People and their resolutions never to lay down their Swords till the King would satisfie them in what they pleas'd is a sufficient manifestation of their Conditional Obedience and that they are not farther Subject to that Authority than the King is obedient to their Wills examples of which are yet fresh in every mans memory At the very beginning of their Rebellion they having declar'd those who adhear'd to the King to be Traytors and He had done the same to the Earl of Essex His Majesty unwilling to have the bloud of his Subjects shed and delighting in Peace sent to the Parliament to call in their Declarations against his Party and he would call in all his against them and their Associates and that both the Armies might be disbanded an Act of Oblivion to be pass'd and a perfect Peace compos'd And What could be more gracious then this yet this they deny Nor will they hearken to any Overtures of a Treaty with him unless he first call in all his Declarations against them Disband his Army yield himself to them and permit those who were with him to be proceeded against and suffer as Delinquents Thus will they have none of him unless he submit to them and permit his best Friends to be ruined And yet these men must think themselves so good Subjects that they deserve his Majesties thanks for their so acting and in so doing think themselves Obedient enough in all Conscience But if this be their duty I wish they would tell me what they think disobedience to be This rejecting their Soveraign is sufficient to stop the mouths of these men from railing against Pope Gregory VII call'd Hildebrand who having excommunicated the Emperour Henry IV. would not absolve him nor receive him into favour till throwing off all his Princely attire he had waited three several dayes in the coldest time of Winter bare-footed at the walls of Vercelli in Piemonte in Italy where the Pope then was to beg audience and forgiveness Phaëton had no reason to question his birth-right unless Phoebus would allow him the command of his flaming Chariot to the ruin of the Youth and a great part of the World And 't is strange Logick and impudence in our Puritans to deny themselves to be Subjects unless they command as Supream A pretty mode to trample upon Authority as if they had set for their pattern Pope Alexander III. who insteed of offering his Toe to be kist by Frederick Barbarossa set his foot upon the Emperours neck If at the beginning of the Warr they were so stubborn as not to receive their King into their favour unless he yield to their mercy and suffer his friends to be distroy'd he must expect stranger Conditions when they are heightned with bloud and villany For then must he ask them Pardon give them satisfaction and carry nothing about him but the bare Title or else he shall be none of their King To which purpose a whole Club of them having sufficiently rail'd against Hâ—m after all their lies scandals and hellish forgeries thus conclude their malice and obedience These are some few of the many reasons Why we cannot repose any more trust in him i. e. King Charles I. and have made those former resolutions yet we shall use our utmost endeavour to settle the present Government as may best stand with the Peace and Happiness of this Kingdom Here they quite renounce any more Obedience to him nay make it by Vote both of their Lords and Commons to be High-Treason for any to make any Application or Address to him And if these be good Subjects without all question 't is Treason to be obedient And what they meant by their utmost endeavours I know not only this I am certain of having thus thrown away the Father they never apply'd themselves to the Son unlesse it were the motion of some of them to proclaim him Traytor and the conclusion of them all was to send the Earl of Warwick to fight him How long before they had been resolved to renounce their King and his Government I know not yet the Earl of Loudoun then Lord Chancellor of Scotland a pretty while before this gave the King notice of their intentions telling him that Some are so afraid others so unwilling to submit themselves to your Majesties Government as they desire not you nor any of your Race longer to raign over them If your Majesty refuse to assent to the Propositions you will lose all your Friends lose the City and all the Country and all England will join against you as one man and when all hope of Reconciliation is past it is to be feard They will processe and depose you and sett up another Government They will charge us to deliver your Majesty to them and to render the Northern Garrisons and to remove our Army out of England And upon your Majesties refusing the Propositions both Kingdomes will be constrain'd to agree and settle Religion and Peace without you which will ruine your Majesty and your Posterity And if your Majesty reject our faithful advice and lose England by your wilfulnesse your Majesty will not be permitted to come and ruine Scotland And at the beginning of the same year when his Majesty from Oxford earnestly desired them that there might be a personal Treaty The Lords and Commons of the English Parliament and the Commissioners of the Scotch Parliament after they had impudently hinted at his Majesty as a most wicked person they expresly deny any such means for peace untill he had given them satisfaction and security And this was still their custome with his Majesty first must he satisfie them before they will hear any thing from him In the same year the Committee of Scotland tell his Majesty at New Castle We hope you come with intentions and full resolutions to give all just satisfaction to the joint-desires of both your Kingdomes And two daies after assure him that If your Majesty shal delay the present performing thereof we shal be necessitated for our own exoneration
of the Earl of Manchester In which two Universities there was a thorough Purge to the perpetual reproach and ignominy of the Undertakers many famous and learned Doctors Heads of Houses Masters of Arts and others were turned out of their Fellowships and Colledges because they would not submit to that which was contrary to their Oaths and the Priviledges of both places imposed upon them by those who had no more authority in such things than they had to behead or rebel against their Master IX Contzenus saith these Revolutions must be done moderately and with abundance of cunning the first step being to make the followers and abetters of the contrary Opinion odious and as it were a scorn in the Countrey and this by disgracing them especially with things which seem most ridiculous absurd and hate ful to the common people either by nick-naming or any way else The scandalous Reports and Pamphlets thrown against both King and Bishop as Popish though they thought nothing less may be some sign what good use hath been made of Contzen's Observation What disgrace cast upon the decent Habits of Church and University though the first according to the Canons and the other appointed by the Statutes of the place What unseemly Titles given to Organs as Bag-pipes and what irreverent names to Churches as Steeple-houses How were the Clergy nick-named with the title of Hirelings Humane Learning as Heathenish and Scholars as professing enmity against the Gospel How Cromwel's Faction spread abroad Pamphlets against King City and Parliament 1647. that the people might take the Army for honest men is somewhat pointed at by Mr. Walker And since that What scurrilous Books hath been contrived by Needham Goodwin Milton Rogers and such like Billingsgate Authors is not unknown to to any Nor is it forgot what impertinent Reports the Long-Parliament spread amongst the People to make the King odious as that he was a Favourite to the Catholicks and those call'd Arminians which sufficiently demonstrated a Presbyterian malice since the first was false and the other no crime And this must also be laid in the dish of Archbishop Laud though Prynne and they knew that he wrote more against the Romanists than all our Brittain Presbyterians who have spent more time in the commendation of Rebellion than in the Service of God And certainly I may as well call Prynne a Stage-Player for writing his Histriomastix as he the Archbishop Papistical because he wrote so learnedly against them And as if this were not mischief enough the People must now and then be alarum'd with strange Reports of Forces from Denmark Lorraign and other strange places as if the Nation were to be conquer'd and the Natifs throats cut which if we yield yet will the ignominy only fall upon the Presbyterian Party who by their want of Allegiance would bring the King to such straits that his own Subjects were not able to defend him from their Tyranny They thought it fit for us to send aid into the Palatinate and yet unlawful for Denmark to assist his own Kinsman against his Rebellious Subjects It was convenient they thought to give help to the French against their lawful King yet held it abominable for Forraigners to give a good wish to the King of England against his rebellious people The Covenanters in Scotland might with honesty crave aid from the French King though a Roman-Catholick against their Anointed Soveraign But so must not the King of England from the Duke of Lorraign though his life endangered by his bloud-thirsty Subjects The Parliament forsooth may make a Pacification with the Irish Catholicks but the King must not harbour such a thought without grand aspersions If the King but march towards Scotland the malignity of envious tongues endeavours to blast his Reputation as not fit to wear the Crown But many thousands of the Scotch-Covenanters may come into England fight against their King kill his faithful Subjects and inrich themselves by their plundering and stealing from the honest People and for their villainies receive large rewards with the Epithet of Brethren and so they were but in Iniquity being guilty of High-Treason because marched and acted against the Kings consent who is the Supreme Authority of the three Nations And that the Supream Head may when rebell'd against for his own security and defence desire help of his Neighbours though of a different perswasion in Religion I think needs no dispute He that would lose his Kingdom quietly is as simple as the Rebel 's wicked and if his own Sword be not long enough for the tryal he may lawfully borrow his Friends If the Parliament stood so much upon their Priviledges I know no reason but that the King might maintain his Prerogative and if any Contradiction be betwixt these two they are obliged to yield to their betters Nor doth it thwart the practise of former times for the Supream Authority to desire assistance from people of a contrary Religion as may be seen by the following examples as I find them set down to my hand in a late French Treatise Aza the good King of Judaea procured assistance from Benhadad the Idolatrous King Syria And so did the Great Constantine imploy in his Armies many Heathenish Goths So were the wicked Vandals call'd into Africa by good Boniface And after this manner did Narses under the Emperour Justinian imploy the Pagan Lombards The good Arcadius Emperour of Constantinople though a Christian delivered the tuition of his young son Theodosius and the Government of the Empire till his Son came to age into the hands of Isdigerdis King of Persia a Heathen who accordingly kept his promise with the Emperour Heraclius the Emperour was beholden to the Saracens as Basilius and Constantine's sons to John Emperour of Constantinople were to Ostelzi And by these people were also Henry and Frederick Brothers to the King of Castile mainly benefited in their Wars against the French Ludouick Sforza Duke of Milan and others begg'd assistance from the Turk against the French as Maximilian of Austria did against the Venetians And if it be lawful to procure aid from Heathens certainly a Christian may seek help from those who profess Jesus Christ though in every thing they cannot absolutely agree But enough of this since the Presbyterian commits ten times more sin in Rebelling than the wickedst man can do in defending his own right though by the assistance of Turks and Infidels X. What a great stickler Robert Parsons the Jesuite was to overthrow both England and the Protestant Religion in it is well known the great States-man Cardinal D'Ossat taketh notice several times of his designs against these Kingdoms Some of his Plots and Contrivances shall follow as they were publisht by some Roman Catholicks One of his means is to alter the Municipal Laws of the Land that the Civil Laws might have sway 'T is needless to relate how the Laws have been chopped and changed by diversity of Governments not
Policy Questions used to be discust 1. Whether the Election or Succession of Kings were the better Form of Government 2. How farr the Royal Power extended 3. Whether Kings might be censured for abusing their Power and deposed by the Estates of the Kingdom And how they stated these Questions let their deeds be judge as they are most proper and then let any man tell me if men of such turbulent spirits can be good Subjects and by consequence good Christians for I believe the World can scarse parallel in one Kingdom so many treasonable and impudent actions in so short a time as less then fifty years let but our late English madness of which theirs and our Presbytery were the Original be at this time excepted And most of these Actions you will find confirm'd and owned though in a different style by the History of The Scots Reformation wrote by whom I know not for a late Reverend Authour denyes it to be Knox's And it is the custom of men of this perswasion to Father their Brats upon others witness Wilson's History of King James a Book not to be believed in all things Nor is it all the Nation hath these spots There is a Church as well as Kirk of Scots And to vilifie the whole Kingdom because it hath nurst up some hot-spurs would be implacable malice and to bring all the World into Ignomy If the Proverb assure us That it is a good Family which hath neither Whore nor Thief in it 't will be a difficult thing to expel Vice from a whole Nation The Virgin-City Venice esteem'd one of the Glories of the World and whose Government for Exactness yields to none abounds with more Venerian pleasures than any of her Christian Neighbours The Spaniards are famous for loyal Subjects yet a Rebel is no Monster in Castile her self Scotland hath been the Mother of as famous men as any other Kingdom if Denmark Germany Poland and the Low-Countries may testifie their valour whilest France will assure you of their fidelity whose Kings have altogether trusted their persons to their Guardship But enough since David Camerarius hath writ a whole Volume in the Commendation of the Scottish Nation CHAP. IX The illegal malepart and impious Plots and Designes of our Schismatical Presbyterians in England in the Raigns of Queen Elizabeth King James and King Charles till the beginning of the wicked long-Long-Parliament NOr was this hot-braind humour fostered alone in Scotland but England also tasted the fiery tryal of their madd pranks Queen Elizabeth no sooner setled in her Throne but the Zealots deface all Monuments and Pictures in Churches they met withall nor did the ashes of the dead lie undisturb'd which caus'd the Queen to set forth a Proclamation against such violations But these men having their malice stopt against Stones and Glasswindores will vent it against those who can be sensible of injuries Goodman Whittingham Gilbie and others having learn'd their lessons at Geneva came roring over against our English Church venting their venom not only by their Preachments and Conventicling but also in Print The latter of these viz. Anthony Gilby of whom formerly born in Lincolnshire and of Christs Colledge in Cambridge tearmed our Ceremonies Liveries of Antichrist accursed Leaven of the blasphemous Popish Priesthood cursed patches of Popery and Idolatry Nor must the Ceremonies alone suffer but the Reverend Bishops too by others of the same gang as Throgmorton Penry Fenner Udal and such like Bravado's calling them Antichristian Petty-Popes Bishops of the Devil cogging and cozening Knaves dumb Dogs Enemies of God c. And for our Worship they affirmed it to be an impious thing to hold any thing common with Rome and from this Argument they refused to come to Divine Service But at last such was the vigilancy of the Queens Council that the fautours of these seditious Non-conformists were found out and Sir Richard Knightly and Sir Wigston were fined in the Starr-Chamber for receiving the Printers and Publishers of such Schismatical Books the celler of one of the Gentlemen bringing forth like Lucian some foul mouth'd Pamphlets against the Church or other Neither do these men mount their Battery only against the Church but also throw their wild-fire and indignation against the Queen and their Supream Authority witness Mr. Edward Deering of Kent's Sermon in which how unworthily let others judge he compared her Highness to an untamed Heifer and Christopher Goodman in a Book publickly vindicated Wiat's Rebellion affirming All who took not his part were Traytors to God his People and their Countrey And as some Common-Lawyers towl'd away by inticing tongues and Gold of the Non-conformists wrote against the Authority of Bishops so some pretending to the Civil and Canon-Law were obliged to oppose and deny the Queens Supremacy in Causes Ecclesiastical Nor might these fore-mentioned things seem strange since they were easily to be vindicated from some of the Geneva Notes upon our Bible where you may find the Disciplinarians highly to complain against Asa because he did not kill his Mother furiously calling of it lack of zeal and foolish pity And maliciously to compare our Arch-bishops Bishops Doctors and such like degrees with the Locusts though they carelesly seem to quit themselves in the exit And yet these are the very same men who profest to Queen Elizabeth That their Applications are such as may most appertain to Gods glory though how hide-bound they were at the same time from Charity may appear by their then slandering the Reverend and Learned Bishops with the ignominious title of ambitious Thus was Authority begun to be blasted by the Puritans a name now almost an hundred years old beginning in 1564. as Fuller thinks though Dr. Heylin out of Genebrard makes it two years younger though in a later History he seems to moderate its original between both viz. 1565. And these were so denominated as the word implyes and Genebrard and experience tells us because they thought themselves so much purer then other Christians that they would not perform Divine Service with them utterly rejecting all Forms used in the Primitive Ages and looking upon all decent Garbes to be unlawful in Church-affairs if different from the common wear or rather if not according to the Geneva-cut The Antiquity of this Name is very ancient as we may see in the old Hereticks who presumptuously call'd themselves Caethari i. e. Puritans the same with the Novatiani with whom the Parmenianistae in supposed purity did something agree and by this Name of Cathari I find Johnstonus in his large History to signifie our Non-conformists The Queen perceiving these men to sleight both her and the Bishops and to act only by the advice of private persons as Mr. Tho. Cartwright who affirm'd That we ought rather to conform our selves in Orders and Ceremonies to the fashion of the Turks then to the Papists Mr. Travers c. who had
