forbidd the Law or disarm justice from having legal power against any King No other supreme Magistrate in what kind of Government soever laies claim to any such enormous Privilege wherfore then should any King who is but one kind of Magistrat and set over the people for no other end then they Next in order of time to the Laws of Moses are those of Christ who declares professedly his judicature to be spiritual abstract from Civil managements and therfore leaves all Nations to thir own particular Lawes and way of Government Yet because the Church hath a kind of Jurisdiction within her own bounds and that also though in process of time much corrupted and plainly turn'd into a corporal judicature yet much approv'd by this King it will be firm anough and valid against him if subjects by the Laws of Church also be invested with a power of judicature both without and against thir King though pretending and by them acknowledg'd next and immediatly under Christ supreme head and Governour Theodosius one of the best Christian Emperours having made a slaughter of the Thessalonians for sedition but too cruelly was excommunicated to his face by Saint Ambrose who was his subject and excommunion is the utmost of Ecclesiastical Judicature a spiritual putting to death But this yee will say was onely an example Read then the Story and it will appeare both that Ambrose avouch'd it for the Law of God and Theodosius confess'd it of his own accord to be so and that the Law of God was not to be made voyd in him for any reverence to his Imperial power From hence not to be tedious I shall pass into our own Land of Britain and shew that Subjects heer have exercis'd the utmost of spirituall Judicature and more then spirituall against thir Kings his Predecessors Vortiger for committing incest with his daughter was by Saint German at that time his subject cursd and condemnd in a Brittish Counsel about the yeare 448 and thereupon soon after was depos'd Mauricus a King in Wales for breach of Oath and the murder of Cynetus was excomunicated and curst with all his offspring by Oudoceus Bishop of Landaff in full Synod about the yeare 560 and not restor'd till he had repented Morcant another King in Wales having slain Frioc his Uncle was faine to come in Person and receave judgement from the same Bishop and his Clergie who upon his penitence acquitted him for no other cause then lest the Kingdom should be destitute of a Successour in the Royal Line These examples are of the Primitive Brittish and Episcopal Church long ere they had any commerce or communion with the Church of Rome What power afterward of deposing Kings and so consequently of putting them to death was assum'd and practis'd by the Canon Law I omitt as a thing generally known Certainly if whole Councels of the Romish Church have in the midst of their dimness discern'd so much of Truth as to decree at Constance and at Basil and many of them to avouch at Trent also that a Councel is above the Pope and may judge him though by them not deni'd to be the Vicar of Christ we in our clearer light may be asham'd not to discern furder that a Parlament is by all equity and right above a King and may judge him whose reasons and pretensions to hold of God onely as his immediat Vicegerent we know how farr fetch'd they are and insufficient As for the Laws of man it would ask a Volume to repeat all that might be cited in this point against him from all Antiquity In Greece Orestes the Son of Agamemnon and by succession King of Argos was in that Countrey judg'd and condemn'd to death for killing his Mother whence escaping he was judg'd againe though a Stranger before the great Counsel of Areopagus in Athens And this memorable act of Judicature was the first that brought the Justice of that grave Senat into fame and high estimation over all Greece for many ages after And in the same Citty Tyrants were to undergoe Legal sentence by the Laws of Solon The Kings of Sparta though descended lineally from Hercules esteem'd a God among them were oft'n judg'd and somtimes put to death by the most just and renowned Laws of Lycurgus who though a King thought it most unequal to bind his Subjects by any Law to which he bound not himself In Rome the Laws made by Valerius Publicola soon after the expelling of Tarquin and his race expell'd without a writt'n Law the Law beeing afterward writt'n and what the Senat decreed against Nero that he should be judg'd and punish'd according to the Laws of thir Ancestors and what in like manner was decreed against other Emperours is vulgarly known as it was known to those heathen and found just by nature ere any Law mentiond it And that the Christian Civil Law warrants like power of Judicature to Subjects against Tyrants is writt'n clearly by the best and famousest Civilians For if it was decreed by Theodosius and stands yet firme in the Code of Justinian that the Law is above the Emperour then certainly the Emperour being under Law the Law may judge him and if judge him may punish him proving tyrannous how els is the Law above him or to what purpose These are necessary deductions and therafter hath bin don in all Ages and Kingdoms oftner then to be heer recited But what need we any furder search after the Law of other Lands for that which is so fully and so plainly set down lawfull in our own Where ancient Books tell us Bracton Fleta and others that the King is under Law and inferiour to his Court of Parlament that although his place to doe Justice be highest yet that he stands as liable to receave Justice as the meanest of his Kingdom Nay Alfred the most worthy King and by som accounted first abolute Monarch of the Saxons heer so ordain'd as is cited out of an ancient Law Book call'd the Mirror in Rights of the Kingdom p. 31. where it is complain'd on As the sovran abuse of all that the King should be deem'd above the Law whereas he ought be subject to it by his Oath Of which Oath anciently it was the last clause that the King should be as liable and obedient to suffer right as others of his people And indeed it were but fond and sensless that the King should be accountable to every petty suit in lesser Courts as we all know he was and not be subject to the Judicature of Parlament in the main matters of our common safety or destruction that he should be answerable in the ordinary cours of Law for any wrong don to a privat Person and not answerable in Court of Parlament for destroying the whole Kingdom By all this and much more that might be added as in an argument overcopious rather then barren we see it manifest that all Laws both of God and Man are made without exemption of any person
