and shameless Semaiah a h Pag. 49. Runegado an Apostate Presbyter a i Pag. 51. man of Fancy k Pag. 61. An envious Runegado and Apostate l Pag. 63. A shifting Runegado and a m Pag. 67. subtile Sophister and yet behold and wonder this is the man that cries The Lord deliver him from rendring Railing for Railing The Bishop having said in his Anti-Baal-Berith Page 191. That the late Primate of Armaghs Reduction of Episcopacy was propounded not in order to binde the hands of or limit Bishops in England and Scotland but as a condescension and expedient to disarm and binde the hands of Presbyters and People Crofton in answer thereunto thus profoundly Quaeres * Pag. 13. Sir Who told you that this was the politick stratagem of that pious Bishop Did not Bishop Wren It would make a man mad and t' would make a man laugh to see such pitiful arguings used in a rejoynder to an Antagonist and yet to be believed as excellent and invincible by some people to hugge themselves up in their delusions Just as if a man should make such a like Quaere to him Who told people that it was little Mr. Croftons Politick stratagem not onely to whipp his maid behinde but before too Did not the Church-Wardens and several other of the Parishioners of that Parish where that noble Ministerial act was done to administer somewhat to the maids necessities So again The Bishop having said That the League which Joshua and the Rulers of the people made with the Trappanning Gibeonites was to the damage of no honest men but themselves Crofton cries out †Pag. 48. Was the Oath of the Gibeonites no way to the injury of honest men Was it no injury to Israel to loose four Cities out of their inheritance given them by the Lord Whereas the Bishop had said It was to the injury of no honest men but themselves which two last words Crofton very cunningly leaves out to make his Readers believe the convincing force of his Arguments But alas he knew to set down the whole Proposition was not for his turn of disputing but would have broke the neck of his cause and design and made it evident to every one that he was a meer shifting caviller one that was minded more to quarrel with an Antagonist then to answer him by good Reasons and Arguments which practise of his brings to my remembrance the like cavilling tricks and shiftings of the most learned Bishop Mountagues Puritanical Informers in the very self-same case who thereupon told them that the setting down of his whole passage and Proposition f See his Appeal to Cesar p. 145. Stood not with their prime purpose of calumniating directly it gave check to their detraction in chief and so they passed it slightly over § 20. So again The Bishop having said That g See his Anti-Baal-Berith p. 146. a King though never so Supream and Free yet may not Vow and Covenant to the diminution of his own just Sovereignty and Authority and Power which is his by Law Crofton thinks fit to give no other answer but this †Pag. 32. Which all people of the world must and will contradict and leaving out like a wrangling Sophister the principal Clause and Hinge of the Bishops Sentence on which hangs the force of the preceding words which is this And necessary for his high calling to protect the Church and State himself and his good Subjects And doth he or any one in his wits think that any Prince may Vow to diminish that whereby his Subjects are defended to extenuate and give away that Power he hath given him by God to Preserve and Protect those people over whom by the same God he is set as Ruler and Supream To cast his Subjects in a maner out of his Protection and give leave to others to Domineer and Tyrannize over them and do them what rapine and mischief they will and he himself sit still as a Cipher Certainly those people that are in such a case may well cry out of an Egyptian slavery and sadly proclaim to their great grief and sorrow both of heart and minde That every man doth that which seems right in his own eyes as though there were no King at all in Israel That a Prince may vow the diminution of his own just Sovereginty and power which is too hard for his Subjects to bear and when such diminution tends to their ease and benefit no body indeed in the world I think will deny but that is nothing at all to what the Bishop saith But that a Prince may not Covenant the diminution of his own just Soveraignty and Power necessary for his high calling to protect his Subjects which and which alone is what the Bishop says is a truth as cleer as the Sun and in that case our Presbyters all people in the world that must and will contradict it must beyond dispute be such people as belong to the world in the Moon § 21. Again the Bishop having set down p. 149. That the two Houses alone no nor the King alone or with them have any Legislative power to decree or execute what is unrighteous against God or man The Shifter answers with a * p. 32. So that the Legislation is founded in the piety and justice of the decree and rebellion against authority is acquitted by the iniquity of the command not at all caring to consider that what the Bishop saith in those words must needs have reference to the Law of God and his meaning thus that by that Law neither King nor two Houses joyntly or severally have any lawful power to decree or execute what is unrighteous for its impossible that that Reverend Prelate should ever forget what he hath read in the Scriptures of wickedness established by a Law and the possibility of Governors Legislative power to execute †Isa 10. 