upon the wicked CHAP. VI. Some short Observations upon their Covenant AN understanding Gentleman assures us that A league amongst Subjects giveth law to a King breaks all bonds of Soveraignty and invites a people to seek for a New Maister And this dear-bought experience hath prov'd true to both Nations yet were the events of these Agreements more mischievous they would be courted by the seditious thinking such pieces of Perjury to be the best works of their Holy-days Since the reformation this mode of swearing against Authority hath been commonly practis'd in Scotland In their first Covenant 3 Decemb 1557. An Earl of Argile was the first subscriber and chief promoter and how active an Earl of Argile hath been in our days about such wickednesse need not here be related but I hope as the other was the first so this shall be the last Yet in this way hath the English been as faulty as the worst of them though I believe at first drol'd in by their Neighbours For when at the beginning of the Warres the English Commissioners went from the Parliament into Scotland to desire their assistance against the King and having addres'd themselvs to the Scotch Assembly delivering them a letter subscribed by some Presbyterian Ministers in which they complaind that their blood was shed like water upon the grouud for defence of the Protestant Religion they receiv'd a negative answer The Assembly telling them amongst other things That you cannot say you fight for the Reform'd Religion since you have not begun to reform your Church ye had thriven better if you had don as we did Begun at the Church and thereafter striven to have gotten the civil sanction to what ye had don in the Church A few days after Sir W. Ermin Mr. Hamden and the rest of the Commissioners were invited by some of their friends to make a new Address to the Assembly which they did the second time desiring a gracious Answer Upon this request the Assembly propounded to them this Will ye join in Covenant with us to reform Doctrine and Discipline conform to this of Scotland and ye shall have a better Answer Sir W. Ermin and the rest answered that they had not that in their Instructions but thank'd the Assembly and said they would represent it to the Parliament of England The Assembly replyd that there would be much time loosed ere they could go to the Parliament for their resolutions and thereafter to return to Scotland to draw up a Solemn League and COVENANT The danger was great and they were not able to resist the King But we shall draw up the Covenant here and send up with you some Noble men Gentlemen and Ministers that shall see it subscrib'd which accordingly was don only two or three words altered Thus was this spurious Wretch illegally begotten and brought forth by unlawful Parents by the Scots worship'd and ador'd as the only Idol fit to bless their undertakings and by their Brothers in mischief the English Long Parliament embraced who peremptorily enjoyn all people to swear Allegiance to it as their only supream Law and authentick Shibuleth to distinguish Treason from Loyalty Though what authority they had to impose such an Oath being against the Command both of King and Law must be left for Mr. Prynne to discover in some Terra incognita since we have no such custome amongst us Yet for all this Mr. Simeon Ash had the confidence in the Pulpit to wonder that any man should think that the Covenant was made here only to bring in the Scots when the Presbyterian Parliament and party was low in England Having thus seen the Birth of this Monster it might quickly be desected and the poison and mischief lodg'd in it might evidently be manifested to the whole world but that it hath formerly been don by more able pens However it cannot but seem strange to any that these men should swear to extirpate the Government of the Church by Archbishops Bishops c. which have been confirmd by 32 Acts of Parliament And they could never yet tell who made them Rulers over Israel and gave them power to such actions quite contrary to Magna Charta the laws of the Land and the Kings express command The first two are known to any one who hath heard any thing of the laws of the land and the latter is as true Yet because I have heard some deny and others question its truth I shall give you his Majesties own Proclamation against it 1643. By the KING His Majesties Proclamation forbidding the Tendering or taking of a late Covenant called a Solemn League and Covenant for Reformation c. WHEREAS there is a Printed paper intituled a Solemn League and Covenant for Reformation and Defence of Religin The honour and happinesse of the King and the peace and safety of the three Kingdomes of England Scotland and Ireland pretended to be Ordered by the Commons in Parliament on the twenty first day of September last to be Printed and published Which Covenant though it seems to make specious expressions of Piety and Religion is in Truth nothing else but a Traiterous and Seditious Combination against us and against the Established Religion and Laws of this Kingdome in pursuance of a Traiterous Design and endeavour to bring in Forraign Force to invade this Kingdome We do therefore straightly Charge and Command all Our Loving Subjects of what Degree of Quality soever Upon their Allegiance That they presume not to take the said Seditious and Traiterous Covenant And We do likewise hereby Forbid and Inhibit all Our Subjects to Impose Administer or Tender the said Covenant as they and every one of them will answer to the Contrary at their Utmost and Extremest Perils Given at our Court at Oxford this Ninth day of October in the Nineteenth year of our Raign GOD SAVE THE KING Than this what could be more plain and authentick yet a furious Presbyterian is pleas'd to tearm this action of the King Satanical slander and abuse a most impious and audacious Paper Atheistical boldness Impious and Platonical pleasure c. Besides the unlawfulness of its making and Imposition the qualities and conditions of the Brat were so impious that an honest man could never take it for several reasons amongst many other take these two or three 1. § They swear to extirpate Popery without respect of persons In which they might be ask'd What they would do with the Queen If they forced her Religion 't was Treason If they did not they are perjur'd 2. § This Oath makes them to be but Conditional Subjects swearing to preserve the Rights and Priviledges of Parliament and the Liberties of the Kingdom before the King or his Authority few of the takers understanding any of these things by which means they swore they knew not what And that this Oath obligeth them to be but conditional Subjects is plain they swearing To preserve and defend the Kings Majesties Person and Authority
Casuists cannot be ignorant how they annihilate and jeast with sin by their sociable Doctrine of Probable Opinion of Directing the Intention and such like as you may see more at large in the Mystery of Jesuitism of which the last Edition with its Additionals will yield you more satisfaction With these things I should be very unwilling to charge them did I not know that the Agitators of these Political evasions from Sin were the chief Casuists amongst them and their Books printed and reprinted by the consent of their Superiours For those men are very much to blame who scandalize a General Religion with the fancies and extravagancies of some private Writers for by this means might Rebelling-Presbyterianism King-killing Independentism deluded Quakerism and other Heresies be thrown upon the famous Church of England and several absurdities upon the Romanists which cannot be found in the Tridentine Council How obsequious this Order is to their Superiours Commands may be seen in many stories related by Hasenmullerus and others Ignatius himself being willing to throw away his life rather than disobey an ignorant Physitian Nor had it been handsom in him to have been refractory who was the Author of this obedient Constitution and wrote a long Letter from Rome to those of his Order in Portugal to perswade them to it which is yet extant What other Articles they have I need not relate these three being a sufficient taste and the rest of their Order may be had either in Italian or Latin To give a true Character of the Jesuite at large would be too tedious since one of themselves viz. Alexander Haius hath performed it well enough in few words viz. Jesuita est omnis homo one as fit to act any thing as he is able to comply with every condition meerly Tales quales as themselves were pleas'd to term it more publickly at Paris They are generally a sort of people more skilful in the causes and motions of the Body Politick than the Philosopher in the Natural being Richelieu's for plotting as quick-sighted as Lynceus as restless as the Bird of Paradice as insinuating and flattering as Clisophus or Charisophus more cruel than the ill-natur'd Barbarian and like the old woman Ptolomais never in their own Trade but when stirring up mischief and the best Actors on the Political Stage fit to undertake and finish any wickedness for which they have formerly been reproachfully banish'd France Bohemia Hungaria Moravia Turky and Venice though since with much ado restored Several of them have suffered in China England Scotland and other places for their villainies nor hath Germany suffered them to go unpunished nor could they expect more favour from many in that Countrey since the misery of it And the loss of the Palatinate if you believe Sir Simond D'ewes had its source from their Brains And one of this Society who suffer'd at Strasburg confest that he was one of the thirty Jesuits who were imploy'd to be Agents for the Roman Cause in the late German Wars and that their Orders were to poyson and make away the chiefest Officers or others who opposed the Emperour as my Author assures us And Teimurases Prince of the Georgeans a people lying upon the Caspian Sea will have none of them in his Territories whence they were forced to fly for that notorious Imposture of theirs concerning the head of that Martyred Queen Ketaban a story so commonly known that I do not a little admire at de S. Lazare for passing by the fraud and jugling of the Jesuites with silence and untruths Mendoza hot-headed Gret-serus and others of the same Society are as parties bound to commend the Honesty and Religion of this Order But the Ingenious Thuanus Pasquier who affords you Pleadings and Reasons against them and others though Roman-Catholicks think it not fit to attribute any goodness to the Jesuite knowing that he is a Subject too dangerous to live in Liberty in any well setled State Spain excepted these two reciprocally maintaining each other more through politick ends than true love of Religion I am confident Great Brittain and Ireland have felt the force of their active brains as the Raign of Queeen Elizabeth and the dangerous beginning of King James can testifie Nor were they any more beneficial to King Charles doing what they could to foment our Dissentions as the Long Parliament could not deny As appears by their Articles against Father Philips one of which was this The damnable Doctrine which he and other Jesuites have taught to destroy and depose Kings hath been the cause of the Civil Warrs like to befal these Kingdoms if God in his mercy did not prevent it And his Seditiousness is somewhat apparent by his Letter sent to Mr. Mountague in France and produced to the House of Commons June 25 in which was this expression Can the wise Cardinal endure England and Scotland to unite and not be able to discern In the end it is like they will joyn together and turn head against France And how vigilant the Cardinal was to keep the two Nations from uniting is visible from the presence and great endeavours of Mr. Thomas Chamberlain a Scotch-man Chaplain and Almoner to Richelieu amongst the Scots who play'd likewise his Cards well in England before our late Rebellion with Order not to depart from Scotland till things succeeding as the Cardinal wish'd he might return into France with good news of a perfect dissention betwixt England and Scotland And to this may be added the Industry of the Cardinal's Secretary in the said Nation where he carryed himself so cunningly that he was taken into Consultation with the Heads of the Covenanters And what good counsel could spring from such a Fountain cannot be ignorant to any who either understood the experience or knew the political biass of the said Cardinal which might well move him to say concerning our late Troubles That 't was easie for one with half an eye to have foreseen them Whereby it seems strange to me that he would never imploy a Jesuite if we may credit Mr. Howell though it may be that he supposed them too much linked to the Interest of Spain to doe him or France any good Nor is the multitudes of them in England any small probability of their bad Intentions being unwilling to hazard their lives as here they do unless upon some grand Design Jarrigius one of their own Society affirmeth that fifty of them clad in several habits kept Council in London whence they deputed a General Agent to Rome And Oliver Cromwell profest that he could prove by witness that they had a Consistory and Council that rul'd all the affairs in England as he could prove by the Particular Instrument then in his power And how formerly they swarm'd in England Mr. Gee will at large inform you And King James could never forget the miseries he suffered whilst King of
Consequence and good Law Treason to warr against him I shall now shew that the Parliament and not himself was the first beginners of these late Confusions the true rise of which I must fetch higher than the Presbyterian Party will give me thanks for And as a leading Card to this Discovery we must observe that a rebellious itching humour of incroaching upon and railing against lawful Authority was the main foundation of our miseries the source of which frantick temper I must draw from Geneva whose Disciples are commonly carryed on with more violence than the furirious Rhosne upon which the City boasts her situation In this City John Calvin confirmed his Presbyterian-Discipline in the same year that Ignatius Loyola the first Founder of the Jesuites was chosen their first General in a solemn manner viz. 1541. And just a hundred years after 1641. was the famous and reverend Church of England over-run and clowded by the Calvinistical Proselytes And as these two Orders of Presbytery and Jesuitism took their rise together so have they gone hand in hand through a blind zeal not only to derogate from but extirpate all Civil Authority not conducible to their Interests And as Calvin's Presbytery at first was begot by Rebellion and Treason they expelling from Geneva their lawful Prince and Magistrate So have their Children following the foot-steps of their Parents as what is in the bone will never out of the flesh made it their business to terrifie the World with this truth that as Schism so Sedition and they are inseparable And in this they have been no way hindred by their Lord and Master John Calvin whose inconsiderate zeal in some things was such that it was so farr from sparing any that it would throw its fury at Kings and Queens Witness his irreverent expression thrown against Queen Mary calling of her Proserpine telling us that she outstrips all the Devils in Hell And in this way of Rhetorick do other of his dear sons follow him as John Knox calls the same Queen wicked Jezabel and Devil and her Rule the monstriferous Empire of a wicked Woman And another Brother viz. Anthony Gilby calls her a Monster and one wanting no will to wickedness And yet this Lady whom they so much abuse and vilifie was as our Authentick Chronicles assure us a Woman truly pious merciful and of most chast and modest behaviour and every way to be prais'd if you consider not her Errour in Religion A charracter so glorious that I fear few of our Disciplinarians dare pretend to But their only railing against Princes doth not shew half their malice for they have found out fine wayes not only to dethrone but murther their Kings by their not only approving of such wickedness but perswading thereto And this power Calvin acknowledgeth to lye in the Parliament consisting of the Three Estates in each Kingdom telling them that they are perfidious and betrayers of their Trust if they do not restrain the Enormities of Kings And with him agrees one of our English Non-conformists Dudlie Fenner and allows the King to be taken away either by Peace or Warr. And what a stiff Enemy he was to our English Church you may imagine by the Education