down all other men into the condition of Slaves and beasts they quite loose thir commendation He confesses a rational sovrantie of soule and freedom of will in every man and yet with an implicit repugnancy would have his reason the sovran ofthat sovranty and would captivate and make useless that natural freedom of will in all other men but himself But them that yeeld him this obedience he so well rewards as to pronounce them worthy to be Slaves They who have lost all to be his Subjects may stoop and take up the reward What that freedom is which cannot be deni'd him as a King because it belongs to him as a Man and a Christian I understand not If it be his negative voice it concludes all men who have not such a negative as his against a whole Parlament to be neither Men nor Christians and what was he himself then all this while that we deni'd it him as a King Will hee say that hee enjoy'd within himself the less freedom for that Might not he both as a Man and as a Christian have raignd within himself in full sovranty of soule no man repining but that his outward and imperious will must invade the civil Liberties of a Nation Did wee therfore not permit him to use his reason or his conscience not permitting him to bereave us the use of ours And might not he have enjoy'd both as a King governing us as Free men by what Laws we our selves would be govern'd It was not the inward use of his reason and of his conscience that would content him but to use them both as a Law over all his Subjects in whatever he declar'd as a King to like or dislike Which use of reason most reasonless and unconseionable is the utmost that any Tyrant ever pretended over his Vassals In all wise Nations the Legislative power and the judicial execution of that power have bin most commonly distinct and in several hands but yet the former supreme the other subordinat If then the King be only set up to execute the Law which is indeed the highest of his office he ought no more to make or forbidd the making of any law agreed upon in Parlament then other inferior Judges who are his Deputies Neither can he more reject a Law offerd him by the Commons then he can new make a Law which they reject And yet the more to credit and uphold his cause he would seeme to have Philosophie on his side straining her wise dictates to unphilosophical purposes But when Kings come so low as to fawn upon Philosophie which before they neither valu'd nor understood t is a signe that failes not they are then put to thir last Trump And Philosophie as well requites them by not suffering her gold'n sayings either to become their lipps or to be us'd as masks and colours of injurious and violent deeds So that what they presume to borrow from her sage and vertuous rules like the Riddle of Sphinx not understood breaks the neck of thir own cause But now againe to Politics He cannot think the Majestie of the Crowne of England to be bound by any Coronation Oath in a blind and brutish formalitie to consent to whatever its Subjects in Parlament shall require What Tyrant could presume to say more when he meant to kick down all Law Goverment and bond of Oath But why he so desires to absolve himself the Oath of his Coronation would be worth the knowing It cannot but be yeelded that the Oath which bindes him to performance of his trust ought in reason to contain the summ of what his chief trust and Office is But if it neither doe enjoyn nor mention to him as a part of his duty the making or the marring of any Law or scrap of Law but requires only his assent to to those Laws which the people have already chos'n or shall choose for so both the Latin of that Oath and the old English and all Reason admits that the People should not lose under a new King what freedom they had before then that negative voice so contended for to deny the passing of any Law which the Commons choose is both against the Oath of his Coronation and his Kingly Office And if the King may deny to pass what the Parlament hath chos'n to be a Law then doth the King make himself Superiour to his whole Kingdom which not onely the general Maxims of Policy gainsay but eev'n our own standing Laws as hath bin cited to him in Remonstrances heertosore that The King hath two Superiours the Law and his Court of Parlament But this he counts to be a blind and brutish formality whether it be Law or Oath or his duty and thinks to turn itoff with wholsom words and phrases which he then first learnt of the honest People when they were so oft'n compell'd to use them against those more truely blind and brutish formalities thrust upon us by his own command not in civil matters onely but in Spiritual And if his Oath to perform what the People require when they Crown him be in his esteem a brutish formality then doubtless those other Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy tak'n absolute on our part may most justly appear to us in all respects as brutish and as formal and so by his own sentence no more binding to us then his Oath to him As for his instance in case He and the House of Peers attempted to enjoyne the House of Commons it beares no equalitie for hee and the Peers represent but themselves the Commons are the whole Kingdom Thus he concludes his Oath to be fully discharg'd in Governing by Laws already made as being not bound to pass any new if his Reason bids him deny And so may infinite mischeifs grow and he with a pernicious negative may deny us all things good or just or safe wherof our ancestors in times much differing from ours had either no fore sight or no occasion to foresee while our general good and safety shall depend upo the privat and overweening Reason of one obstinat Man who against all the Kingdom if he list will interpret both the Law and his Oath of Coronation by the tenor of his own will Which he himself confesses to be an arbitrary power yet doubts not in his Argument to imply as if he thought it more fit the Parlament should be subject to his will then he to their advice a man neither by nature nor by nurture wise How is it possible that he in whom such Principles as these were so deep rooted could ever though restor'd again have raign'd otherwise then Tyrannically He objects That force was but a slavish method to dispell his error But how oft'n shall it be answer'd him that no force was us'd to dispell the error out of his head but to drive it from off our necks for his error was imperious and would command all other men to ronounce thir own reason and understanding till they perish'd under
binds him to no less neither is he at all by his Office to interpose against a Parlament in the making or not making of any Law but to take that for just and good legally which is there decreed and to see it executed accordingly Nor was he set over us to vie wisdom with his Parlament but to be guided by them any of whome possibly may as farr excell him in the gift of wisdom as he them in place and dignitie But much neerer is it to impossibilitie that any King alone should be wiser then all his councel sure anough it was not he though no King ever before him so much contended to have it thought so And if the Parlament so thought not but desir'd him to follow their advice and deliberation in things of public concernment he accounts it the same proposition as if Sampson had bin mov'd to the putting out his eyes that the Philistims might abuse him And thus out of an unwise or pretended feare least others should make a scorn of him for yeilding to his Parlament he regards not to give cause of worse suspicion that he made a scorn of his regal Oath But to exclude him from all power of deniall seemes an arrogance in the Parlament he means what in him then to deny against the Parlament None at all by what he argues For by Petitioning they confess thir inferioritie and that obliges them to rest if not satisfi'd yet quieted with such an Answer as the will and reason of their Superior thinks sit to give First Petitioning in better English is no more then requesting or requiring and men require not favours