1 unrighteous decrees by the Woe that by God himself is pronounced unto them that decree such Nay the very language of the Bishop in that assertion of his doth convince me cleerly that he was wholly guided by this very Scripture in what he said which Crofton so much carps at and so as I just now said must needs have reference to the lawfulness of such power for such ends and purposes by the Law of God which expresly hath prohibited it and pronounced a woe against the Actors of it But hark what the man makes a matter of complaint of why that Rebellion by the Bishops saying oh how loyal he is all of a sudden and fearful of maintaining any Rebellious principles not above eight lines before he hath point blanck affirmed nay and as though it were a convincing truth too what I shall prove before I have done with him not onely to be sedition and rebellion but an open denial of the Supremacy Power and Authority of His Most Sacred Majesty but le ts hear what he can say for himself
the King is under none but God This saith he is that divine Sentence Quod nec Jovis ira nec ignis nec poterit ferrum nec edax abolere vetustas which neither angry Jove nor fiery Vulcan neither devouring Age nor bloody sword a worse devourer then that shall ever expunge out of our Law-books or explode out of the memory of every pious man Thus he Bracton cited by the Reverend and Learned Judge Jenkins tells us Rex non habet parem in Regno suo That the King hath not an equal in his kingdom if not an Equal then certainly no Superior and so by consequence shows the fiction of the Two Houses Supremacy There hath been so much already cited for the Supremacy of His Sacred Majesty over all persons in his Dominions by Judge Jenkins Mr. Diggs and several others that I need not trouble the Reader with any more repetitions thereof but refer the dissatisfied to their several Writings and conclude this point with a word or two concerning the Oath of Supremacy which every Member of the two Houses must take before he sits in the House or else according to Law he stands a person to all intents and purposes as if he had never bin elected or returned which clearly declares the King to be the onely Supream Governor of this Realm and of all other His Highness Dominions and Countreys as well in all Spiritual and Ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal and so certainly by undeniable consequence over the Two Houses in Parliament causes For why was the exclusive Particle Onely inserted but to cut off all pretences of co-ordinacy or share in the Regal Supremacy And truly if he be Supream there is neither Major nor Superior saith the Learned Lord Bridgeman in his Speech aforesaid Was this Oath think you Mr. Crofton composed by the Lords and Commons in Parliament in the time of Qu. Elizabeth and at their suit by * Eliz. c. 1 Act of Parliament made high Treason 5 Eliz. c. 1 for a subject to deny to take it for to be evaded and treasonably denied the subject matter thereof ascribed to the Subjects themselves who were fain to take it ere they could have the least colour or pretence perjuriously to claim or usurp it from the rightful owner and this too by such a Shadow of a Disputant as your fanciful self who have armed your self with so much confidence to bawl out these seditious Assertions which deserve nothing else but the utmost rigor of the Law for a confutation Nothing but self-condemnation No other way left you to save your credit but by writing sedition and throwing your poison'd darts of malice against your Superiors for the pretended denial of that the truth whereof your own whimsical self is found to be a real disclaimer Cannot you dig a pit for another but you must presently fall into it your self These shabbed courses of yours forces me to deal with you by a retortion and ask you once again some more of your own questions Where is Sir the Kings Prerogative over all persons in all causes What is become of the Oath of Supremacy Hath a Gracious King lately pardoned you and your Delinquent party for your former misdemeanors really to debase nay dethrone Him by your impudent and traiterous entituling his sworn Subjects with His Onely Supremacy Truly Sir I cannot blame you much now for your words in your Preface where you tell us That side 2. having animadverted this Anti-Baal-Berith i. e. the Bishops Book you finde a necessity to apologize for the very act of your Animadversion and fear nothing