of his two Scholars Tho. Cartwright and Walter Trevers And Robert Rollock one of the Scottish Brethren confirms this way of King-killing under the notion of Tyrants But How furiously doth John Knox his Countrey-man incite the people to Rebellion telling them that Reformation of Religion belongs as well to the Commonalty as Kings and other Magistrates And that the common people may demand of their Kings true Preachers and that others i. e. in his sense Bishops may be expell'd But if the Rulers will not then they may provide themselves which they may defend and maintain against all that shall oppose them And that they may with-hold the fruits and profits from their false Bishops and Clergy And he tells them that their Princes Rulers and Bishops are criminal of Idolatry and Innocent Bloud and Tyranny And that no person whatsoever is exempted from punishment if he can be manifestly convicted to have provoked or led the people to Idolatry And that the punishment of Idolatry Blasphemy and such like doth appertain to the people as well as others And all these incitements are because the Queen was a Roman-Catholick of which he tells the Lords that if they grant Priviledge or Liberty they shall assuredly drink the Cup of Gods Vengeance and shall be reputed before his presence Companions of Thieves and maintainers of Murtherers And that he might make them more willingly throw off all Obedience he perswades them that It is not Birth nor Propinquity of Bloud that makes a King Lawful and plainly tells them that the Rule of a Woman is unlawful And these brave Doctrines he got printed at Geneva 1558. July 14. from whence he sends them into Brittain to move the people into Rebellion From the same place doth Beza afterwards write to Knox then in Scotland to perswade him to extirpate Episcopacy though the being of it might cause Peace and Unity And of this mind was his Patron John Calvin who profest that he could not Exercise the Office of a Minister unless the Presbyterian Government was confirmed and setled in Geneva From this City did Beza write into England to perswade them from all Formalities and Ceremonies used in our Church and from this place sprang all our Troubles about Non-conformity All this which hath been said as the Opinion of private men was publickly concluded on as Orthodox in Scotland if you will give credit to one of their chief Patrons Buchanan one who hath done an irreparable mischief to Princes by his villainous and wretched Book De Jure Regni apud Scotos a poysonous Well from whence the Long-Parliament and our late Common-wealths-men have drawn most of their Pleas and Arguments And is no small demonstration of the Authours Impudence to dedicate it to King James too good a Master for such a wretched Servant Nor was these things any way denyed in the same Nation of late dayes when 1638. August 27. it was ordered That the ablest man in each Parish should be provided to dispute of the King's Power in calling Assemblies and what they meant by this is no hard matter to discern considering that not only they had the moneth before maintained the power of Convocating to lye in themselves but also the same year had actively derided at the King's Authority and the next year bid him Battle And how little many of their Presbyters have since mended their manners may appear by that impudent piece of Non-sense Malice and Treason spoken by one of their Grandees Mr. Robert Duglas at our King's Coronation in Scotland and by him call'd a Sermon but how unbefitting that name as we now take the word to signifie is appropriated let any that dare call
from this Swashbuckler These and many other innovating and cross grain'd actions you may find storied down by their almost-own Fuller for so may I well take the boldnesse to call him since they could never desire a more complyable Historian And therefore these may carry the more probability with the Reader let his education be either sound or rotten KING JAMES succeeding upon the death of Queen Elizabeth the Non-conformists thought to gain ground apace having to deal with a Prince as they thought bred up in their own way and a stranger not only to England but as they hoped to her government also 'T is true He had been nurst up in the Presbyterian way in Scotland but their insolencies and incroachments to get all the power into their own hands as a stiff Presbyterian under the fained name of Wilson doth confesse gave him so much experience as not only to allow of no alteration or that very small in the Church of England but also publickly to testifie his happinesse in ruling over and amongst people so sweetly united in such a Church-government whereas in Scotland He was a a King without State without Honour without Order where beardlesse boyes would brave him to his face As himself did word it Yet to satisfie their clamours He gave them a conference at Hampior-Court where their Objections seemed so trivial that Self will and an erronious Conscience was thought to be more predominant then Reason Upon which the King put forth a Proclamation for Uniformity to which all the Ministers in England and they are above nine thousand submitted except forty nine such a noise will a few disturbers cause in any society when tolerated Nor need this seem strange to those who know that in the first year of Queen Elizabeth the number of our Clergy-men who refused the Oath of Supremacy did not amount to 200. though they had all not only been bred up in the Romish Religion but also for some few years before had violently asserted the Pope's authority in England And we now see those who have been the Chief-tains of the Non-conformists to turn tail and acknowledge Episcopal government the which I hope they do more for Conscience then Covetousnesse Yet for all this though King Law and all things else were against the Disciplinarian Interest they grow resolute and as one saith starkmaa and send to their Brethren in Scotland informing them of all which had hapned and that they in Scotland must expect to conform too and then God wot would follow the utter destruction of Sion Upon which some of them take an Alarum and meet at Aberdeen in spight of the King and his Authority intending to declare against and root out all the foot-steps and memory of Episcopacy for which some of them afterwards were forced to acknowledge their fault And Andrew Melvil for writing Libels against our English Church he then being at London was called before the Council where behaving himself insolently and like a mad man he was committed to the Tower By these actions our Non-conformists easily perceived that they could gain nothing but their own shame and destruction whilst they acted only as private men whereupon they resolve under-hand to blow up the Parliaments against Prerogative to which purpose by their industry they never wanted a good party in the House who carried themselves so resolutely and cunningly that for the future Westminster only rung with the clamours of Grievancies liberty of Subject and Priviledge of Parliament A Parliament never sitting but some Member or other throwing dirt in his Majesties face and this conscionably done by freedom of speech never or very seldom satisfying the King in what he conveniently required for when his pleasure for any reasonable thing was any time made known to them then they grumble and reply that God must be served before man and then for a moneth or two nothing is done in the House but the uttering of long-winded speeches against Arminianism and Popery And this to as little purpose as Cardinal Rapacciolus his prayer that the Devils fins and transgressions might be forgiven him that so he might receive some comfort and be of good cheer For any thing or reason besides bitter Invectives is as difficult to be found amongst them as Coach horses at Venice or a Gondola in Themes as is obvious to any who have seen the Speeches in the two last Kings raigns 'T is true all were not carryed on with the same Spirit for the House was still composed of two different tempers Like Orense a Town in Gallaecia of Spain one side of which in Winter is covered with Snow and num'd by the fury of frozen blasts whilest the other side doth not only want these white Robes but is favoured with a continual warmth arising from the adjacent medicinal hot Baths yet the more wicked party obliged by being so to be more industrious will commonly gain advantages whilst the good People trusting in their honesty act altogether too supinely I shall not now trace the Extravagancies of private men but shew you some of their hot-headed prancks in Parliament because they have now made that the Stage on which they intended to act for the future and in this I shall study brevity and pass by many notorious insolencies In the first Parliament of King James which was drawn out into several Sessions one of the Members bid the rest take heed lest they gave too much to the King lest they endanger their own throats cutting when they went home Others bob'd his Majesty in his teeth for rewarding some of his own Countreymen affirming that their silver and gold abounded at Edenburgh And one Piggot after he had spoken disgracefully of the Scots added withall That it would never be well with England till a Sicilian Vesper was made of the Scotish Nation as if he had not known what Countrey-man the King was Words of such high nature that Queen Elizabeth would have shewn her Prerogative But having now to deal with a King whom they thought might have been trampled upon here as well as beyond the Tweed they left nothing unturn'd whereby they might strengthen their own Faction And this spirit of Contradiction and Contention ruling amongst them is pointed at by one of their own Brethren though clad in more favourable words these bickerings and the Members unrestless humour forced the King to dissolve the Parliament having sat long enough in all Conscience to do any good if they intended any Afterwards another Parliament being call'd and consisting of the same Temperature was presently dissolved In the next Parliament the King desires some Moneys having not had any assistance from his People for several years so that he was constrained to lessen his Houshold This necessary request the Parliament hears but never intend to grant And the better to lay it aside they first begin with the spacious and specious subject of Complaints and with a high hand
the perfidious hot-spurr'd Presbyters THE HISTORY Of the Wicked PLOTS and CONSPIRACIES OF OUR Pretended Saints BOOK II. CHAP. I. The mischievous and impudent Contrivances and Innovations of the wicked long-Parliament 1. Their slandering of the Court and Church 2. Their Affection to the Schismaticall Incendiaries 3. The Impudence and seditiousnesse of their Lecturers 4. Their designes to alter the frame of Civil Government 5. Their Plots to overthrow Episeopacy 6. Their stirring up the people to Tumults 7. The small esteem the Commons had of the King and Nobility Whereby it appears that it was not the King but the Parliament that occasioned and began the Warres HAving now and that as succinctly as I could somewhat discovered the peace-consuming zeal of our Presbyterians I shall come to the subject intended to wit our late unhappy Distractions The seeds of which was not only before sown by the Nonconformists but began a little to take root and sprout forth through the temper of our English Parliament 1628. and the after actions of the Scottish Covenanters by whom the King was cajol'd to call a Parliament to fit November the third 1640. A day ominous to the Clergy by a former president upon that day the 20. year of King Henry the Eighth that Parliament beginning which began the ruine of Cardinal Woolsey the power of the Clergy and the dissolution of those famous Monuments of Charity the Abbeys and such like hospitable buildings England hath afforded us many Parliaments yet but one of them honoured with the Epithet of Good and that some hundred years agoe though since his Majesty hath been pleas'd to memorize one with the character of the healing and blessed Parliament as many of our former Representatives have had several names added to them as the Parliament that wrought wonders The great Parliament The marvellous Parliament The Laymens Parliament because no Lawyer was to be in it The unlearned Parliament either for the unlearnedness of the Members or for their malice to learned men Barebones Parliament The short Parliament and in the same year 1640. did our long wicked Parliament commence and I have heard of a Mad Parliament No sooner did the long Parliament sit but their proceedings were hurryed on with that fiery zeal that if distractions had not followed thereupon it would have been as strange to the discreeter sort as Margaret Countess of Hollands year-like birth at Lusdunen to our Country-women or the story of the womanly girle who at six years old was brought to bed of a son in Indostain For instantly they fell upon grievances abuses in Religion violation of laws liberties and what not Concerning which their speeches flew plentifully about and releas'd the grand Incendiaries Prynne Burton Bastwick and Dr. Leighton and giving them great rewards Some of them being triumphantly guarded into London by many thousands of horse and foot with rose-mary and bays in their hands and hats Novemb. 28. which was not only an high affront to the Kings Authority but a political glass to the Nonconformists through which they might see the strength and unanimity of their own Faction who were grown so valiant that a little before this upon the fast day Novemb. 17. where Dr. Burgess and Marshall preacht above 7 houres before the Commons and before the Lords two Bishops but as the second service was reading a Psalm was struck up by some of the Brethren which presently disturbd the Divine service to the amazement of the civill and orthodox Auditors who could little expect any such thing without an express order by authority But this is no great matter in respect of their after actions which are so many against the King and Kingdom and that too before his Majesty's horrid murther that it is impossible for me in this Compendium to decimate them into a relation their very printed Acts and Ordinances in that time amounting to above 530. Besides their Declarations Petitions Remonstrances Votes Proclamations Messages Speeches and such like passages and all stuft with some worshipful thing or other by which their pretty actions were confirmed Yet as farr as brevity will allow me I shall endeavour to speak out and as plain as I can yet must I not accuse all nor half it may be of the members many of them spur'd on by their Loyalty following his Majesty and sitting in Parliament in the Schools at Oxford after whose departure the House at Westminster seemed like Pandora's box from whence all our future mischiefs and diseases flew over the Nation The Parliament a little after its beginning having triumph'd over divers persons of quality whom they knew to be opposers of their intended Presbytery thought it fitting to seek some absolute way of security to themselves for the future And to this nothing could be thought more conducible considering how they had gul'd an odium of Reverend Episcopacy into the simple people than by the certainty of Parliaments for which purpose they procured of the King who dreamt nothing of their after-games and fetches an Act for Triennial Parliaments And that their own actions might appear of more grandure by the stability of their own foundation they also obtain'd from his Majesty who was never wanting to grant any thing to his Parliaments pretended to be for the good of his subjects an Act whereby themselves should not be dissolved prorogued or adjourn'd but by their own consent By which means they were fancied by many of the Kingdome to be of such high Authority that neither King law or any power else could have any influence over them let their actions be never so treasonable or wicked And so might Phaeton suppose when his Father had given him the command of his refulgent Chariot though his indiscreet authority brought ruine to himself and destruction to some parts of the world And well may any one in this turn their own weapons against themselves and yet not be deem'd too medling Such a continuing-Commission is freely given yet cunningly procured to the Captain of a ship But when this Governour falls so farr distracted as to indeavour nothing more then the ruine of his Vessel by their own popular consequence his Commission is void as being no more able to govern his charge to the best This instance I quote more because oft alledged against Regall authority than for any similitude it carrieth unlesse upon our perpetual Parliamentary account And therefore the reviving of this long-Parliament by a modern Writer seems to be to as small purpose as Don Quixot's martial endeavours to retrive the I know not what Knight-errantry by his paper helmet his wind-mill and claret-butts encounters or Hortensius the self-conceited School-master in du Parques Franchion to obtain the Crown and Kingdome of Poland The King having as he thought pacifyed his Subjects in England having granted them what they desired thought it likewise expedient to settle all things in Scotland in a peaceable temper for which purpose he put himself to the