onely but thir due and that not onely from Superiors but from Equals and Inferiors also The noblest Romans when they stood for that which was a kind of Regal honour the Consulship were wont in a submissive manner to goe about and begg that highest Dignity of the meanest Plebeians naming them man by man which in their tongue was call'd Petitio consulatus And the Parlament of England Petition'd the King not because all of them were inferior to him but because he was superior to any one of them which they did of civil custom and for fashions sake more then of duty for by plaine Law cited before the Parlament is his Superiour But what law in any trial or dispute enjoynes a free man to rest quieted though not satisfi'd with the will and reason of his Superior It were a mad law that would subject reason to superioritie of place And if our highest consultations and purpos'd lawes must be terminated by the Kings will then is the will of one man our Law and no suttletie of dispute can redeem the Parlament and Nation from being Slaves neither can any Tyrant require more then that his will or reason though not satisfying should yet be rested in and determin all things We may conclude therfore that when the Parlament petition'd the King it was but meerly forme let it be as foolish and absurd as he pleases It cannot certainly be so absurd as what he requires that the Parlament should confine thir own and all the Kingdoms reason to the will of one man because it was his hap to succeed his Father For neither God nor the Lawes have subjected us to his will nor sett his reason to be our sovran above Law which must needs be if he can strangle it in the birth but sett his person over us in the sovran execution of such Laws as the Parlament establish The Parlament therfore without any usurpation hath had it alwaies in thir power to limit and confine the exorbitancie of Kings whether they call it thir will thir reason or thir conscience But this above all was never expected nor is to be endur'd that a King who is bound by law and Oath to follow the advice of his Parlament should be permitted to except against them as young Statesmen and proudly to suspend his following thir advice untill his seven yeares experience had shewn him how well they could govern themselves Doubtless the Law never suppos'd so great an arrogance could be in one man that he whose seventeen yeares unexperience had almost ruin'd all should sit another seven yeares Schoolmaster to tutor those who were sent by the whole Realme to be his Counselers and teachers And with what modesty can he pretend to be a Statesman himself who with his Fathers Kingcraft and his own did never that of his own accord which was not directly opposit to his professed Interest both at home and abroad discontenting and alienating his Subjects at home weakning and deserting his Confederats abroad and with them the Common cause of Religion So that the whole course of his raign by an example of his own furnishing hath resembl'd Phaeton more then Phoebus and forc'd the Parlament to drive like Jehu which Omen tak'n from his own mouth God hath not diverted And he on the other side might have rememberd that the Parlament sit in that body not as his Subjects but as his Superiors call'd not by him but by the Law not onely twice every yeare but as oft as great affaires require to be his Counselers and Dictators though he stomac it nor to be dissolv'd at his pleasure but when all greevances be first remov'd all Petitions heard and answer'd This is not onely Reason but the known Law of the Land When he heard that Propositions would be sent him he satt conjecturing what they would propound and because they propounded what he expected not he takes that to be a warrant for his denying them But what did he expect he expected that the Parlament would reinforce some old Laws But if those Laws were not a sufficient remedy to all greevances nay were found to be greevances themselves when did we loose that other part of our freedom to establish new He thought some injuries done by himself and others to the Common wealth were to be repair'd But how could that be while he the chief offender took upon him to be sole Judge both of the injury and the reparation He staid till the advantages of his Crown consider'd might induce him to condiscend to the Peoples good Whenas the Crown it self with all those advantages were therfore giv'n him that the peoples good should be first consider'd not bargain'd for and bought by inches with the bribe of more offertures and advantages to his Crown He look'd for moderate desires of due Reformation as if any such desires could be immoderate He lookd for such a Reformation both in Church and State as might preserve the roots of every greevance and abuse in both still growing which he calls The foundation and essentials and would have onely the excrescencies of evil prun'd away for the present as was plotted before that they might grow fast anough between Triennial Parlaments to hinder them by worke anough besides from ever striking at the root He alleges They should have had regard to the Laws in force
so but privatly in the Counsel Books inroull'd no Parlament that if accommodation had succeeded upon what termes soever such a devilish fraud was prepar'd that the King in his own esteem had bin absolv'd from all performance as having treated with Rebels and no Parlament and they on the other side in stead of an expected happines had bin brought under the Hatchet Then no doubt Warr had ended that Massacher and Tyranny might begin These jealousies however rais'd let all men see whether they be diminish'd or allay'd by the Letters of his own Cabinet open'd And yet the breach of this Treaty is lay'd all upon the Parlament and thir Commissioners with odious Names of Pertinacy hatred of Peace Faction and Covetousness nay his own Bratt Superstition is layd to their charge not withstanding his heer profess'd resolution to continue both the Order Maintenance and Authority of Prelats as a truth of God And who were most to blame in the unsuccessfullness of that Treaty his appeale is to Gods decision beleeving to be very excusable at that Tribunal But if ever man gloried in an unflexible stifness he came not behind any and that grand Maxim always to put somthing into his Treaties which might give colour to refuse all that was in other things granted and to make them signifie nothing was his own Principal Maxim and particular instructions to his Commissioners Yet all by his own verdit must be consterd Reason in the King and depraved temper in the Parlament That the highest Tide of success with these principles and designes set him not above a Treaty no great wonder And yet if that be spok'n to his praise the Parlament therin surpass'd him who when he was thir vanquish'd and thir captive his forces utterly brok'n and disbanded yet offerd him three several times no wors proposals or demands then when he stood fair to be thir Conqueror But that imprudent surmise that his lowest Ebb could not set him below a Fight was a presumption that ruin'd him He presag'd the future unsuccessfulness of Treaties by the unwillingness of som men to treat and could not see what was present that thir unwillingness had good cause to proceed from the continual experience of his own obstinacy and breach of