hath his principall strength in things of their own nature indifferent for these be neither commanded nor forbidden in Gods law To conclude this point The Kings law is the sinew of all government which to cut is to ham-string Church and Common-wealth for it is better to live where nothing then where every thing is lawfull In the next place Justice in these cases must have her due course Let him have judgement c. By this time Justice calls out to all her retinue Judges Justices Jurours c. Is there any who will not obey c I charge you let him have judgement whosoever he be and saith in Gods words Thine eye shall not spare in judgement And heare your charge O ye Ministers of justice she hath made you executours of her will and hath bound you all by oath well and truely to perform it so farre as Gods and the Kings law shall binde you See then ye discharge and not deceive the trust reposed in you lest Church and Commonwealth the orphanes whose guardians ye be do lose religion and peace the legacies which she hath bequeathed them Judex saith Isidore is jus-dicens for the Judge is a speaking law and the law is a silent Judge Verily the law is a dead letter till the Judge breaths the breath of life into it by execution which is the edge and life of it The law sees nothing but by the eyes of the Judge and Judges are the eyes of the Commonwealth which if they be by any means put out a State though never so potent is but like big-limbed Polyphemus ready for ruine or mighty Sampson pulling down all upon their heads to their own and the ruine of all ingaged with them in the same condition Cicero could say that Impunitie is the greatest breeder and nurse of transgression that may be For to let malefactours go without judgement either not at all or condignly punishing them is but to stroke the offenders on the head as Eli did with a Do no more so my sonnes and so to give them and other after them a kinde of commission to do the like Take heed of a weak affectation of mercifull Judges or mercifull Juries take heed I say ye do not thereby encourage sinne and clap it on the back Can that be mercy which is unjust The greatest and most admired mercy that ever the world saw even that whereby we must all live for ever was it with neglect of justice No for Ecce benignitatem severitatem Dei may also to this great work be applied it being hard to determine whether Gods adopted sonnes found more mercy or his naturall sonne more severitie Bonis nocet qui malis parcit saith Seneca By sparing one ye are injurious to many for Chrysostom saith well Dum parcebatur lupo mactabatur grex Spare the wolf and the flock goes to wrack What though the vulgar account you hard Judges remember the answer of a King of Thrace to one telling him that in regard of his severitie he played the mad-man and not the King Oh saith the King this my madnesse makes my subjects sound and wise Execution must be speedy Without delay Yet no more haste then good speed mature deliberation must go before execution nothing must be judged before the time for that were not speedy but rash judgement an evil in our private and petty carriages severely forbidden therefore much more in publique and weighty affairs But when the way is made and the offender convicted then Judges must like Almighty God be swift witnesses for sinne and punishment must ride both on one horse let him that hath done the work have his wages for in criminall causes it is as crying a sinne to detein it as from the honest labourer And this hath no lesse place in personall causes between man and man which if they hang long before a Judge it is as a sore long under a chirurgians hand or a quartane ague which is opprobrium medicorum Thus have I with your Honourable and Christian an patience passed through the points propounded I have washed and searched the wounds and also prepared the plaister Now give me leave I beseech you to lay it on as tenderly as I can in a few words of Application wherein I intend healing not exasperating but if any sore smart it is because it 's festred or ranckled not by any corrosive in the balm And now what shall I do shall I be silent and give in a verdict of Omnia bene that 's indeed the shortest cut and safest way but so should I make all your sinnes mine own No we must review every piece of the Text and charge the same upon all the Ministers of justice great and small upon Judges the Kings eyes in their circuits upon Justices the Judges eyes in their divisions upon Jurours who are the scales of justice to weigh all actions and upon witnesses who put these weights into the scales But oh hard task to rake in this kennell to speak of the many-headed vice in all these particulars without dislike from you or check from mine own conscience so that I may say in Persius his words Oh si fas dicere Sed fas Shall the stage in a play and the Poet in a peal of Satyres deride your sinnes with a prophane spirit and shall the Spirit of God in the pulpit be confin'd or must the Preacher stoop at pulpit-doore to take measure of his hearers feet God forbid I am sent this day on Gods errand to you all which if it should not please remember I beseech you that I am but a poore messenger and must do my message at mine own perill First there must be no partiality in judgement And give me leave most Honoured Lords lest I should commit a sinne of partiality while I speak against it in the first place to addresse my self to your Honours I have an awfull and reverend respect of your places and persons yet remember I beseech you that humilitie in eminency is a singular vertue if like the soaring eagle or towring hawk the higher ye be the lesse ye seem and I do well know your labours pains are great for magna fortuna magna servitus your difficulties also are more then we can imagine you have the winde and storms in your faces when we be under the lee and being fathers of the Commonwealth do wake for us when we do sleep I meddle not with your employments of state they are out of my reach I am no eaves-dreeper of state it is for me to observe the ground-winde not the rack-winde I keep me therefore within the compasse of my Text and desire your Honours seriously to ponder that acceptation of persons in judgement is a stinking abomination in the nostrils of the Almighty whether it be for reward favour passion or cowardise For the first mine own breast doth clear your selves that ye be not as those Judges in Plutarch who ever came to the judgement-seat as