leaving the Government of all to the Lords of his Parliament Which impudence of theirs hurryed them on so farre that they never left fighting till their King was murder'd but how uncertain Thus are the best men violently opposed by the wicked though the vertue and patience of the former might in reason mollifie the latter to obedience How wishedly will some pitty the case of Argalus and Parthenia the patience of Gryseld in Chaucer the misery and troublesome adventures of the Phanatick Lovers in Cleopatra Cassandra Amadis de Gaul Sidney and such like Yet all these as meer Romantick as Rablaise his Garagantua And yet with an unmoved apprehension can peruse the lamentable murder of Edward the Second of England and James the first and Milcolumb the first of Scotland the cutting off the head of good King Alpinus the poisoning of Fergusius the third by his own Queen and her stabbing her self the strangling of Malvinus by his own Queen and the throat-cutting of King Fethelmachus by a Fidler and besides these the martyrdome of old Queen Ketaban in Persia The stabbing of Henry the fourth in France The sacrilegious poisoning of the Emp. Henry the seventh in Italy The miserable death of Mauricius the Emp. with his Wife and five Children by the wicked Phocas And can read the fatall stories recorded by Boccace with lesse grief then the deplorable narrative of Arnalte's love to Lucenda And the patience of the good King Henry the sixth who being grievously struck by a murthering Varlet only made this Reply Forsooth and forsooth being his words for most earnest expression never using an oath ye do fouly to smite a King anointed so May be farre out-rivall'd by some with the misfortunes and hardship of some inchaunted Lover in Ariosto Parismus the two Palmerins or Mirrour of Knighthood And for the horrid murther of his late Majesty experience tells us that many have been so farre from contracting grief that they have so much triumphantly rejoiced at it that they have thought an action of so much wickednesse to have been honourable to them and their posterity for ever Thus have we come short to our Ancestors in fidelity and Loyalty by studying all occasions to rebell against our King They rather then undergo the ignominions title of Nithing i. e. a knave or a night-filcher swarme to the Service of their King we on the contrary rather then not be branded with the wicked name of a Traytor will court all occasions by our Rebellion to make our selves meritorious to a pair of Gallows And so to conclude this assertion I shall tell you that the Parliament wanted all the qualifications to make a warre really espousable No warre being lawful unlesse it be commanded by the Supream Authority the which the Parliament was not but the King if the Laws of our Land be an authentick Standerd And secondly the occasion of the Warre must be just which was wanting on the Parliaments side all their specious pretences being false and ridiculons their reasons suggested to the people to beget a Warre being to as small purpose as the Duke of Burgundy to quarrell for a cart-load of Sheep-skins or the two Brethren neer Padua about the disposal of the Starrs and Firmament And suppose their jealousies had been true yet it was Treason in them to warre against the Supream Authority the King according to the Laws of our Land and damnable according to the word of God Let Buchanan and such as he by supposing the Apostles and the Spirit to deal with us like Hypocrites evince to the contrary For if the Apostle Paul commandeth the Christians to be obedient to their Heathen and Tyrannical Kings who made it their sport to persecute Christians and that for Conscience-sake telling them that their power was of God certainly we are bound to obey a Christian Prince whose authority can be no lesse If we perceive our selves grieved resist we cannot but by Prayers and Obedience To which purpose the ancient Chaucer instructs us who certainly in this sung according to the rule of his time and therein neither false Law nor Gospel Lordes hestes may not be fayned They may wel be wayled and complained But men must nedes unto her lustre obey And so wol I there nis no more to sey The primitive Christians when collected into great Armies were honoured for their obedience never rebelling against but fighting or quietly living under their Heathen Kings as Tertullian will satisfie more at large But now we are so farre from being peaceable in a Christian Government that if occasion of rebellion cannot handsomly be pluckt by the fore-top yet we can create reason to our selves though upon a serious reflection we acknowledge such endeavours to be unjust Thus the Army when in obedience to the Parliament it had conquer'd and ruin'd the King and Kingdome and by the assistance of the sword and Satan had made themselves Lords and Masters over their Betters then I say when they were at the top of their prosperity they do seriously professe that the Parliament did justifie many extraordinary strange and doubtlesse in respect of the letter of the Law very illegal actions viz. Their taking up Armes raising and forming Armies against the King fighting against his person imprisoning impeaching arraigning trying and executing him cutting off his Head banishing his Children abolishing Bishops Deans and Chapters took away Kingly Government and the House of Lords broke the Crowns sold the Jewels Plate Goods Houses and Lands belonging unto the Kings of this Nation erected extraordinary High Courts of Justice and therein impeached arraigned condemned and executed many notorious enemies to the publick peace when the Laws in being and the ordinary Courts of Justice could not reach them These were strange and unknown practises in this Nation and not at all justifiable as is conceived by any known Laws and Statutes Thus have you the judgment of a ruling Army against their Masters and themselves though this their repentance was but to vindicate another infidelity But here after all this it may be objected that though some factious spirits of the Parliament have been too incroaching upon the King and the chief Incendiaries of these Warres yet why should I lay all this upon the Presbyterian account To which there needs no tedious reply if we do but consider that these factious people were all Non-conformists from whom if examples may be held for proofs as Schismaticks a self-conceited giddy hot-headed zeal and by consequence Rebellion is as inseparable as pride from Menecrates or Children when gallanted up in new cloathes For my part I am apt to believe that the Bloud of many thousand Christians shed in these warrs and before cryeth loud against Presbytery as the people only guilty of the first occasion of quarrel And that they have been the chief occasion of other slaughters may be credited not only from forraign stories but the authentick judgment of the ever great
and this also the Protestation and Covenant bound them to keep But how these were observed and that by the Parliament itself every Member therein having taken the two Oaths is not unknown And if these allow'd them to fight against the King or at least to kill him I shall lament my Baptism and put no more trust in my Creed When the Rump had perjured themselves by beheading their King they frame an Engagement obliging all to take it or else to have no benefit of an English-man the words of which were these I do declare and promise that I will be true and faithful to the Common-wealth of England as it is now established without a King or House of Lords This was taken by all the Officers and Souldiers of the Armies who return'd their Subscriptions in Parchment-Rolles to make the work more sure and lasting and besides them many others took it But the Army kept not long to this their Solemn Engagement for they not only rooted out the Rump but alter'd the Government again to a single Person by making Oliver Cromwell Protector whose Council by Order of his Parliament was to swear Fidelity and Allegiance to him and every Member of Parliament both then and for the future did and was to swear Failty to him thus I A. B. Do in the presence and by the Name of God Almighty promise and swear That I will be true and faithful to the Lord Protector of the Common-wealth of England Scotland and Ireland and the Dominios and Territories thereunto belonging as Chief Magistrate thereof and shall not contrive design or attempt any thing against the Person or lawful Authority of the Lord Protector This Oath in behalf of Protectorship and a single Person lasted not long for the Army having overthrown Richard and again restored the Rump another Oath was ordered to be taken in these words You shall swear That you will be true faithful and constant to this Common-wealth without a single Person Kingship or House of Lords And after all this as if one Oath signified nothing some of them took a new-found-out Oath of Abjuration against Kingship though poor Souls only to their own shame and confusion And this was the pretty invention of the hot-headed Knight Don Haslerigo one of Burges's Principles to abominate and hate all Bishops but to imbrace and love their Lands dearly but this fault is not only incident to them it being the main reason that there is such a skip-jack as an English Presbytery Such horrid Perjury as this and such abominable Villanies committed by our late Parliaments made them not a little guilty of the highest Sacriledge The Parliament-House where the Commons now sit being formerly St. Steven's Chappel built by King Steven The consideration of which might have moved honest men to have acted more religiously though these men only sate there to ruine both it and the Church It being a knack amongst our new Saints to pull down Churches for the Propagation of Religion an action of more malice than reason being as ridiculous as the wise-men of Gotham to put Saltfish into a Pond to multiply or to hedge in the Cookow and as simple as Maestro Nun̄o Divinity Professor in Valladolid who made a great deal of clutter to borrow Boots and Spurs because he was to ride in a Coach But of this no more only if those men be not perjured who swallowed these contradictory Oaths I shall allow my self not only irrational but bemoan my condition because not born one of the old Aegyptian Heathens whose Religion punish'd such sins with severe death CHAP. V. The wicked Sacriledge of the Parliament and Army THe Schoolmen and others make a threefold Sacriledge viz. either by taking away from or violating in a holy place a holy thing or secondly an holy thing from or in a place not holy or fanctified or lastly a thing not holy in or from a holy place And that there are some places and things holy I suppose few but those who are wickedly interested in Church-Lands will plead ignorance For though this or that originally be not really holy of it self yet the Dedication and Consecration of them by the Church to holy uses makes them holy to the Lord. For saith God devoted things that a man shall devote unto the Lord. every devoted thing is most holy unto the Lord. And these things once offer'd unto the Lord are not to be profaned And if any through ignorance sin against this He shall make amends for the harm that he hath done in the holy thing Belshazzar's sin was not so much for being drunk with Wine but his sacrilegious drinking out of the Vessels of the Temple Those who rob God of his Tithes and Offerings are severely curst and an express command against exchanging or alienating those things which are holy to the Lord as the Lands of his Church How highly did God punish those who regarded not his Temple every man running unto his own House and what little impression hath this made upon England where most forsook the Church drawing themselves to illegal Conventicles and such private Houses never intended for such publick duties 'T is noted as a great aggravation of King Ahaz iniquities for destroying the holy Vessels and shutting up the doors of the Temple though amongst our late rebellious Reformers such actions were esteem'd a true token of holiness Jehoash King of Judah took all the treasure and holy things out of the Temple and sent them to Hazael King of Syria for a bribe and was recompenced by being slain by his Servants But our Innocent King was murdered by those who had fed their Brethern with Monies impiously rent from Church-Lands whereby their Villanies were doubled to make them more serviceable to their cloven-footed Master who set them on work The wisest man that ever was assureth us That it is a snare to a man who devoureth that which is holy and after vows to make enquiry Out of which words a learned Writer observes That he is guilty of death who sins against God either by alienating taking away or keeping back those things which are holy or consecrated to the Lord. Ananias and Saphiras act is held by Divines as a true pattern of Sacriledge for which they suffer'd death by a special judgement of God as Achan in the old time was stoned to death St. Paul admires that any man should be so wicked as to commit Sacriledge and our late Sectaries wonder that any should stand in aw of it Our Saviours whipping the buyers and sellers and such like out of the Temple is no small sign what respect should be held to our Churches not to be turn'd into Exchanges as is well known the once famous Cathedral of St. Pauls was For Confirmation of this many heavy examples of Gods judgements against those who have either violated his Church or alienated his Messengers Lands might be drawn
upon this last change have call'd those irrational who questioned the jus divinum of Episcopacy And how many of our Presbyterians have declared their perpetual adhearing to their Covenant against our present Church-government yet since the Change have taken contrary preferments with a pretty distinction that they onely swore against the wickedness accidentally happening to such forms These Non-conformists have been originally the main enemies as far as sword would go against the late King and This present yet now that he is restored none courts the rising Sun-more then they and that with thwacking Rodomantado's of their activity for his Restauration and what danger and jeopardy they have incurr'd for his cause which puts me in mind of the first Reformation in Scotland When the Scriptures were allowed to be read in English then those who had ever scarce read ten sentences of it would chop their acquaintances on the cheek with it and say This hath lain under my beds feet these ten years Others would glory O! how oft have I been in danger for this book How secretly have I stoln from my wife at midnight to read upon it All which was done meerly to curry favour the Governour being then held one of the most servent Protestants in Europe And how far this story quadrates with our Presbyterian temper may be seen by the sequel discourse I have seen some men in the Rump's time when condemn'd to death for Felony by the then Judges earnestly plead their former siding with and activity for the Parliament thinking thereby to gain so much favour from the Judge who had been formerly brothers in one and the same iniquity as the procurement of a Reprieve if not a pardon But now the plea is so much alter'd that the same Faction pretends to hold forth some small favours to the present King as a badge to denote the bearers so stuft with Loyalty as to be capable of the greatest trust When the Father was alive then they fought against him to make him more glorious And now that the Son 's restored they onely sent the Earl of Warwick to pelt him beyond seas to learn humility because Affliction and Presbytery are the best Tutors to that vertue For rather then He or his Father should suffer any real damage or hurt they would do just nothing Which calâ—s to my remembrance the flatterer Afranius who swore to Caligula then sick that he would willingly dye so the Emperour might recover who upon Caligula's restoration to health was by command slain that he might not be for sworn Whether Afranius meant really or no I know not but this I am confident of That our Presbyterians take little care of any oaths tending to the safety and peace of King and Country and therefore take what liberty they please to protest knowing his Majesties mercy is such that he had rather give them time to repent for their former wickedness and perjury then put a period to their beings by the mode of Trussing as they had done formerly to many of his most faithful Subjects Americus Vespacian the Florentine had the confidence to denominate the best Continent of the West-Indies by his name though if he had not had the benefit of Colono or Colombo of Genua his observations he might as soon it's probable have found out Nigra Rupis or the certain Station of Ophir as have seen that other world And if the ever to be honour'd Duke of Albermarle had not contrived and as I may say of himself wrought out the happy Restauration of his Majesty The Brethren alas would as soon have found out the ten tribes as of themselves endeavoured the King's return unless upon Tyrannical Conditions So that if Virgil took it ill that Bathyllus had robb'd him of the honour but of one Distick the Duke of Albermarle hath no reason to favour those people who would pluck from him the greatest glory that in possibility could be thrown upon a Subject If the Presbyterians did any thing advance his Majesties Restauration it must either be by Chance or Industry As for the first they cannot expect any thanks since this event proceeded not from resolution but rather contrary to their desire or at least expectation The Ape little thought by putting on his Master's Cap to cure him of a Pluresy and he who wrote to the Lord Monteagle did not think thereby to discover the Gun-powder plot The Surgion had no intention to destroy Charles II. King of Navarre by burning the thread too carelesly and what resolutions the Presbyterians had to restore our Charles II I must yet plead ignorance till better informed but I am confident they would never willingly have this way pleasured King Charles the first And that they ever so much troubled their thoughts with the King as to make his Restauration a part of their business is hitherto as far from my discovery as the true situation of the old Towns in Ptolemy or the Northern bounders of America I hear not of any of their actions in England when his Majesty was beyond seas before his agreement with the Scots I hear of none of their designs here to assist the King or their own Brethren for him in Scotland I know of no assistance that they afforded or brought to the King when he marched for Worcester but have heard of some who have then opposed him with all their might Nor am I informed of their activeness in any of the many Plots against Oliver and if in none of these things they have been stirring their Grand Plea of Loyalty must fall to the ground unless they did his Majesty good service by being obedient and faithfull subjects to the Rump and Oliver sworn enemies to the King and in this case their plea cannot be so ingenious as that of the immortal Poet John Cleaveland I remember Antonio de Torquemeda tells a story of some men and their horses that were carried to Granada in Spain by the advantage of one Cloak though they thought they had onely been getting their dinners not thinking of such a journey And if the Presbytery did any service for the King it was I suppose after this manner when they never dreamed of it Nay I do not so much as hear the whispering of any relief till the other day of monies or such like conveniencies that they assisted the King with or any of his distressed followers Major General Massey and Captain Titus excepted and that but a poor pittance too some 400l between them not for any design but a supply of personal necessities And the reason of this beggerly liberality was not so much because they were sufferers for the King as that the former had done good services for the Presbyterian Parliament as Master Love himself doth more then hint besides this we will not forget the huge summe of 40l to Coll. Bampfield and his man Yet as a pretty token of their Loyalty they keep a great deal of clutter concerning the