word His prayer therfore of forgiveness to the guilty of that treaties breaking he had good reason to say heartily over as including no man in that guilt sooner then himself As for that Protestation following in his Prayer How oft have I entreated for peace but when I speak therof they make them ready to Warr unless he thought himself still in that perfidious mist between Colebrook and Houndslow and thought that mist could hide him from the eye of Heav'n as well as of Man after such a bloody recompence giv'n to our first offers of Peace how could this in the sight of Heav'n without horrours of conscience be utter'd XIX Vpon the various events of the Warr. IT is no new or unwonted thing for bad men to claim as much part in God as his best servants to usurp and imitate thir words and appropriate to themselves those properties which belong onely to the good and righteous This not onely in Scripis familiarly to be found but heer also in this Chapter of Apocrypha He tells us much why it pleas'd God to send him Victory or Loss although what in so doing was the intent of God he might be much mistak'n as to his own particular but we are yet to learn what real good use he made therof in his practice Those numbers which he grew to from small beginnings were not such as out of love came to protect him for none approv'd his actions as a King except Courtiers and Prelats but were such as fled to be protected by him from the fear of that Reformation which the pravity of thir lives would not bear Such a Snowball he might easily gather by rowling through those cold and dark provinces of ignorance and leudness where on a sudden he became so numerous He imputes that to Gods protection which to them who persist in a bad cause is either his long-suffering or his hard'ning and that to wholesom chastisement which were the gradual beginnings of a severe punishment For if neither God nor nature put civil power in the hands of any whomsoever but to a lawfull end and commands our obedience to the autority of Law onely not to the Tyrannical force of any person and if the Laws of our Land have plac'd the Sword in no mans single hand so much as to unsheath against a forren enemie much less upon the native people but have plac'd it in that elective body of the Parlament to whom the making repealing judging and interpreting of Law it self was also committed as was fittest so long as wee intended to bee a free Nation and not the Slaves of one mans will then was the King himself disobedient and rebellious to that Law by which he raign'd and by autority of Parlament to raise armes against him in defence of Law and Libertie we doe not onely think but beleeve and know was justifiable both by the Word of God the Laws of the Land and all lawfull Oaths and they who sided with him fought against all these The same Allegations which he uses for himself and his Party may as well fitt any Tyrant in the world for let the Parlament bee call'd a Faction when the King pleases and that no Law must bee made or chang'd either civil or religious because no Law will content all sides then must be made or chang'd no Law at all but what a Tyrant be he Protestant or Papist thinks fitt Which tyrannous assertion forc'd upon us by the Sword he who fights against and dyes fighting if his other sins overweigh not dyes a Martyr undoubtedly both of the Faith and of the Common-wealth and I hold it not as the opinion but as the full beleef and persuasion of farr holier and wiser men then Parasitie Preachers Who without their dinner-Doctrin know that neither King Law civil Oaths or Religion was ever establish'd without the Parlament and thir power is the same to abrogate as to establish neither is any thing to bee thought establish'd which that House declares to be abolisht Where the Parlament sitts there inseparably sitts the King there the Laws there our Oaths and whatsoever can be civil in Religion They who fought for the Parlament in the truest sense fought for all these who fought for the King divided from his Parlament fought for the shadow of a King against all these and for things that were not as if they were establisht It were a thing monstrously absurd and contradictory to give the Parlament a Legislative power and then to upbraid them for transgressing old Establishments But the King and his Party having lost in this Quarrel thir Heav'n upon Earth beginn to make great reckning of Eternal Life and at an easie rate in forma Pauperis Canonize one another
which made him much the fitter man to raigne But they who suffer as oppressors Tyrants violaters of Law and persecutors of Reformation without appearance of repenting if they once get hold againe of that dignity and power which they had lost are but whetted and inrag'd by what they suffer'd against those whom they look upon as them that caus'd thir sufferings How he hath bin subject to the scepter of Gods word and spirit though acknowledg'd to be the best Goverment and what his dispensation of civil power hath bin with what Justice and what honour to the public peace it is but looking back upon the whole catalogue of his deeds and that will be sufficient to remember us The Cup of Gods physic as he calls it what alteration it wrought in him to a firm healthfulness from any surfet or excess wherof the people generally thought him sick if any man would goe about to prove we have his own testimony following heer that it wrought none at all First he hath the same fix'd opinion and esteem of his old Ephesian Goddess call'd the Church of England as he had ever and charges strictly his Son after him to persevere in that Anti-Papal Scism for it is not much better as that which will be necessary both for his soules and the Kingdoms Peace But if this can be any foundation of the kingdoms peace which was the first cause of our distractions let common sense be Judge It is a rule and principle worthy to be known by Christians that no Scripture no nor so much as any ancient Creed bindes our Faith or our obedience to any Church whatsoever denominated by a particular name farr less if it be distinguisht by a several Goverment from that which is indeed Catholic No man was ever bidd be subject to the Church of Corinth Rome or Asia but to the Church without addition as it held faithfull to the rules of Scripture and the Goverment establisht in all places by the Apostles which at first was universally the same in all Churches and Congregations not differing or distinguisht by the diversity of Countries Territories or civil bounds That Church that from the name of a distinct place takes autority to set up a distinct Faith or Government is a Scism and Faction not a Church It were an injurie to condemn the Papist of absurdity and contradiction for adhering to his Catholic Romish Religion if we for the pleasure of a King and his politic considerations shall adhere to a Catholic English But suppose the Church of England were as it ought to be how is it to us the safer by being so nam'd and establisht when as that very name and establishment by his contriving or approbation serv'd for nothing els but to delude us and amuse us while the Church of England insensibly was almost chang'd and translated into the Church of Rome Which as every Man knows in general to be true so the particular Treaties and Transactions tending to that conclusion