more then to be bound to your good behavior in misbehaving your self so much as to answer not according to what your confidence helped you to prate A fool according to his folly wherein you may seem like unto him but a learned reverend Prelate with whole mouth-fuls of sedition and rebellion wherein you are the perfect image of all the traiterous Conspirators that have been before you why else do you divide non dividenda make a division in that wherein none without perjury ought or can be make two sharers and partners in the Supremacy which the legal Oath and Statute-Laws of this Realm by which we must steer our course and not by your horrible frightful dreams declare to centre and to be the peculiar right and Sovereignty of one alone and that inseparable from his person too The goodly aim and end of all your Jabbering for the Two Houses co-ordinacy in the Supremacy is but to fulfil the Martyrs words e See Eikon Basilike in 24. P. 47. That the Majesty of the Kings of England might hereafter hang like Mahomets Tomb by a Magnetick charm between the power and priviledges of the Two Houses in an airy imagination of Regality But the Two Houses usurpation of the Supremacy it seems will not serve Mr. Croftons turn if they cannot swallow up the Legislative power too from the Royal Owner In his Analepsis * p. 12. he called them then onely Co-ordinate and Sharers in the Legislation of England now he grasps for the Suprem Legislative power alone for those long Parliament Legislative theives that made it their precious saintly work to make their strength the Law of Justice robb and pillage and murder the Subjects of their Soveraign by their cursed illegal Orders quirkes and devices and then show them the Law of their uncontroulable atheistical wills for it sic volo sic jubeo stat proratione voluntas I am perswaded the man hath a huge fancy to go higher and higher in his Seditious and treasonable language till he comes to make his last ascent at the Sacred Gallowes or else he dreams with the Fifth kingdom Rebels That notwithstanding any thing he saith or doth yet that not a hair of his head shall perish I shall not stand long upon answering him in this fiction and dream of his but shall quickly dispatch him by adding to what I have upon this point already said that which now immediately followes And therefore for that which he termes the Legislative power and because he is just like the Cuckoe repeating over and over one and the same thing to lengthen his Book Let 's hear a little what Justice Hide told the Blackening Regicide Harison at his Tryal in the Old Bayly I am sorry saith he that any man should have the face and boldness to deliver such words as you have You and all must know That the King is above the Two Houses They must propose their Laws to him The Laws are made by him and not by them by their consenting but they are His Laws That either or both Houses or any assembly or people in this or any other Nation Governed by Monarchy hath or ever claimed saith f See the Royallists defence p. 39. another in 1648. to have a Legislative power or so far to represent the Kingdom as to make new Laws and change the old without
authority to change it which must needs have reference to the Laws of God according to the subsequent words of the Bishops where he explaines his meaning by judiciously asserting That Christian Kings and their Parliaments are obliged to the Laws of God and rules os Christian piety and polity too of which the whole Church in its primitive example is the best interpreter and so his position in short is this That they have no lawful authority by the Laws of God and rules of Christian piety and polity to change Episcopal Government which is a cleer evident truth to me for I consider with my self that those Laws and Rules will admit at no hand of any schism ataxy confusion or division in the Church which are contrary to true Christianity for the abounding whereof amongst the Corinthians they were so often taxed of their too much carnality and that Bishops were set up by the Apostles themselves in remedium Schismatis for the preventing of schismes and divisions and that none of those errors and heresies were so prevalent or apparent to humane eyes in the Bishops times as since their Julian extirpation for the setting up of Prsbyterian practical-jesuitism was the ground of a day of fasting and humiliation amongst the Godly rebels and a Sermon thereupon preached by our unsacred Covenanter What shall we say to those things that men should show so much pretence of goodness in appointing a day to humble themselves for the errors and heresies of the times the true proper effects of their arrogant ways of Rebellion in setting up Presbytery as a distinct Government by it self without Episcopacy in direct opposition to the practise of the Catholick Church as well as to the King and his Laws which is and hath bin the head and fountain from whence the unclean muddy streames of heresies