actions of Master Love and a few of his associates as if this were sufficient to afford scraps of Loyalty to every particular Member of that Faction But to this may be answered First that if the story were as absolute Royal as man could imagine yet will it onely demonstrate that there were some three or four and twenty Presbyterians which were active for the good of his Majesty no more stirring in it as Master Love himself doth confess being utterly unknown to the rest of their party professing upon the Scaffold that the saying the contrary is onely a politick Engine to make the Presbyterian party odious so that the actions of these men are nothing to the vindication of the rest Besides compleat Loyalty they looked upon as odious But secondly the compleat honour of the story may upon very good grounds in the main be questioned For though they did sometimes meet at Master Love's house yet their Consultations were rather for the misery then benefit of King Church or Kingdome The main of their contrivances being to send to some about his Majesty advising them by all means to use their interests to Provoke Him i. e. the King to agree with the Scots and to take the Covenant as also to advise the Scots Commissioners that in their agreement with their King they should have a special respect to the Interest of Religion and Terms of the Covenant and to this purpose they must tumble out their prayers and send into Scotland to know whether they did maintain Religion and Covenant Interest So that the Scots were not onely guilty of their after Covenanting Tyranny with their betters but the English Brethren also by their thus thrusting on the design Hitherto we see all the Loyalty and affection by these men shew'd to their Soveraign was meerly conditionally and that upon a Covenant-account little beneficial to the King or his Party as may appear by the acknowledgement of one of their Patrons viz. Mr. Love I do retain as vehement a detestation of Malignancy whether in England or in Scotland as ever I did and shall in my place and calling oppose such a Design and Interest with as much zeal and faithfulness as ever Nor was his rancour towards the Kings best friends staid here but even upon the Scaffold just before his death as if thereby he intended to proclaim them odious to Posterity he thus endeavours to charm his Auditours I dye with my judgement set against Malignity I do hate both name and thing I shall retain as vehement a detestation of a Malignant Interest as ever I did And what he meant by a Malignant himself shall declare though 't is well enough understood I do not count the godly party our Covenanting Brethren in Scotland I do not count them a Malignant Party But who then he presently thus tells you My judgement then was and still is for bringing Malignants who did seduce him i. e. King Charles the first and draw him from the Parliament to condign punishment And the best friends his Majesty had beyond-Sea with him he calls desperate Malignants and bad Council so that I believe little honour can be attributed to this Conventicle for what they did However if through civility though not any share of merit we should grant that this little meeting was of a greater consequence for the benefit of the King than it either was or could be imagined though Mr. Love doth protest in the presence of God the searcher of all hearts that he knoweth no Plot or Design against the present Government i. e. Rump nor is he privy in the least to any preparations for or intendments towards any intestine Insurrections or forraign Invasions or to any Correspondencies now held with any in or of the Scottish Nation or any other whatsoever Though I say some credit were given to this Design yet will it not advance the reputation of the contrivers considering their after-submission to the Rump calling them the Supream Authority the Parliament of the Common-wealth of England c. Mr. Love professing That he is unfaignedly sorry for his so acting and promiseth never to plot contrive or design any thing to the hurt of this present Government Rump and that he is sorrowful for his high crimes and offences against the Parliament in his late and great miscarriages and desires them to pass by these sundry and great offences and at last thus fairly concludes That I shall devote the remainder of my dayes to the glory of God and good of his people the peace and safety of this Common-wealth against all the Malignant Enemies and opposers thereof Nor did he alone recant but also Jenkins Case and others of the same Club. Here we see a Company of Penitents hanging down their heads as if upon a Scottish-stool of Repentance acknowledging their Iniquity and sins for talking of the King with a great deal of remorse and sorrow faithfully promising for the future to live obedient subjects to their Rumpships and al this to procure the favour and love of those Usurping and King-killing Tyrants Yet when Love saw that all his whining and puleing would not work his Pardon but that they were resolved to let him bloud Then forsooth he thought it best to put a good face upon the business and so being on the Scaffold and perceiving no hopes of life he plucks up his courage and for the credit of himself and Brethren he begins to â—ant dapperly against the Rump affirming for all his former repentance That for the things I am condemn'd neither God nor mine own Conscience condemn me and I would not be look'd upon as a man owning this present Government I dye with my judgement against it and at last calls himself a Martyr Though he had a little before acknowledged himself guilty of the sentence of death justly passed on him And affirmed that he was insnared into the business and that through unadvisedness and weakness yet this complyance he boldly denyeth upon the Scaffold I am accused to be an Apostate to be a Turn-coat to be this to be that to be any thing but what I am but a long Sword a bloudy Scaffold hath not made me in the least to alter my Principles The truth of which I must leave to the Reader only telling him that the Margaiates in America scorn to submit to their Enemies because they know that it will not save their lives though probably if repentance would be an advantage they might be as ready as others If Mr. Love dyed a Martyr it was as unwillingly as ever man did it being the Rumps resolution for example sake not his constancy that brought him to the Block In plain English the man was of a hasty and violent spirit which seldom hath a rational or sound foundation and by many is accused to be the breaker up of the Uxbridge-Treaty by his ranting
to them by their own fears they skud to their Dam with all speed and secure themselves in the same paunch whence they first proceeded At this time I dare boldly say that there is none pleads more in behalf and toleration of the Phanaticks then their Presbyterian Mother doth under the specious and whining pretence of Tender Conscience though when they were on Cock-horse none did more oppose that plea than themselves as I shall shew hereafter Which abominable jugling with many others used by this Fraternity prompts me to so much indignation that I can scarce allow the Foundation of Presbytery so charitable a thought as I do that poor miserable fellow who being accused of Bestiality at his Arraignment confessed it yet that it was not out of any evill intention he had done it but only to procreate a Monster with which having nothing to sustain his life he might win his bread by going about the Country to shew it These Puritans having formerly stirr'd up the Rabble by their seditious Pamphlets and Lectures to Rebellion against King Charles the Father are now driving the same way against the Son as a preparative to which they are daily instilling into the peoples Noddles Principles of disobedience schisme discontent and Rebellion for they Still find it good To keep th' infection high i th' peoples blood For Active Treason must be doing still Lest she unlearn her Art of doing ill I shall not tell the Londoners how King Henry III and King Richard II used them nor how Frederick Barbarossa the German Emperour clawd the Milanois and their City but it will not be amisse to hint to our factious Presbytery how the same Emperour made Hermon the Elector Palatine with his associates carry dogs upon their backs then held a punishment and disgrace for being disturbers of the peace And were the same inflicted upon our Boute-feu's Good God! what snarling would there be at Christ-Church in London and the lecturing junctos how zealously would the sister-hood meditate on the Temple-Barre Off-spring of Lay-Elders how would it puzzle the tender-hearted souls to decide the grand controversies which ears were longest or which animal best conditioned Thus would the Pulpit be guarded like St. Malo And our Non-conformists would have another plea against Tobit as Apocryphal because not agreeable to their practise his Dog running before but these lugd behind By this means dogs would be used to smell out a Presbyter as the Italian dog could Fornicators and Adulterers and it may be by this conjunction the Brethren might smell Popery in Obedience and Decencie as they do Idolatry in kneeling and loyalty in opposing the King For Monsieur Borel tells us of a man that by the biting of a dog had his common smelling rais'd to the sagacity of a hound or spaniel And possibly the presence of those crafty and cruel Hyena's might make the dogs as silent as those found in Africa and the East-indies or those in Virginia which cannot bark but howle and since fair means and gentlenesse will not work upon the churlish humour of the men they should blame themselves if severity like a Wolfe should appear to silence them otherwaies if the dog and man should be thus coupled together our Curs at London and other places would in time be brought to be as devout at Lectures and Conventicles as the Lisboan dog Tudesco so call'd I suppose in hatred to the Dutch as a Lancashire Gentlewoman call'd her three Cats having no ears Pryn Burton and Bastwick was serious and zealous for the Romish Church But because they may grumble and call this railing though you see how merry I make my self at their Worships I shall since they will not give me leave to anger them make them so odious to posterity that a sign of Jack Presbyters head would intice no Customers but Fauxes Ravilliacks Olivers and such like detestable animals And for these things in this and the following Chapters I shall go no higher than our late times which may serve as part of a Supplement to the Reverend Bishop Bancroft But it may be said To what purpose is all this since they themselves do not deny it and all the world knows it 'T is true However a few hints will not be amiss if it be only to tell the people that these Blades are still of the same mettall So that I dare boldly affirm that if this Loyall Parliament or the Reverend Bishops would make these Incendiaries recant their former Rebellious and seditious speeches formerly affirm'd in Pulpit and Writings it would be the greatest blow that ever the enemies of Church or State received and the only way to make the simple people see how they have been misled and abused If they refuse such Recantations it must either be through scorn and contempt or that they are still of the same Rebellious humour for both which the Laws provide punishment and I hope their interest would not be so great as to stop This. I need not tell you who they were who Rebell'd lately against his Majesty yet would I gladly have the Consistory to enform me in these three Quaeries First Why the Non-conformists and only the Non-conformists did oppose fight and rebel against the King Secondly Why the Episcopal part of the Lords and Commons with the Judges Lawyers and others who followed his Majesty should not did not or could not understand the Prerogative of the King Priviledges of Parliament and Liberty of the Subject as well as the Puritanical party which opposed his Majesty Thirdly Why since the Reformation None of the Reformed Episcopal perswasion have in Arms Rebelled against their Soveraigns Whereas ever now and anon we are alarm'd with some Presbyterian Rebellion or other The Proverb assures us that There is no smoak without some fire And why all these men should be seditious as experience assureth us I shall leave to the consideration of Dr. Burges being one of the oldest amongst them But it may be some of them in answer to these Quaeries will say in the seditious Tenent of that Scotch-firebrand Mr. Robert Blair who taught his Schollers in his Lectures upon Aristotle That Monarchial Government was unlawful And were not the blew-capt Covenanting Brethren pretty birds that could finde no fitter man to make Professor of Divinity in the University of St. Andrews then this furious Orestes Some it might be would affirm that they only fought to obtain the desire of that Scotch Bully who in his sermon thus stirr'd up his Auditors Let us never give over 'till we have the King in our power and then he shall see how good Subjects we are Others it might be were weary of the Kings ruling over them and so might act for England as others belcht out concerning a neighbour-Kingdome viz. That Scotland had been too long a Monarchy and that they would never do well so long as one of the Stuarts was alive And possibly some
and spent in these late distractions Nor did I as yet ever hear of any godly men that desired wert it possible to purchase their FRIENDS or money again at so dear a rate as with the return of these to have those soul-burdening Anti-Christian yokes re-imposed upon us And if any such there be I am sure that desire is no part of their Godlinesse and I professe my self in that to be none of the number Would not this man be a fit Chaplain to an Army of Cannabals whose delight is to devoure one another Well I shall desire to ask Mr. William one or two Questions which will be worth his answering I. Is Episcopacy such a devilish Government and Presbytery so good and necessary that the first ought to be null'd and the latter set up though the doing of it will cost an hundred thousand mens lives and the destruction of three Kingdoms and the King to boot II. Had not the King some friends that were truly Godly who wisht the Restauration of his Life Crown Throne Authority Supremacy and Prerogative and the Episcopal Church-Government too Or could no man that was Godly desire these things If not then III. Would the Brethren wish this King upon the Scaffold too provided that would free them from our Episcopacy Or do they think it fitting or lawful to rebell again and destroy so many families for the rooting out of our Bishops Though Mr. L'estrange will not shame the man by concealing his name Yet because I am pretty confident of no alteration in his judgment unlesse it be according to his custome from worse to worse I shall tell thee where thou maist find him out After thou hast put on a mortified countenance and obtain'd the art of a counterfeited cough but muster all the wickednesse thou canst hear of into thine heart foot it demurely to Mr. Jenkin's house I mean the very same man of Christ Church London the very same man that petitioned and recanted with a breath and if thou canst meet with him he may tell thee who was the utterer of that Sermon But not to trouble you any longer with particular instances I shall give you the Vote of a whole Club of London Levites where you may see what good opinion they had of the King The wofull miscarriages of the King himself which we cannot but acknowledge to be many and very great in his Government that have cost the three Kingdomes so dear and cast him down from his Excellency into an horrid Pit of misery almost beyond example Pray that God would give him effectual Repentance For subjects to give such a Character upon their Soveraign is the highest piece of impudence but for them to throw such aspersions upon the most vertuous of men is a malitious slander not to be found in Christians Yet was this piece of falshood approved of and subscribed to by 59 Presbyterian cushion-dusters about London all which in the same paper acknowledge the legality of the Rebellion If the King be such a wicked man as these Brethren make of him what must then be done with him Some of them say 't is no great matter if execution be done upon him However it may be most of them will agree with their Champion Mr. Baxter who decrees that he must be deposed Nor are the subjects afterwards to trouble themselves for his Restauration Nor is the Injured Prince himself to seek his re-settlement if the Common Wealth may prosper without him and so he is obliged to resigne his Government And thus the people being free from any obedience to him may choose another King Or if a Common-Wealth be pitcht upon it is not at all displeasing to Baxter who is not fond that is his word of any one Government above another only his desire is that the Parliaments may be Holy and this ascertained from Generation to Generation by such a necessary Regulation of Elections as I have after here at large described and that all those that by wickednesse have †forfeited their †liberties may neither choose nor be chosen But I shall leave Mr. Baxter to his own Repentance only I would put him in mind that once he thus magnied a Government of Traytors which were his Majesties profest Enemies If that Nation that is most happy of any upon Earth in a Government suited to the highest Interest and to Gods description Rom. 3. 