from it onely in duration for if a man should ever be as in his passion with eyes staring countenance red and inflate teeth grating and interfering tongue stutting and stamâ—â—â—â—ng hands shaking and trembling and all actions thus irregular shewing laesum principium who would not say this man were distracted But if Socrates would not beat his boy when he was angry how much more should all ministers of justice banish this heady passion from the judgement-seat lest they heat the oven seven times hotter in their own cause then in Gods proceeding in heat against the person and not in zeal against the sinne 4. Lastly from fear or cowardise this cast away Nabaoth the Judges had letters written in Achabs name and sealed with his seal and they durst not go against the Kings Mandamus With this the Jews brought on Pilate to give sentence of death against the Lord of life who adjudged him both to die and to be guiltlesse of death Nè non videretur amicus Caesari Lest he should not be Cesars friend or rather lest Cesar should not be his friend But how much better had it been if these Judges had preferred the displeasure of the great Judge of all the world and said Da veniam Imperator tu minaris carcerem Deus gehennam I will forfeit mine head or mine office rather then my truth Thus they who be in scarlet should be valiant men To betray a cause for want of courage is worse then for want of understanding this is of ignorance but that is voluntary therefore not to be expiated but by double sacrifice A minister of justice of the two had better be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without an head of knowledge then an heart of execution But joyn head and heart together in this sacred cause wisedome going before like a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and courage coming after like a puissant army And this be said of the first point against this base-born Partiality descended either from reward favour passion or cowardise onely let me adde that No errour in justice doth so directly flie to the throat as respect of persons doth other do but lame her but this gives her the deadly mortall wound The second point is Obstinate offenders are chiefly to be looked unto Whosoever will not c. This obstinacy is indeed an Alecto in anothers likenesse a meer mock-vertue walking under the habit of constancy or fortitude as many other vices have their cloaks also but we shall uncase him presently These obstinates be of two sorts Dogmaticall and Practicall the one in opinion the other in life and conversation The Dogmaticall obstinates are such as erre in judgement as Schismaticks led by a particular spirit erring on the right hand and Papists who are carried with conceit of the religion of their fathers and forefathers and these erre on the left hand both of them thinking themselves constant but are indeed obstinate as we know To both I say with S. Paul It is good to be zealous in a good thing But of these after in as fit a place The Practicall obstinates are they we now have to deal withall They who do not obey must have judgement but it is a great and unsufferable increase of the fault when men will not obey for Non obedire shuts the doore but Nolle obedire doth bolt and rampiere it up against all duty to God and the King Such S. Paul calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 haters of God and hated of God these be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such as will not have God to reigne over them like Pharaoh who blusters at Gods message saying Who is the Lord not unlike the Thracians who in thunder and lightning used by way of revenge to shoot shafts at Jupiter They are described in Scripture to have words thoughts and lives all peremptorily wicked For their words they are stout against the Lord saying Depart from us c. They set their mouth against heaven and their tongue walketh throughout the earth Our lips are our own who is Lord over us Their thoughts are no better for they are haughty in their own conceit therein making a fool of the whole world As for their lives they have a resolution quidlibet audendi tell them of death and hell they are at a point for that They have made a league with death and with hell they are at agreement And as for counsel the medicine of putrid mindes either they will not be charmed like the adder which Cassiodorus saith stops one eare against the earth the other with his tail or if in any fit they give it the hearing they take it by whiffes as they do tobacco it 's no sooner in but it 's out with a puffe In their soaring presumptions they build Babels but as they begin in pride so they end in confusion for this obstinacy in sinning is ever the punishment of custome in sinne and is that which S. Paul calls the reprobate minde These are in respect of Gods and the Kings laws very outlaws lords of misrule in a Commonwealth The character of this obstinate is this or such like By birth he is a Gentleman or at least an heire of one who lived poore to leave him rich he is brought up to nothing but to live upon his lands for the most part he comes to his lands at one and twenty and by that time though young in yeares yet is he old in wickednesse by foure and twenty hath spent good part of his estate and if possibly he can he will sell his land twise or thrise over he never names God but to swear by him he is a coyner or minter of new and execrable oaths he fears not God nor man save Sergieants and Baliffes he hath already travelled through many prisons he owes for clothes of six or seven severall fashions yet he loseth no rent for he takes it all aforehand he undoes his tenants by suretiship for the young master if he gets into an Inne he comes not out till his horse pay the reckoning and there out of his window scoffes at those who go to church his discourse is nothing but rayling upon and disgracing the better minded Justices and other ministers of justice in every quarrell he is either principall or second he is a night-walker and if he should never be drunk he would die for want of sleep where ever he comes he misuses the Constable and beats the watch he never comes in any publique assembly but a play nor rides through a town without smoke at his nose but in processe of time his means spent his credit crackt his hopes forlorn having nothing left of a Gentleman but his long lock and his sword he had rather lack life then living and either kills a man or takes a purse and is brought to the assises Where if ye meet any such remember the charge Whosoever will not c.