are at large discover'd in a Book intitld the English Pope But when the people discerning these abuses began to call for Reformation in order to which the Parlament demanded of the King to unestablish that Prelatical Goverment which without Scripture had usurpt over us strait as Pharaoh accus'd of Idleness the Israelites that sought leave to goe and sacrifice to God he layes faction to thir charge And that we may not hope to have ever any thing reform'd in the Church either by him or his Son he forewarnes him That the Devil of Rebellion doth most commonly turn himself into an Angel of Reformation and sayes anough to make him hate it as he worst of Evils and the bane of his Crown nay he counsels him to let nothing seem little or despicable to him so as not speedily and effcteually to suppress errors and Scisms Wherby we may perceave plainly that our consciences were destin'd to the same servitude and persecution if not wors then before whether under him or if it should so happ'n under his Son who count all Protestant Churches erroneous and scismatical which are not episcopal His next precept is concerning our civil Liberties which by his sole voice and predominant will must be circumscrib'd and not permitted to extend a hands bredth furder then his interpretation of the Laws already settl'd And although all human laws are but the offspring of that frailty that fallibility and imperfection which was in thir Authors wherby many Laws in the change of ignorant and obscure Ages may be found both scandalous and full of greevance to their Posterity that made them and no Law is furder good then mutable upon just occasion yet if the removing of an old Law or the making of a new would save the Kingdom we shall not have it unless his arbitrary voice will so far slack'n the stiff curb of his prerogative as to grant it us who are as free born to make our own law as our fathers were who made these we have Where are then the English Liberties which we boast to have bin left us by our Progenitors To that he answers that Our Liberties consist in the enjoyment of the fruits of our industry and the benefit of those Laws to which we our selves have consented First for the injoyment of those fruits which our industry and labours have made our own upon our own what Privilege is that above what the Turks Jewes and Mores enjoy under the Turkish Monarchy For without that kind of Justice which is also in Argiers among Theevs and Pirates between themselvs no kind of Government no Societie just or unjust could stand no combination or conspiracy could stick together Which he also acknowledges in these words That if the Crown upon his head be so heavy as to oppress the whole body the weakness of inferiour members cannot return any thing of strength honour or safety to the head but that a necessary debilitation must follow So that this Liberty of the Subject concerns himself and the subsistence of his own regal power in the first place and before the consideration of any right belonging to the Subject VVe expect therfore somthing more that must distinguish free Goverment from slavish But in stead of that this King though ever talking and protesting as smooth as now sufferd it in his own hearing to be Preacht and pleaded without controule or check by them whom he most favourd and upheld that the Subject had no property of his own Goods but that all was the Kings right Next for the benefit of those Laws to which we our selves have consented we never had it under him for not to speak of Laws ill executed when the Parlament and in them the people have consented to divers Laws and according to our ancient Rights demanded them he took upon him to have a negative will as the transcendent and ultimat Law above all our Laws and to rule us forcibly by Laws to which we our selves did not consent
but complain'd of Thus these two heads wherein the utmost of his allowance heer will give our Liberties leave to consist the one of them shall be so farr onely made good to us as may support his own interest and Crown from ruin or debilitation and so farr Turkish Vassals enjoy as much liberty under Mahomet and the Grand Signor the other we neither yet have enjoyd under him nor were ever like to doe under the Tyranny of a negative voice which he claimes above the unanimous consent and power of a whole Nation virtually in the Parlament In which negative voice to have bin cast by the doom of Warr and put to death by those who vanquisht him in thir own defence he reck'ns to himself more then a negative Martyrdom But Martyrs bear witness to the truth not to themselves If I beare witness of my self saith Christ my witness is not true He who writes himself Martyr by his own inscription is like an ill Painter who by writing on the shapeless Picture which he hath drawn is fain to tell passengers what shape it is which els no man could imagin no more then how a Martyrdom can belong to him who therfore dyes for his Religion because it is establisht Certainly if Agrippa had turn'd Christian as he was once turning and had put to death Scribes and Pharisees for observing the Law of Moses and refusing Christianitie they had di'd a truer Martyrdom For those Laws were establisht by God and Moses these by no warrantable authors of Religion whose Laws in all other best reformed Churches are rejected And if to die for an establshment of Religion be Martyrdom then Romish Priests executed for that which had so many hundred yeares bin establisht in this Land are no wors Martyrs then he Lastly if to die for the testimony of his own conscience be anough to make him Martyr what Heretic dying for direct blasphemie as som have don constantly may not boast a Martyrdom As for the constitution or repeale of civil Laws that power lying onely in the Parlament which he by the verry law of his coronation was to grant them not to debarr them nor to preserve a lesser Law with the contempt and violation of a greater it will conclude him not so much as in a civil and metaphoricall sense to have di'd a Martyr of our Laws but a plaine transgressor of them And should the Parlament endu'd with Legislative power make our Laws and be after to dispute them peece meale with the reson conscience humour passion fansie folly obstinacy or other ends of one man whose sole word and will shall baffle and unmake what all the wisdom of a Parlament hath bin deliberatly framing what a ridiculous and contemptible thing a Parlament would soon be and what a base unworthy Nation we who boast our freedom and send them with the manifest peril of thir lives to preserve it they who are not mark'd by destiny for Slaves may apprehend In this servil condition to have kept us still under hatches he both resolves heer to the last and so instructs his Son As to those offerd condescensions of Charitable connivence or toleration if we consider what went before and what follows they moulder into nothing For what with not suffering ever so little to seem a despicable scism without effectual suppression as he warn'd him before and what with no opposition of Law Goverment or establisht Religion to be permitted which is his following proviso and wholly within his own construction what a miserable and suspected toleration under Spies and haunting Promooters we should enjoy is apparent Besides that it is so farr beneath the honour of