3. should yet murmure and despise that Government It would be a most hainous sin and a terrible Prognostick especially to the guilty souls These men must be brave Subjects that make it their whole business to study Rebellion and where they cannot execute the King will imprison and spit upon the face of the person like those beyond Seas that hang the Effigies when they cannot ruine the life Of which Presbyterian wickednesse and policy thus a good Poet. By this self-pregnant sin improves to rh ' full Affront at London Treason growes at Hull A bold Repulse succeeds perplext abode Despis'd at home thrives to refus'd abroad Place tutors Place on Cities Cities call He may not here be safe nor there at all When lo the spreading mischief not content To force up breaches in One Element Invades his Navy doth insulting stand O're the joint-Trophies both of Sea and Land To gild this Rapine for the Vulgar eies They chase him through all His Capacities Shift lights and distances untill they see Another self in him which is not He. Vex Stills and Crucibles the Furnace ply To soft and drain a Chymick Majesty At last their careful sweats auspicious howr Drops him apart distinguisht from his Power I cannot but smile when I see the Independent girding at the Presbyterians and vindicate their own actions by the Disciplinarian Principles proving them to be as great enemies to the King as those who cut off his head as the laws of the land makes the Trespass as great felloniously to lop off the noble branches as to root up the whole body of the Royall Oak To which purpose one of the Presbyterian seconds though at last their Interest were differently bottom'd thus twits the Brethren If by the Covenant we were indispensably obliged to preserve his Person i. e. the Kings How comes it to pass that we were oblig'd by the same Covenant to wage Warr against him I have heard of a distinction betwixt his Power and his Person but never of any betwixt his Person and Himself So that if the Covenant would have dispenc'd any Souldier of England or Scotland to kill his Person by an accident of Wars as his life was oft in danger before he came to the Scaffold his death had been violent and the Obligation to preserve him had ended and yet according to this Argument the Covenant had not been broken Why then should these men think the World so dull as not to understand plainly enough that The Covenant provided for his Death more ways than one Though
this Objection may sound harsh in a Presbyterians ear who do not love to hear of their Iniquities yet that famous Geneva Bull Stephen Marshall can out-rore this though its clamours were as loud as the Nilan Thunderings of Catadupa Noysing it out to the World that if he had been so slain it had been none of the Parliaments fault for he might have kept himself farther off if he pleas'd These men rail against the Pope as Antichrist and the Whore of Babylon and their wording is all for they never yet proved it but whether they do not both tread in the same way both taking upon them to depose Kings let those who are skill'd in Story judge yet for my part I think that one of our Countrey-men was not amiss in this They depose Kings by force by force you 'll do 't But first use fair means to perswade them to 't They dare kill Kings now 'twixt you here 's the strife You dare shoot at the King to save his life And what 's the difference pray whether they fall By the Popes Bull or your Oxe-General Three Kingdoms you have striv'd to make your own And like the Pope usurp a Triple-Crown But somewhat more to this purpose the former Writer thus reasoneth If in matter of Supream Command we of the People may not obey any but the Husband or the King Why then did the Presbyterian Party for so many years oppose and not totally submit to their now supposed Husband Why did they Commissionate so many thousand men who by accident of Warr had the power though not the Chance to kill him Nay in the Parliaments Case it was alwayes conjoyntly argued by them that it was he the Husband that would have kill'd them the supposed Wife for which reason the Kirk of Scotland long ago sent him a Bill of Divorce unless he satisfied for the bloud of three Kingdoms Which of the two Parties it was that at last kill'd him belongs not much to the satisfaction of us the people though here questioned because those Parties as to that Act differ'd no more than Diminutio and Obtruncatio Capitis do for they who after a long Warr and by long Imprisonment dispoil'd him of that Regal power did according to the Term of the Civil Law Diminuere Caput Regis and they who in Consequence of his Civil death took away his Natural life did Obtruncare Caput Regis If he had been kill'd in an Action of Warr before should the Souldier or he who gave the Souldier Commission have answer'd for his life For the more clearing of this I shall desire Jack Presbyter to resolve me these two Quaeries First Whether he doth approve of Cook ' s Appeal or Vindication of the King's Tryal except where he demands Justice though I need not except it If he doth take him Jaylor and Lord have mercy upon him But if he doth not then Secondly Whether he can shew me any thing in that Hellish piece of Treason except when Cook doth vindicate his Majesty from some slanders but I can show the same wickedness in Books publish'd by the Authority of Presbyterians or made and printed by people of that Faction For a piece of Parallel I shall at present point you to one or two Instances See The Mystery of Iniquity yet working in the Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland Printed for Sam. Gellibrand 1643. Declaration of the Commons of England concerning no farther Address or Application to be made to the King 1647. A Remonstrance of the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland to his Majesty 1645. Mr. Robert Douglas being Moderator whose Sermon at Scoon 1651. you may also read John Vicars his several lying and scandalous Pamphlets And the several Presbyterian Books and expressions mentioned in this Book needless now to be repeated And to this purpose thus saith the learned Mr. Rich. Watson Whosoever will take the pains to compare the particulars in the Scottish Remonstrance which they brought in their hands when they came in upon the Covenant with those in the accursed Court proceeding against his late Royal Majesty may be able to do Dorislaw Steel Cook c. some little courtesie in their credit and plead for them that they drew not up but only Transcrib'd a Charge brought long since from Edenburgh to London Thus both Parties think the King alike guilty though it was the Presbyterian that first perswaded the Independent to think him so Then here must be all the difference The first declares him abominably wicked the latter being credulous believes the Declaration One part cowardly deliver him up I shall not hint upon the word selling to Execution and the other being more hardy strike the stroak Not that by this I lessen the wickedness of a Rumper as I cannot excuse that of a secluded Member since the latter knowingly destroy'd and kill'd the King 1642. the other under the notion of a private man murther'd Charles Stuart six years after The Laws of the Land not only in Killing but also in Fighting against the Kings Command making it Treason How to that Heaven did this Pilot Steer 'Twixt th' Independent and the Presbyter Plac'd in the Confines of two shipwracks thus The Greeks are seated 'twixt the Turks and Vs Whom did Bizantium free Rome would condemn And freed from Rome they are enslav'd by Them So plac'd betwixt a Precipice and Wolf There the Aegean here the Venice-gulf What with the rising and the setting Sun By these th' are hated and by those undone Thus Vertue 's hemm'd with Vices and though either Solicites her Consent she yields to neither Nay thus our Saviour to enhance his grief Was hung betwixt a Murderer and a Thief What the Powder-plot intended the Independent acted and I am confident the Presbyterians acted more mischief than Faux or his Complices Both of them were stopt in their designs and actions Only we know how farr the Romanists would have gone but we cannot understand what would have been the conclusion of the Puritans Villanies As we have a fifth of November in memory of one so shall we never think of the third of November but in detestation of the other two If the Presbyter would repent his former Vindications of the late Rebellion against their King It would convert the Act of Indempnity into one of Oblivion and people instead of dashing them in the teeth with their Iniquities would pitty their former blindness But when at this day they still continue in the same faults 't is not a sign of infirmity but real malice and enmity to that which is good Still we hear them perswade the people to the legality of the late Warr and that by consequence the same may be lawful against the Son which was against the Father and that upon such petit jealousies as their factious brains can possess the poor people with all whose easie natures are accustomed to take Pique against any thing that their hot-spurr'd Parson
they are all Saints thereby inticing the Countrey to choose them for their future Representees that under their protection the Non-conformists might have more work to do or else by having a good opinion of them may stick close to them upon all occasions and pitty that the Cause these good men undertook had no better success but the discredit and ignominy of the Contrivers not forgetting the large sums of Money and Lands they cheated the King Church and State of If Rebellion Murther Sacriledge Schism Perjury Knavery and such like sins can make a man wicked and 't is well known where all these and many more vices were met together the Epithet will keep its ground secure against the fume and range of all the Schismaticks in England or Scotland Yet even since the King came in have they had many good wishes not unknown to the whole Nation and therefore I shall give you but one Instance and that of one old enough to know what they were but that he spake through a Covenanting Interest and these commendations of them are as they were 1644. when all those who were Loyal and good had left the House and followed his Majesty his Encomium is this A House full and free and these the best that ever England had for Piety towards God and Loyalty to their Soveraign A Parliament of Lords and Commons so pious so prudent so loyal and faithful to God and their King These Commendations are but like Libanius the Sophister's applauding and praising Julian the Apostate who amongst the many moral vertues that there are might possibly have a tincture of some What goodness these people had I know not yet can I guess at a large portion of their mischief Only one shall be mine instance viz. That they were the first Contrivers of these Wars they consulted the Rebellion they broach'd it and gave it life by their Votes and Declarations whereby they cunningly inveagled others into their sin yet being degrees in wickedness the worst of their Souldiers was not the tenth part so bad as these Members the first being knavishly inticed to act the others Command they contriv'd and plotted the Rebellion and drol'd on the Countrey to be obedient to their Orders under the specious shew of Reformation and Religion knowing the consequence of the old Rule never fails Quoties vis fallere Plebem Finge Deum They cannot be good Subjects to King Charles I. that commend his Enemies and they deserve no thanks from King Charles II. who praise those who did and voted and declared it lawful to fight against his Father thereby proclaiming to the World the legality of acting the same if they could get occasion against the Son 'T is needless to tell you how they violently made it their business to clip and pare the Kings Prerogative and Authority and amongst many other frivolously plucking away the Militia allowing the King through civility to carry a Sword by his side because he 's a Gentleman but not upon any occasion whatsoever to draw it that being forsooth the office and priviledge of their hands by which hanging a lock at his hilt but they keeping the Keys using him as they used their children giving them Gold in a Box which they must not finger only please themselves with its ratling by which means they will make themselves a Negative Vote in Peace and Warr. And after this fashion did their Covenanting Brethren of Scotland abuse their King taking all power of Arms into their own hands their reason being because The Kings Castles and Strengths are the Keys of the Realm and they knew no reason to the contrary but that they might keep their own Keys Thus would they make their King meerly Titular and a perfect Slave and Captive to their Wills Not unlike Sancho Panco who for sport-sake was made Governour of the Islands but had no Authority nay scarce liberty to eat his Victuals The rustick Biscayners cry up their priviledges so much that the King of Spain dare not go amongst them but well armed and guarded And good reason for they think their King to have so small Authority over them that he must bare one of his legs when he cometh upon the Frontiers of their Countrey and though they meet him as their King with what bravery they can and proffer him some few Maravidi's small brass-pieces each of them about the value of a Scotch Turner or Bodel somewhat less than our English farthing in a Leathern Bag hung at the end of a Lance yet for all this shew of great kindness they fairly tell him that he must not take them This Nation hath long enough felt the smart of crying Priviledges and Majesty it self hath been dar'd by that specious pretence Though they give him the Name of King yet they take all its Attributes to themselves though they call themselves Subjects yet like the Scots they do not Petition but with their Swords in their hands at the first denyal sounding an Alarum and at the second run themselves so farr into Rebellion that if something be not granted them they will destroy all As if they had swallowed up their Obedience with that ravenous Whirl-pool in Pentland Frith in the North of Scotland with which if either Ship or Boat shall happen to encroach they must quickly either throw over something into it as a Barrel a piece of Timber and such like or that fatal Euripus shall then suddenly become their swallowing Sepulcher Thus the Presbyterians make their Obedience a Bargain and if Interest out-bid the King He need not trouble himself by being a customer to these men who allow him no power but what they suppose he derived from them and which they can take to themselves again when they see occasion or please CHAP. IV. That the Presbyterians are but Conditional Subjects no longer obedient to their King or acknowledging Him than he serves their turn and is subservient to their fancies A Conditional Subject is the worst Animal in a Kingdom being the first Creature that shrinks from Government and always ready to destroy the Peace of the Nation for which and other things he will never want a reason grateful to the Rabble as long as he can cry out that his Subjection is but Conditional and the Magistrate having broke his part he 's no more oblig'd to his duty And this the people believing to be each mans case will make themselves Judges by which means the Authority of a single Person will ever be out-voted or over-worded That the King of England is Supream is certain That the greatest wickedness in the World cannot un-King him is as true The Law of the Land obligeth us to submit and makes it Treason to resist and the Scriptures bids us Obey but never Rebel for Conscience sake Every man is born with the Oath of Allegiance and is as much obliged to its observance before as after his taking it Though the Prince were Turk or