to the Father by attempting an Index expurgatorius upon the very Commandments of God by rasing out the second to Christ by setting up a company of miserable saints for mediatours and joyning works to his all-sufficient sacrifice to the Holy Spirit by making the Popes lewd holinesse to be Christ his unerring vicar upon earth as if Christ were Non-resident from his Church when he hath said he will be with it to the end by his Spirit It is also against the Kings law and honour for it reacheth at his Crown and if the Catholick cause requires at his life too by setting some base villain for an Assassinate to change his miscreant life for the sacred life of Gods Anointed and a King thus dead by them dies an excommunicate and accursed person and the other an allowed and canonized Martyr Now the professours of this religion among us be among the obstinate offenders for few of them will conferre to be informed they who will conferre will not be convicted or if they be by Scriptures and arguments convicted yet will they not be convinced and if I had them to speak too I should have little hope to do them good yet they shall give me leave to bemone their condition Poore souls I speak of our common seduced ones they have no religion but that which is in Feofees hands and in whose hands is it The Italian proverb tells us The worst of Catholicks are Priests the worst of Priests are made Cardinals the worst of Cardinals made Pope And the Pope thus bred is the Feoffee in whom they betrust all their religion for they have no Faith but that of the Church to beleeve as the Church beleeves a short cut to heaven indeed And who is this Church is it not the Pope vertually and that upon this conceit that he cannot erre and yet some nay most of these Popes have been Sodomites and yet he cannot erre all of them have been ambitious Symonists and yet he cannot erre Some have mixt poison with the Sacrament and so if there were any such thing as transubstantiation had poisoned Christ himself and yet he cannot erre Some have been Hereticks condemned by their successours and yet he cannot erre Some have been Sorcerers and Necromancers and yet he cannot erre He must not be reproved though he should carry millions of souls to hell and yet he cannot erre One was a woman and yet he cannot erre sometimes there have been Popes and Antipopes together and yet he cannot erre sometime none at all for divers yeares together then onely he could not erre Behold your Religion your Faith your Church your God in this your Pope O Catholicks Poore souls who bear so great adventure in so leaking a bottom If these things be so and many here present know them undoubtedly to be so may we not wonder that so many are seduced upon these grounds but more that this heresie should dayly gather strength and number and what the reason should be of the increase of Popery We have good laws against them but they like our arms lie up and rust What do we not still smell the gunpowder beyond which is Terra incognita no man knowing what is between it and hell do we not know that for these sixtie yeares and more they have laboured of nothing so much as the undoing of their dearest countrey which bred and bare them Blessed be God we have the law in our hands for had they it in theirs their little finger would be heavier upon us then our whole body is upon them Judges complain for want of information what have the Justices none in their divisions or do their lands lie too neare together some others complain they have promoted and nothing done Well I beseech you all joyn to put those laws in execution but alas they are put rather to execution like those excellent proclamations against Priests and Jesuites which once proclaimed no more is done but to nail them to a post and there they hang like malefactours But remember I beseech you all that Sarah and her sonne can have no securitie unlesse Hagar and her brat be beaten out of doores Superstitious Papists will not obey the law of God nor the Kings law therefore Let them have judgement without delay Secondly Gods law and the Kings is violated by blasphemous swearing Our land hath mourned by plague pestilence and famine and why not for oaths is there any thing dearer to God then his name hath he not set a penalty upon the breach of this commandment more then upon any other and yet how savagely and barbarously is it kicked spurned tossed and blasphemed by all sorts from Nobles to Peasants I see and observe that Noblemen and Gentlemen give over any fashion when it grows common oh that they would give over swearing seeing every clown and carter every hostler and tapster will swear compleatly We know also the Kings law against this sinne but men will not see it executed but will suffer that infamy put upon Gods name that they will not endure in their own What my good name saith every one oh you touch my free-hold nay men will not endure their Father Master or Friend to be touched in his name but will draw their swords in the quarrell and is not Gods name as deare to him as thine to thee or is not God more to thee then Friend Master or Father Suffer not then so great dishonour done to his name but carry every oath to the Justice and let him pay his twelve pence a petty penalty indeed for so great a sinne but yet if duely executed I presume by this time many great men had been reformed or else sworn out of all their living But alas say some the Justices themselves will swear sometimes Oh! say not so what the keepers of the vines not to keep their own vines to be the guardians of the Kings law and themselves to be breakers of it I dare not entertain such a thought of many of them but if any do break this law I charge him upon his oath to execute the law upon himself seeing he never sweares but in the hearing of a Justice of peace To end this point I can never sufficiently bewail the misery of the present and succeeding generation seeing now oaths do even strive for number with words and children in the streets can no sooner speak then swear To all swearers therefore I say Why will ye hazard Gods threatned displeasure for a sinne so needlesse and yet so dangerous To others I say suffer none to vomit and belch out oaths in thy hearing without penaltie of the Kings law Blasphemous swearers do violate Gods law and the Kings therefore Let them have judgement without delay In the next place Gods and the Kings law is broken by profane sabbath-breaking for God hath placed this commandment between the first and second table like the common sense between the exteriour and interiour senses as being usefull to both