a Parlament and free Nation to begg and supplicat the Godship of one fraile Man for the bare and simple toleration of what they all consent to be both just pious and best pleasing to God while that which is erroneous unjust and mischeivous in the church or State shall by him alone against them all be kept up and establisht and they censur'd the while for a covetous ambitious sacrilegious faction Another bait to allure the people is the charge he laies upon his Son to be tender of them Which if we should beleeve in part because they are his Heard his Cattell the Stock upon his ground as he accounts them whom to wast and destroy would undoe himself yet the inducement which he brings to move him renders the motion it self somthing suspicious For if Princes need no Palliations as he tells his Son wherfore is it that he himself hath so oft'n us'd them Princes of all other men have not more change of Rayment in thir Wardrobes then variety of Shifts and palliations in thir solemn actingsand pretences to the People To try next if he can insnare the prime Men of those who have oppos'd him whom more truly then his meaning was he calls the Patrons and Vindicators of the People he gives out Indemnity and offers Acts of Oblivion But they who with a good conscience and upright heart did thir civil duties in the sight of God and in thir several places to resist Tyranny and the violence of Superstition banded both against them he may be sure will never seek to be forgiv'n that which may be justly attributed to thir immortal praise nor will assent ever to the guilty blotting out of those actions before men by which thir Faith assures them they chiefly stand approv'd and are had in remembrance before the throne of God He exhorts his son not tostudy revenge But how far he or at least they about him intend to follow that exhortation was seen lately at the Hague now lateliest at Madrid where to execute in the basest manner though but the smallest part of that savage barbarous revenge which they doe no thing elsbut study contemplate they car'd not to let the world know them for profess'd Traitors assassinatersof all Law both Divine and human eev'n of that last and most extensive Law kept inviolable to public persons among all fair enemies in the midst of uttermost defiance and hostility How implacable therefore they would be after any termes of closure or admittance for the future or any like opportunity giv'n them heerafter it will be wisdom our safety to beleeve rather and prevent then to make triall And it will concerne the multitude though courted heer to take heed how they seek to hide or colour thir own fickleness and instability with a bad repentance of thir well-doing and thir fidelity to the better cause to which at first so cherfully and conscientiously they joyn'd themselves He returnes againe to extoll the Church of England and againe requires his Son by the joynt autority of a Father and a King not to let his heart receive the least check or disaffection against it And not without cause for by that meanes having sole influence upon the Clergy and they upon the people after long search and many disputes he could not
though briefly in regard so much on this Subject hath been Writt'n lately It happn'd once as we find in Esdras and Josephus Authors not less beleiv'd then any under sacred to be a great and solemn debate in the Court of Darius what thing was to be counted strongest of all other He that could resolve this in reward of his excelling wisdom should be clad in Purple drink in Gold sleep on a Bed of Gold and sitt next Darius None but they doubtless who were reputed wise had the Question propounded to them Who after som respit giv'n them by the King to consider in full Assembly of all his Lords and gravest Counselors returnd severally what they thought The first held that Wine was strongest another that the King was strongest But Zorobabel Prince of the Captive Jewes and Heire to the Crown of Judah being one of them proov'd Women to be stronger then the King for that he himself had seen a Concubin take his Crown from off his head to set it upon her own And others besides him have lately seen the like Feat don and not in jest Yet he proov'd on and it was so yeilded by the King himself all his sages that neither Wine nor Women nor the King but Truth of all other things was the strongest For me though neither ask'd nor in a Nation that gives such rewards to wisdom I shall pronounce my sentence somwhat different from Zorobabel and shall defend that either Truth and Justice are all one for Truth is but Justice in our knowledge and Justice is but Truth in our practice and he indeed so explaines himself in saying that with Truth is no accepting of Persons which is the property of Justice or els if there be any odds that Justice though not stronger then truth yet by her office is to put forth and exhibit more strength in the affaires of mankind For Truth is properly no more then Contemplation and her utmost efficiency is but teaching but Justice in her very essence is all strength and activity and hath a Sword put into her hand to use against all violence and oppression on the earth Shee it is most truely who accepts no Person and exempts none from the severity of her stroke Shee never suffers injury to prevaile but when fashood first prevailes over Truth and that also is a kind of Justice don on them who are so deluded Though wicked Kings and Tyrants counterfet her Sword as som did that Buckler fabl'd to fall from Heav'n into the Capitol yet shee communicates her power to none but such as like her self are just or at least will do Justice For it were extreme partialitie and injustice the flat denyall and overthrow of her self to put her own authentic Sword into the hand of an unjust and wicked Man or so farr to accept and exalt one mortal person above his equals that he alone shall have the punishing of all other men transgressing and not receive like punishment from men when he himself shall be found the highest transgressor We may conclude therfore that Justice above all other things is and ought to be the strongest Shee is the strength the Kingdom the power and majestie of all Ages Truth her self would subscribe to this though Darius and all the Monarchs of the World should deny And if by sentence thus writt'n it were my happiness to set free the minds of English men from longing to returne poorly under that Captivity of Kings from which the strength and supreme Sword of Justice hath deliverd them I shall have don a work not much inferior to that of Zorobabel who by well praising and extolling the force of Truth in that contemplative strength conquer'd Darius and freed his Countrey and the people of God from the Captivity of Babylon Which I shall yet not despaire to doe if they in this Land whose minds are yet Captive be but as ingenuous to acknowledge the strength and supremacie of Justice as that heathen king was to confess the strength of truth or let them but as he did grant that and they will soon perceave that Truth resignes all her outward strength to Justice Justice therfore must needs be strongest both in her own and in the strength of Truth But if a King may doe among men whatsoever is his will and pleasure and notwithstanding be unaccountable to men then contrary to this magnifi'd wisdom of Zorobabel neither Truth nor Justice but the King is strongest of all other things which that Persian Monarch himself in the midst of all his pride and glory durst not assume Let us see therfore what this King hath to affirm why the sentence of Justice and the weight of that Sword which shee delivers into the hands of men should be more partial to him offending then to all others of human race First he pleades that No Law of God or man gives to subjects any power of judicature without or against him Which assertion shall be prov'd in every part to be most untrue The first express Law of God giv'n to mankind was that to Noah as a Law in general to all the Sons of men And by that most ancient and universal Law whosoever sheddeth mans blood by man shall his blood be shed we find heer no exception If a king therfore doe this to a King and that by men also the same shall be don This in the Law of Moses which came next several times is repeated and in one place remarkably Numb 35. Ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer but he shall surely be put to death the Land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shedd therein but by the blood of him that shed it This is so spok'n as that which concern'd all Israel not one man alone to see perform'd and if no satisfaction were to be tak'n then certainly no exception Nay the King when they should set up any was to observe the whole Law and not onely to see it don but to do it that his heart might not be lifted up above his Brethren to dreame of vain and reasonless prerogatives or exemptions wherby the Law it self must needs be founded in unrighteousness And were that true which is most fals that all Kings are the Lords Anointed it were yet absurd to think that the Anointment of God should be as it were a charme against Law and give them privilege who punish others to sin themselves unpunishably The high Preist was the Lords anointed as well as any King and with the same consecrated oile yet Salomon had put to death Abiathar had it not bin for other respects then that anointment If God himself say to Kings Touch not mine anointed meaning his chos'n people as is evident in that Psalme yet no man will argue thence that he protects them from Civil Laws if they offend then certainly though David as a privat man and in his own cause feard to lift his hand against the Lords Anointed much less can this
the injunction of his all-ruling error He alleges the uprightness of his intentions to excuse his possible failings a position fals both in Law and Divinity Yea contrary to his own better principles who affirmes in the twelfth Chapter that The goodness of a mans intention will not excuse the scandall and contagion of his example His not knowing through the corruption of flattery and Court Principles what he ought to have known will not excuse his not doing what he ought to have don no more then the small skill of him who undertakes to be a Pilot will excuse him to be misledd by any wandring Starr mistak'n for the Pole But let his intentions be never so upright what is that to us What answer for the reason and the National Rights which God hath giv'n us if having Parlaments and Laws and the power of making more to avoid mischeif wee suffer one mans blind intentions to lead us all with our eyes op'n to manifest destruction And if Arguments prevaile not with such a one force is well us'd not to carry on the weakness of our Counsels or to convince his error as he surmises but to acquitt and rescue our own reason our own consciences from the force and prohibition laid by his usurping error upon our Liberties understandings Never thing pleas'd him more then when his judgement concurr'd with theirs That was to the applause of his own judgement and would as well have pleas'd any selfconceited man Yea in many things he chose rather to deny himself then them That is to say in trifles For of his own Interests and Personal Rights he conceavs himself Maister To part with if he please not to contest for against the Kingdom which is greater then he whose Rights are all subordinat to the Kingdoms good And in what concernes truth Justice the right of Church or his Crown no man shall gaine his consent against his mind What can be left then for a Parlament but to sit like Images while he still thus either with incomparable arrogance assumes to himself the best abilitie of judging for other men what is Truth Justice Goodness what his own or the Churches Right or with unsufferable Tyranny restraines all men from the enjoyment of any good which his judgement though erroneous thinks not fit to grant them notwithstanding that the Law and his Coronal Oath requires his undeniable assent to what Laws the Parlament agree upon He had rather wear a Crown of Thorns with our Saviour Many would be all one with our Saviour whom our Saviour will not know They who govern ill those Kingdoms which they had a right to have to our Saviours Crown of Thornes no right at all Thornes they may find anow of thir own gathering and thir own twisting for Thornes and Snares saith Solomon are in the way of the froward but to weare them as our Saviour wore them is not giv'n to them that suffer by thir own demerits Nor is a Crown of Gold his due who cannot first wear a Crown of Lead not onely for the weight of that great Office but for the compliance which it ought to have with them who are to counsel him which heer he termes in scorne An imbased flexibleness to the various and oft contrary dictates of any Factions meaning his Parlament for the question hath bin all this while between them two And to his Parlament though a numerous and chois Assembly of whom the Land thought wisest he imputes rather then to himself want of reason neglect of the Public interest of parties and particularitie of private will and passion but with what modesty or likelihood of truth it will be wearisom to repeat so oft'n He concludes with a sentence faire in seeming but fallacious For if the conscience be ill edifi'd the resolution may more befitt a foolish then a Christian King to preferr a self-will'd conscience before a Kingdoms good especially in the deniall of that which Law and his Regal Office by Oath bids him grant to his Parlament and whole Kingdom rightfully demanding For we may observe him throughout the discours to assert his Negative power against the whole Kingdom now under the specious Plea of his conscience and his reason but heertofore in a lowder note Without us or against our consent the Votes of either or of both Houses together must not cannot shall not Declar. May 4. 