and blasphemies have had their rise and product And yet forsooth must have the means still kept for the production of the same ends of disorder and confusion Vpon the consideration of the whole I cannot but subscribe to the great truth of the Bishops words That as no legislative power is impowered by Gods Laws to bring in either Heresie Error Superstition Schisme Faction or Confusion so neither have the King Lords and Commons any prudent moral religious or lawful Authority by those Laws or those of this English Nation and Rules of Christian Piety and Polity to change the Ancient universal and excellent Government by Bishops to any that is As new and schismatical so far worse and unsuitable to England every way If one part of the sentence be true which by Croftons silence is absolutely concluded No man need fear to affirm the other without any derogation to the legal rightful Supremacy of the King That which speakes against Schisme and faction confusion and disorder will not surely give me any lawful power to extirpate Bishops the main preventers of it by being the constant promoters of love and unity § 27. Thus I have examined the words as I found them imperfectly quoted in Croftons Discourse without that additional clause which I have set down in my true Citation of them which he most unworthily and basely had left out that so he might have some what to fill up his rambling discourse with for a true Citation would have fo confounded his understanding as immediately to have commanded him into a becoming silence and ingenuous conviction of the Bishops truths but rather then he would depart from his cavilling art and shiftings he 'l mangle the words of an Antagonist to make his own way the smoother for credulous poor mortals to set their steps in which hath brought to my remembrance the answer of a most Reverend person to the Miltonian Justifier of Regicide and Rebellion depraver of verity and breaker of the Kings Image That he p See the Image unbroken p. 153. broke sentences and truths lest he should breake for want of matter And the words of the Bishops with that additional clause in it is so cleer a truth as can no waies be darkned by a Presbyters Argumentations which was seen evident enough by Crofton himself and so very craftily left it out and therefore needs no other defence but the bare words themselves which carry truth in their forehead to the convincing of any opposer which I have no sooner done but I took a resolution to follow the mans pattern for once and turn Quaerist too Where 's the Premunire that the Bishop hath stept into now Is speaking of a known Truth confronting of King and Parliaments Suppose the Bishop had lived in Queen Maries days and had said That neither Queen nor Parliament had any lawful power by the Laws of God and Rules of Christian Piety and Polity either to change the King Edward-Reformation or to set up and establish Popery in the kingdom Was it fit for any mans mouth but a cursed Jesuits to charge him with sedition and treason against the Queen in confronting her and her Parliaments by saying black is black and white is white by asserting a known truth Blessed be God we live under a Prince that desires not to have His Supremacy stretcht so as to make it an Instrument of Justification of the Lawfulness of His Actings either against God or his Truth or the Defenders of true Christianity that desires to have His Supremacy carryed on and maintain'd for no other ends and purposes then those for which it was first established To make Clergy-men as well as Lay know that he is their onely Supream Governor and in case of offence that His Power will reach to the punishment of both that they shall not be exempted from the Civil Magistrates sword of Justice either by the wicked pretence of a foreign Papal superior Jurisdiction or Antimonarchical Sentence or Determination of the traiterous seditious Consistorians if they do that which is not justifiable either by the Laws of God or this Land Where 's the Bishops sedition I wonder Where 's his treason that he needs to fear to be made less by the head for as this Leaguer cants it Why he saith in affirming the defect of the Kings and Parliaments prudent moral religious and lawful power to change Episcopacy to one that is worse and far unsuitable to England every way for that is it which the Bishop saith which our unsacred Covenanter hath dared to contradict with his shabbed pratling Ay but saith Crofton The Statutes of the Kings declare against the Pope That Holy Church was founded in Prelacy by their own donation power and authority and so by the same way changeable Ergo What That they have any prudent moral religious and lawful authority to change it to a worse After what rate doth this wily Covenanter argue Can they that swear to govern a people well and according to the Laws of the Land have any of that quaternary Power to change one Government for a worse Will the people in such a case think or can