give them advertisement of all that passed The Moderator Mr. Alex. Henderson well known in both Kingdoms for a rigid Covenanter did justly affirm that it was no Commission the party having no power by it to give any voyce in the Assembly and so there was no more to be said to it But immediately something being transmitted by whispering from ear to ear until it came to the Moderators ear The Moderator began presently to Recant and perusing his Letter of Credence said He perceived that there was only want of Formality in the draught which they might easily pass over And so they allowed that for a Commission which was none and admitted him to have a voyce in the Assembly though the University gave him no such power nor would they have sent any Commissioner but a Divine At this sudden change of the Moderator made in him by a whisper many began to smile and to lay wagers that the party admitted was a Covenanter which the Moderator did not expect from that University and that this secretly-eonvey'd Intelligence of it had changed him And accordingly it proved to be Thus kissing goeth by favour among these people As a man might as well have been a Devil as a Gibelline for any favour he might expect from Pope Boniface VIII so strictly and partially did he bind himself with those of the Guelphian Interest But their hypocrisie is not only visible in these byass'd actions but in the whole series of their lives in which their jugling is not to be parallel'd What counterfeited Zeal What pretended gifts of the Spirit What seeming Sanctity What long-winded Prayer-affections What contrived Sighs and Groans not to be utter'd What demure Carriage What Eye-humility What pretended Self-denyal And yet what real Wickedness and Roguery are acted under these Vizards Whilest they are under they would be thought all humility but having once got their ends and Supremacy their actions bespeak them the worst of Tyrants Which calls to my memory that Monck that by his dejected carriage alwayes looking down with his Eyes was by his Neighbours taken for a real Saint but being by hypocritical carriage chosen Abbot lived in the height of open wickedness affirming that at first he was but seeking for the Keys of the Monastery but having now found them and got what he look'd for would live according to his own pleasure Thus it is storyed of Pope Sixtus how true I know not that before he arrived to that honour eat and drank nothing but Bread and Water saying Panis Aqua Vita Beata But having once setled himself in the Porphyry Chair he refused to stoop to such coorse fare when it was offer'd him having his reason from the contrary Position of the words Aqua Panis Est vita Canis After this fashion another threw away his Net when he came to the Pontifical Dignity knowing that he had then catch'd the Fish Thus at the beginning of the Warrs a publick Monethly Fast was appointed for the last Wednesday of every Moneth but no sooner had they got the King upon the Scaffold and the Nation fully secured into the Rumps Interest but then they thought it needless to abuse or gull the People with multitude of Prayers and Sermons they having got what they long expected and as they thought had so strongly secured themselves that it was all one whether the beslaved People thought them to be Saints or no and so by a particular Act of their Worships null'd the Proclamation for the Observation of the former all which verifieth the old Verse The Devil was sick the Devil a Monck would be The Devil was well the Devil a Monck was he Thus you see the true reason of this new Order of Sanctity and how easie it is to deceive the world with a counterfeit Holiness Like the old Wife at Venice who caus'd two great Books to be made both of equal bigness and like fashion whereof the one was a real Bible but the other hollow within like a Chest made in all points like a Book with Clasps and all which she fill'd with flat Bottels of Malmsey and with good fine Marchpanes which she her self made of the Brawn of Capons and Partridges with Sugar and Almonds and then with-drew her self into a pretty Cell with these two Books and there sat prunking and tarrying all alone in her devout Contemplations sometimes five or six dayes together Praying and Reading full devoutly till the Bible was quite empty not eating or drinking any thing else all that while And after this manner did Antonius Piceus get a name of Sanctity by his hypocritical fasting 40. dayes and whether John Scot did his Miracles this way or by the help of the Virgin Mary is not worth enquiry at this time Though I am confident that the Presbyterians gain more by jugling than by fair play How seeming honest are many of their Writings and Protestations yet when well look'd into are either never kept or of themselves signifie nothing but like a meer Complement full of courtesie full of craft of which many examples might be given but one at this time may satisfie seeing it was done by the chief of that Gang and that too since his Majesties return At a General Meeting of the Covenanting Presbyterians in and about the City of London a Petition was drawn up by them to be presented to the King which thus concludes Beseech your Majesty That the things of God and Religion which have been so Solemnly Covenanted for may be owned and confirmed by your Royal Authority which notwithstanding we do sincerely profess our readiness to accommodate with our Godly and Orthodox Brethren dissenting from us so farr as may consist with our Consciences and Covenant Is not this a very gratious Petition and Condescention Can any man desire the Society of more peaceable Brethren Who only desire that their Covenant made against all Laws and Authority yet they hold its Obligation to be perpetual might be confirm'd yet if it be not for Peace-sake they are very willing to agree with the Episcopal Party according to the Covenant O these are loving souls and hate Dissention as a Beggar doth a liberal Alms and truly the Episcopal Clergy is as much beholden to them as Montross was Had the Independents at their first return from America and Holland made a solemn Engagement for the extirpation of Presbytery And in 1644. or 45. had Petitioned the Parliament that their Engagement might be confirm'd by their Authority all England over yet in conclusion would profess that they would willingly agree with Presbytery so farr as their Engagement allow'd them Would not all the Brethren in England and Scotland exclaim against it for a meer juggle and cry out Gra-mercy Horse Yet had this Engagement been farr more rational and lawful than the Covenant But Awaa Whiggs awaa This Covenanting Sophism is but a demonstration of your Hellish Knavery and he that puts any trust in
is seconded by his Brother in malice that hocus pocus and jugler in Divinity and Policy Dick Baxter Too many Congregations have none but insufficient or scandalous Teachers or no preaching Ministers at all And then bravely bids his friends at Kiderminster never to join themselves with the Episcopal Government but to stick close to those destructive and seditious rules he taught them Let none draw you from Catholick unity to a Faction though the declaming against Faction and Schism should be the device by which they should accomplish it Is not the world well mended when Episcopacy must be call'd Faction and Schism and Presbytery only held to be Catholick But this is just like the other actions of the same man who used to call Rebellion Loyalty and Loyalty Rebellion with such fury doth his distempered zeal make him continually run counter Nor is this all but they impudently tell the Bishops to their very faces of their cruelty pride and covetousnesse uncharitable censoriousnesse unmerciful opposition and such like And then declare to the world of strange Persecution of many hundred worthy men laid by and that conformity is the means to strip these Nations of the glory in which they have excell'd all the rest of the world even a learned able holy Ministry and a people sincere and serious and understanding in matters of their salvation And also that the readiest way to bring the Gospel into contempt in the World and cause all Religion to dwindle away into Formality first and then to barbarism and brutishnesse is to let in an ignorant idle vitious Ministry Thus do they vilifie all that are not of their Gang really making it their businesse to make the people believe that none can be good but a Presbyterian though I hope in this Book that their knavery is sufficiently made visible In another of their ridiculous Pamphlets they perswade the Nation again to believe strange things that some hundreds of able holy faithful ministers are of late cast out and not only very many of their families in great distresse but aboundance of Congregations in England Ireland and Wales are overspread with lamentable ignorance and are destitute of able faithful Teachers Thousands of the Servants of the Lord that are either deprived of their Faithful Teachers or in fears of losing them And that there are few Nations under the Heavens of God as farre as we can learn that have more able holy faithful laborious and truly peaceable Preachers of the Gospell proportionably than those are that are now cast out in England and are like in England Scotland and Ireland to be cast out if the old conformity be urg'd This course of unmerciful opposition is the greatest wrong to it that you can easily be drawn to unawares while so many truly fearing God are cast or trodden down and tempted to think ill of that which themselves and the Church thus suffer by And when so many of the worst befriend this way because it gratifieth them it tends to make your cause judged of according to the quality of its friends and adversaries Well said self-conceipt And in another place hints to the world that if the Presbyterians be turnd out there will not be honest men enough in the Nation to supply their places And having thus told the Bishops the wickednesse of their party and the honesty and goodnesse of a Puritan they boldly appeal to the King and after a great many good morrows thus pittifully conclude And shall wait in hope that so great a Calamity of your people as will follow the losse of so many able faithful Ministers as the rigorous imposition would cast out should never be recorded in the History of your Raign Thus these simpring Brethren are highly against liberty of conscience in others yet would they have it themselves Though they will so farr comply as not to be against an unimpos'd Liturgy yet are they expresly against our Common-Prayer Book Nay were it alter'd according to their own desires yet would they not be obliged by the Laws to use it Though in Queen Elizabeths time they amongst themselves having compos'd A Book of the form of Common Prayer c. they presented it to the Parliament earnestly desiring that by Act of Parliament that Book might be confirm'd and used all the Kingdome over Yet about 1585. four Presbyterian Classes made complaint to the Lord Burleigh against the Liturgy though they would not have it all taken away his Lordship bid them make a better upon which the first Classis fram'd a new one somewhat neer the Geneva mode but this the second Classis dislik'd and alter'd in 600 particulars that again had the fate to be quarrel'd at by the III Classis and what the third resolved upon the fourth would not Thus would these men have somewhat but they cannot agree amongst themselves a sufficient sign of their inconstancy altering this way and that according to the weather sometimes they will have a form impos'd anon they will have it at liberty and another time they will have none at all of whom I shall say with a late Characterizer That they are bold Gentlemen that cannot speak to man without notes and yet prate to God ex tempore The African Scipio conquerd the wild and heathenish Spaniards by his courtesie St. Francis if you will believe the Legend brought a mad Wolfe to such civility that he could behave himself a la mode and live friendly with his Neighbours A furious Buck and a pack of Hounds were miraculously brought to devotion by worshipping a Sea-toss'd Relique And an Elephant at Adsmeer in Indostain in the height of his fury remembred the courtesie receiv'd from an Herb-woman as St. Hieromes Lyon requited the cure of his foot by the keeping of his Masters Asse which being lost by his negligence the meek Lyon did penance by bearing home the wood 'T is said that a Wolfe at the command of St. Blase restored the hogg which it had taken from a poor woman Nor would the birds depart from the same man till he had laid his hands on them and blest them A sheep is storyed to have bleated in the Thief 's belly at the command of St. Patrick and the stones to have said Amen to St. Bedes Preachment as the Marble yielded to St. James body and an high Tower at the command of the same St. bowd down its Top equal to the ground to let a Merchant escape Thus monsters and stocks and stones if you believe the Legends can obey but no courtesie can win over these Non-conforming men still they will be opposite still seditious never complying to Authority unlesse that submitt to them first and as men neer drowning still catching hold of any thing for a pretence to cover their obstinacy When the Parliament and Queen inact conformity they deny obedience to that law when King James by Proclamation
Parliaments Remonstrance to the King 2. Novemb 1642. 24 Hen. 8. c. 12. Qui initio tantopere extulerunt Henricum Regem Angliae certè fuerunt inconsiderati homines dederwit illi summam rerum omnium potestatem hoc me semper graviter vulneravit Erant enim Blasphemi quum votarunt ipsum Summum Caput Ecclesiae sub Christo c. Jo. Calvin in Amos cap. 7. verss 13. pag. 282. * Admonition to England and Scotland fol. 70. a. 25 Edw. 3. cap. 2. 1 Mariae c. 1. 11 Hen. 7. c. 1. Ex. Coll. p. 280 724 725. * 7 Edw. 6. c. 3. Anno Dom. 1404. 7 Edw. 1. Stat. 1. H's Sober Inspections pag. 33 34. Pezel Mellif Hist Part. 2. p. 142. Spotswood's Hist p. 75 76. Stow ' s Chron. p. 625. col 2. Sanderson's Hist of King James p. 519 520. Hackwell ' s Mod. tenend Parl. p. 203. Stow ' s Chron. p. 518. col 2. Baker ' s Chron. pag. 288. * The Speakers Petition for freedom of Speech is not recorded before this time as Hen. Elsynge saith p. 139. Baker p. 170 171. Stow. p. 636. col 2. Dr. Heylin's Exam. Histor Part. 2. p. 62. Baker pag. 420. Sanderson's Hist K. James pag. 510. Ex. Coll. p. 550. Bacon ' s Hist Hen. 7. p. 20 36. Stow. p. 583. col 1. lin 58. Hackwell's mod tenend Parl. p. 93. H's Sober Inspections pag. 54 56 60 61. Sanderson's Hist K. James pag. 510. Wilson ' s Hist p. 77 78. L'Strange pag. 100 101 105. Ex. Coll. p. 727. 8 Hen. 6. Abridg of Statutes in the word Convocdtion 25 Edw. 3. c. 2. 1 Phil. Mar. cap. 1. 1541. Nov. 20. Proserpinae quae bodie illic superat omnes Diabolos Calv. in Amos cap. 7. verss 13. pag. 282. Knox's Appellation sol 44. a. Gilb. Admonition to England Scotland fol. 68. a. b. Martin's Chron. p. 422. Institut lib. 4. cap. 20. Sect. 31. Hunc tollant vel Pacificè vel cum Bello Fenner Sacra Theolog. lib. 5. cap 13. fol. 80. b. Roll. Com. in Daniel cap. 5. vers 18. p. 122. Knox to the Communalty fol. 49. b. 55. b. Id. sol 57. a. Id. Appellation fol. 30. a. Id. fol. 31. b. Id. fol. 77. b. Hist Reformat of Scotl. p. 220 225 226 311. Epist 79. Testaretur imprimis se non posse Ministerio suo fungi nisi unà cum Doctrina Châ—â—â—â—ana Presbyterium quoque legitimum cum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ecclesiastica reciperetur Bez. vit Calv. Epist 12. Hist lib. 15. pag. 590. Lysimach Nican Epist Congrat pag. 18. Prynn's Speech in the House of Commons anno 1648. pag 28. Dr. Heylin's Answer to Burton c. 6. p. 119. Comment in Rom. cap. 13. col 1381 1382 1383. Necnon docet defendit secundum Canonem Sacrarum Scripturarum subdilos nullo modo vi armis Regi vel Principi suo resistere debere nec illius arma vel offensiva vel defensiua in causâ Religionis vel alià in re quacunque contra Regem vel Principem suum capescere licere Decretum Universit Oxon. 1622. Cleaveland to the Hectors Heylin ' s Hist Quinque Articular part 3. cap. 16. pag. 5. Troubles of Franckford Edit 1642. Sanderson's Hist K. James p. 15. 1558. Conference at Hampton Court pag. 82 83 84. 1559. Spotswood pag. 124. Id. pag. 123. Sanderson's Hist of Q. Mary of Scotland pag. 21. 1560. 1561. Sanderson's Hist p. 26. 1562. Id. pag. 28. 1563. Sanderson p. 31. 1564. 1565. 1566. 1567. Sanderson's Hist of King James p. 52. 1568. 1572. 1575. 1577. 1579. Conference at Hampton-Court pag. 20. Edit 1638. 1580. Pag. 39. 1582. Spotswood pag. 324. 1583. 1583. 1584. 1585. 1586. 1587. 1589. 1590. 1591. 1592. 1593. 1594. 1596. 1600. 1601. 1603. 1605. * Spotswood ' s Hist pag. 317 318 319 330 384 327. Spotswood pag. 423 424. De. Jure Regni Motus Britan. verax cushi P. 23. Spotswood P. 447. Sanderson ' s Hist p. 213. Spotswood P. 85. 146 267. Cleaveland P. 46. De Scotorum fortitudine doctrina pietate c. Heylin ' s Exam Hist part 1 pag. 157. Martin ' s Chron. p. 526. 593. Fuller Book 9. Sect. 7. sect 17. 20. Sanderson's History of K. James p. 138. Fuller Lib. 9 Sect. 3. sect 22. Id. Lib. 9. p. 77. Martin's Chron p. 783. 2 Chron. 15. 16. Revel 9. 3. Id. Epist Dedicat to Queen Elizab. Church-Hist Lib. 9. p. 76. Exam. Hist. p. 149. * Id. Hist Reform 172. Chron. p. 1166. Gab. Praicol p. 124. 382. Confer Hamp Court p. 27. Heylins Ex. Hist pag. 166. Pap of the Hatchet Weaver's Fun. Mon. pag. 56. Alex. Gil in his Logonomia Anglica doth something vary from this copy cap. 23. p. 122. Weevers Fun. Mon. pag. 54. Pet. Frarius ' s orat in English fine Fuller book 9. Sect. 7. 39. Bancrosts dangerous Positions p. 96. Stow p. 702 703. Weaver's Fun. Mon. pag. 54. Bancroft p. 82. Hist Great Brit. pag. 7. Conf. Hampt Court pag. 4. Spotswood pag. 479. Heylin's Hist of Reformat pag. 115. Sanderson's Hist of K. Ja. pag. 321. Conclave Alexand 7. p. 41. Lud. Non. Hispan cap. 53. Mart. Zeillerus Hispan pag. 362. Heylin's Ex. Hist part 2. pag. 71. Wilson's Hist pag. 51 52. Wilson ' s Hist pag. 155. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Book 2. p. 33 34. 1627 8 Rusworth's Collect and Appendix H. L'Strange pag. 101. L'Strange pag. 111. Heylin ' s Ex. Hist part 2. pag. 94 95. April 21. 1641. 1637. New Survey of the West-Indies cap. 22. pag. 208. Ovid. Metam lib. 6. Maintenance of the Sanctuary or a Declarat of the Church of Scotland p. 58. 1640 Pag. Fisher Irenodia Gratulat Bakers Chron. pag. 138. F Id. p. 158. B. p. 161. E. p. 167. A. p. 177. B. E. Tho. Walsingham Hist Ang. Anno 1404. * Stow's Chro. pag. 191. col 1. Relat. du voyage de Mosc Tart. de Per. pag. 516 517. in the letter du sieur de Mandesto August 1641. Diurn Occur pag. 7. 25 October 1641. Rushworth's History Collect pag. 672. Prynn's breviate of his life pag. 15. House of Fame lib. 3 fol. 320. b. * Them 2. Decemb. 1641. 14. Decemb. 15. Decemb. 1641. Ex. Coll. p. 529. Justin lib. 16. Plin. Hist Nat. lib. 8. cap. 16. A. Gel. l. 5. c. 15. Observar on Hist K. Ch. pag. 29 30 31. Sanderson's Hist K. Ch. p. 505. Ex. Coll. p. 517. Gierusalem liberuta Cant. 2. I. 3 Edw. 1. 33. 2 Rich. 2. c. 33. 12 Rich. 2. c. a 1. II. III. Stow ' s Chron. pag. 293. Hist Lewis 13. pag. 128. Prud. de Sandoval Hist del Emp. Carlos V. lib. 5. Sect. 20. Id. Sect. 4. Lib. 8. Sect. 20. Prud. de Sandoval lib. 6. sect 10. Catclina in Spanish 22 Feb. 1640. Ex Coll. p. 526 527. Hist Lewis 13. pag. 128. Survay of Venice pag. 7. pag. 58. Ex Coll. p. 547. 548. Observat on the Hist K. Ch. p. 61. Polit. lib. 2. cap. 18. Sect. 8. House of Fame Fol. B. 319. 8 Eliz. cap. 1.
Scotland by domestick dissentions stir'd up against him by Hay Creighton Bruce Graham and other Jesuites who furnished the Rebellious Nobility with moneys from Spain to carry on their designs Nor hath Ireland reason to rejoyce in their acquaintance where the Seminary Fryars of late dayes had gone so far as in Dublin it self not only to appear in their habits but also to affront the Archbishop and Maior of that City nor were they wanting to the erection of Colledges and Societies maintain'd by good Benefactors as appears by a Letter from the Council in England to that in Ireland Yet for all this hath their rebellious favourits dealt mildly with them though the Laws be severe enough and 20. years ago look'd upon this kind of mercy as a crime fit to be thrown in the face both of King and Bishop but how deservedly let any judge but Prynne whose malice and partiality is well enough known Nor need we much trouble our selves to prove the Jesuite somewhat medling their familiarity with the Anabaptists Quakers and such like Phanaticks being suspicious Of which many examples might here be shewn but that their common knowledge would make the Relation tedious only take notice that the very Weekly Gazet suspects Mr. Rogers and those of his Fraternity to have some Jesuite or Priest at the Helm with them And Mr. Rogers takes no good course to clear himself by endeavouring to vindicate the Jesuite from having any hand in our late Warrs which this following Story is sufficient to confute When the late King was murdered Mr. Henry Spotteswood riding casually that way just as his Head was cut off espyed the Queens Confessor there on Horse-back in the habit of a Trooper drawing forth his Sword and flourishing it over his own head in Tryumph as others then did At which Mr. Spotteswood being much amazed and being familiarly acquainted with the Confessor road up to him and said O Father I little thought to have found you here or any of your Profession at such a sad spectacle To which he answered that There were at least forty or more Priests and Jesuites there present on Horse-back besides himself The resultancy of this Story is home and pat and for the truth of it I referr you to Mr. Prynne Nor need we here relate the great correspondency betwixt the late Grandees and Cardinal Mazarini of which Mr. Walker gives us a hint and experience can proclaim the rest Nor is it probable that they should have no hand in the promotion of our late distractions as most beneficial to the Catholick Cause since they have been the chief fomenters of all other Wars in Christendom leaving nothing un-essay'd that may bring all into confusion as Ludovicus Lucius and others can inform you more at large Besides all this we might give some Extracts out of the Plot discovered by Andreas ab Habernfield 1640. September to Sir William Boswell the Kings Agent at the Hague and by him to the Archbishop and so to his Majesty A design managed abroad by the Pope and Cardinal Barbarino and in England chiefly by George Con a Scotch-man and the Pope's Nuncio The substance of which was that the Roman-Catholicks here should stirr up the Puritans to revenge themselves of the Bishops and the Scots should also be perswaded to Arms whence the English should so adhere that the King remaining Inferiour in Forces should be constrain'd to crave aid from the Papists which should be deny'd unless he favoured them with a Toleration which if absolutely deny'd it was contrived by sodain death to remove him But because we find the Reality of the Plot questioned by an understanding Gentleman we shall referr you to L'estrange and Prynne's Relation But let this Plot be as it will 't is more then suspicion that our Phanaticks have been beholden in many things to the Jesuite of which one example may somewhat satisfie They caus'd the Book written by Parsons Anno 1524. under the faigned name of Doleman and call'd A Conference about the Succession of the Crown which Book was condemned by Act of Parliament 35. Elizab. to be publish'd again under the title of Several Speeches delivered at a Conference concerning the Power of Parliaments to proceed against their King for Mis-government The Arguments and Precedents are meerly the same though the fashion of the Book be a little altered Parsons having made it a Dialogue and these men into Speeches And how agreeable to this Rule of King-killing they steer'd their course is impossible to be forgot as long as Memory or Record can be had in this World CHAP. IV. The helps and assistance which the Calvinist Presbyterian and Jesuite afford one another for the ruine and alteration of Kingdoms with their Plots to destroy the Government and Tranquillity of England THat the Independents should only be beholden to the Jesuits or these Fathers the sole Ingeneers of Wickedness would mainly over-cloud the Reputation of the Presbyterians who look upon themselves as active for any mischief and as cunning contrivers And therefore 't is best for them to go hand in hand each discovering to other what new Plots they have found out for the subversion of Governments By which Club they have afforded certain Rules to Politicians which have exactly been observed and followed by our late Schismaticks as is palpable by the following Observations And first we shall begin with the Plots of the Calvinists a people never negligent to promote their own Interests Of whose Sect as the Emperour Ferdinand affirm'd the proper genius is To hold nothing either Fraud or Wickedness which is undertaken for the Religion No sanctity of Oath nor fear of Dishonour hinders them A Chararacter like that given by the experienced King James to the Puritans the same with our Non-conforming Presbyterians of whom one gives this sentence Puritans and all other Sectaries who though scarce two of them agree in what they would have yet they all in general are haters of Government And to this purpose was the judgement of the wise Secretary Walsingham when to Monsieur Critoy Secretary of France he assured them to be dangerous and very popular not Zeal nor Conscience but meer Faction and Division and besides this gives a short description of their Cunning Jugling and Rebellion for which with the Jesuite they start strange Doctrines to be as an Umbrella to their Illegal proceeding Of which the learned Bancroft Mr. David Owen and an Ingenious Epistle Congratulatory under the Name of Lysimachus Nicanor will afford you many Instances Whereby you may see that the Presbyterians in their Principles and Actions have more of Rome than the late reverend Archbishop Land or his favorites Let Bayly and the spurious Irenaeus Philalethes or any others collect or steal out of him what they please The Calvinists being resolved to root the Lutherans out of the Palatinate took this following Method to bring their ends about as
trouble of a journy thither yet not without some notable observators No sooner he being departed but our Parliament ordering some members to go also into Scotland in notion of a Committee to inform them of all passages in Scotland Yet when the King went into Scotland the Parliament adjourn'd though appointed a Committee of the Commons consisting of 50 of and over which Mr. Pym was the chief Lord and Maister of mis-rule and him I find nominated at the very beginning of this Parliament with the Emphasis of the great parliament man And the truth of it is that he was so farre the dominus fac totum in this juncto that his words were laws all things being acted according to his desire Here many things of Church matters were by these Gentlemen purely innovated and then prosecuted with such violence that the Episcopal clergy durst not gainsay him as Dr. Fuller Mr. Hutton Mr. Fletcher and others of St. Giles Cripplegate Mr. Booth the Minister of St. Botolphs Aldersgate Dr. Heywood of St. Giles the Ministers of St. George Southwark of Margarets new Fish-street c. could very well testifie by experience Although the house of Lords would not consent in these things to join with the Commons yet did they so farre supinely wink at the others actions that their Authority was now so much intrench'd upon by the Commons that their priviledges slipt from them unperceived though without all question the presbyterian party both understood and smiled at such proceedings About this time there was a great deal of noise and clamour about a Letter forsooth against Mr. Pym with I know not what plaister in it and written God wot when and delivered by no body knows whom but a Gentleman forsooth in a gray-coat on horseback and great searching and inquiring for this man in the moon was made but all to as little purpose as the Northwest passage or the philosophers stone And many times hath it been printed and spread abroad to let the good people see the wickedness forsooth of Malignants and with such chaffe as this have many of our old fools been taken Yet when that impudent Libel stuft with as much malice as either this letter or hell could afford was vented against that great prop of learning the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury Laud no notice was in the least wise taken of it nor did he himself any thing regard it though it thus threatned his destruction Laud look to thy self be assured thy life is sought as thou art the fountain of wickedness Repent of thy monstrous sins before thou be taken out of the World c. And assure thy self neither God nor the world can endure such a vile Councellor or Whisperer to live Than this what more implacable destructive and abominable considering his nearness to the Kings person his trust and beneficial endeavours for the publick good Yet had he been better or if I may say here the best and the designes against him more devilish yet would our Non-conformists have hug'd and blest themselves at this opposition had it been as after malicious experience proved to his ruine and all this because he was an absolute opposer of the Presbyterian innovations who though but of a very little body yet had a soul more large and vast for the good of Church and Literature then a whole Parliament of Disciplinarians But let us now think of his Majesties return from Scotland in whose absence some of the Parliament had rais'd large reports of strange and terrible plots and designs against John an Oaks and John a Stiles by which means many people were endeavour'd to be whisper'd into dissatisfaction of the King and such a jealousie was grown by the noise of this Chimaera that many did according as they were bid think that things were not then well carryed and this was cunningly aimed at the King and his Favourites by those who had their Coy-ducks in such obedience that their Commands was not unlike that of Madam Fame to Aeolus in our ingenious Chaucer Bring eke his other claviown That hight Sclaunder in every Towne With which he wont is to diffame Hem that me lyst and do * hem shame But these Alarums served the Parliaments turn being a Cloak under which they might deceive the People in their pretences for raising a Guard the which they did and it may be to defend them from a Pedicularie disease of which possibly they saw some symptoms then in the House Of these Romantick Jealousies Frights Alarums and unheard of Plots and Designs his Majesty tells the Parliament and of the evil consequences of such slanders in his first Speech to them after his return from Scotland And in his next earnestly desires them to prosecute the Irish affairs and perceiving them considering about pressing of Souldiers with a check at his Prerogative He desires that the bounds of his ancient and undoubted Authority might not then fall into debate however that it may pass with a Salvo jure he is willing rather then such disputes should take up time in such an hour of extreamity for whilest the Grass groweth the Horse may sterve Upon this they clamour against his Majesties dealings professing the Priviledges of Parliament were broken by these his Exceptions for which they demand satisfaction and earnestly desire his Majesty not only to declare the names of but also to deliver up to punishment those persons who had given such counsel Nor was this mode of dealing one of their least Plots upon all occasions desiring the King to betray his faithful Counsellors by that means not only to leave him naked but to the discretion of the Houses But these things carryed no great shew of unhandsomness though like the Apples of Sodem beautiful without yet stuft with filthiness in respect of their after Thunder-claps which like Brutus shew'd their malice in their fronts For the next day after their Petition they welcome him home with a Remonstrance as they call it in which maliciously they endeavour to rip up all the faults and none is good but God of his Majesties Raign and that in as civil a way as their zeal could allow them as you may see in the Paper it self for in it through his actions they tax him with Cruelty Injustice Oppression Violence and what not They out-braid him for putting forth untrue scandalous false and impudent Declarations in it they highly commend the Schismatical Non-conformists blaming the King for punishing them Nor is this all but the Scotch Invasion of England too is extoll'd and defended and the King scandalized as if he endeavoured to root out the true Religion and bring in Popery nor are they silent against the Bishops and their Orthodox Divines by which it is plain the Presbyterian ruled the Parliament nor must the Innocent Ceremonies and forsooth Superstition escape a scouring And yet in this very same mogende-Paper they confess they must acknowledge that his Majesty hath