1642. With these and the like deceavable Doctrines he levens also his Prayer VII Vpon the Queens departure TO this Argument we shall soon have said for what concerns it us to hear a Husband divulâ—… his Houshold privacies extolling to others the verâ—…tues of his Wife an infirmity not seldom incident to those who have least cause But how good shee was a Wife was to himself and be it left to his own fancy how bad a Subject is not much disputed And being such it need be made no wonder though shee left a Protestant Kingdom with as little honour as her Mother left a Popish That this Is the first example of any Protestant Subjects that haue tak'n up Armes against thir King a Protestant can be to Protestants no dishonour when it shal be heard that he first levied Warr on them and to the interest of Papists more then of Protestants He might have giv'n yet the precedence of making warr upon him to the subjects of his own Nation who had twice oppos'd him in the op'n Feild long ere the English found it necessary to doe the like And how groundless how dissembl'd is that feare least shee who for so many yeares had bin averse from the Religion of her Husband and every yeare more and more before these disturbances broke out should for them be now the more alienated from that to which we never heard shee was inclin'd But if the feare of her Delinquency and that Justice which the Protestants demanded on her was any cause of heralienating the more to have gain'd her by indirect means had bin no advantage to Religion much less then was the detriment to loose her furder off It had bin happy if his own actions had not giv'n cause of more scandal to the Protestants then what they did against her could justly scandalize any Papist Them who accus'd her well anough known to be the Parlament he censures for Men yet to seeke thir Religion whether Doctrine Discipline or good manners the rest he soothes with the name of true English Protestants a meer scismatical name yet he so great an enemy of Scism He ascribes Rudeness and barbarity worse then Indian to the English Parlament and all vertue to his Wife in straines that come almost to Sonnetting How fitt to govern men undervaluing and aspersing the great Counsel of his Kingdom in comparison of one Woman Examples are not farr to seek how great mischeif and dishonour hath befall'n to Nations under the Government of effeminate and Uxorious Magistrates Who being themselves govern'd and overswaid at home under a Feminine usurpation
Plenty and Religion as all Nations either admir'd or envi'd For the Justice we had let the Counsel-Table Starr-Chamber High Commission speak the praise of it not forgetting the unprincely usage and as farr as might be the abolishing of Parlaments the displacing of honest Judges the sale of Offices Bribery and Exaction not found out to be punish'd but to be shar'd in with impunity for the time to come Who can number the extortions the oppressions the public robberies and rapines committed on the Subject both by Sea and Land under various pretences Thir possessions also tak'n from them one while as Forrest Land another while as Crown-Land nor were thir Goods exempted no not the Bullion in the Mint Piracy was become a project own'd and authoriz'd against the Subject For the peace we had what peace was that which drew out the English to a needless and disshonourable voyage against the Spaniard at Cales Or that which lent our shipping to a treacherous and Antichristian Warr against the poore Protestants of Rochell our suppliants What peace was that which fell to rob the French by Sea to the imbarring of all our Merchants in that Kingdom which brought forth that unblest expedition to the I le of Rhee doubtfull whether more calamitous in the success or in the designe betraying all the flowre of our military youth and best Commanders to a shamefull surprisal and execution This was the peace we had and the peace we gave whether to freinds or to foes abroad And if at home any peace were intended us what meant those Irish billeted Souldiers in all parts of the Kingdom and the designe of German Horse to fubdue us in our peacefull Houses For our Religion where was there a more ignorant profane and vitious Clergy learned in nothing but the antiquitie of thir pride thir covetousnes and superstition whose unsincere and levenous Doctrine corrupting the people first taught them loosness then bondage loosning them from all sound knowledge and strictness of life the more to fit them for the bondage of Tyranny and superstition So that what was left us for other Nations not to pitty rather then admire or envy all those seaventeen yeares no wise man could see For wealth and plenty in a land where Justice raignes not is no argument of a flourishing State but of a neerness rather to ruin or commotion These were not some miscariages onely of Goverment which might escape but a universal distemper and reducement of law to arbitrary power not through the evil counsels of some men but through the constant cours practise of al that were in highest favour whose worst actions frequently avowing he took upon himself and what faults did not yet seem in public to be originally his such care he took by professing and proclaiming op'nly as made them all at length his own adopted sins The persons also when he could no longer protect he esteem'd and favour'd to the end but never otherwise then by constraint yeilded any of them to due punishment thereby manifesting that what they did was by his own Autority and approbation Yet heer he asks whose innocent blood he hath shed What widdows or Orphans teares can witness against him After the suspected Poysoning of his Father not inquir'd into but smother'd up and him protected and advanc'd to the very half of his Kingdom who was accus'd in Parlament to be Author of the fact with much more evidence then Duke Dudley that fals Protector is accus'd upon record to have poison'd Edward the sixt after all his rage and persecution after so many Yeares of cruel Warr on his People in three Kingdoms Whence the Author of Truths manifest a Scotchman not unacquainted with affaires positively affirmes That there hath bin more Christian blood shed by the Commission approbation and connivance of King Charles and his Father James in the latter end of thir raigne then in the Ten Roman Persecutions Not to speake of those many whippings Pillories and other corporal inflictions wherwith his raign also before this Warr was not unbloodie some have dy'd in Prison under cruel restraint others in Banishment whose lives were shortn'd through the rigour of that persecution wherwith so many yeares he infested the true Church And those six Members all men judg'd to have escap'd no less then capital danger whom he so greedily pursuing into the House of Commons had not there the forbearance to conceal how much it troubl'd him That the Birds were flowne If som Vultur in the Mountains could have op'nd his beak intelligibly and spoke what fitter words could he have utter'd at the loss of his prey The Tyrant Nero though not yet deserving that name sett his hand so unwillingly to the execution of a condemned Person as to wish He had not known letters Certainly for a King himself to charge his Subjects with high treason and so vehemently to prosecute them in his own cause as to doe the Office of a Searcher argu'd in him no great aversation from shedding blood were it but to satisfie his anger and that revenge was no unpleasing morsel to him wherof he himself thought not much to be so diligently his own Caterer But we insist rather upon what was actual then what was probable He now falls to examin the causes of this Warr as a difficulty which he had long studied to find out It was not saith he my withdrawing from White Hall for no account in reason could be giv'n of those Tumults where an orderly Guard was granted But if it be a most certain truth that the Parlament could never yet obtain of him any Guard fit to be confided in then by his own confession some account of those pretended Tumults may in reason be giv'n and both concerning them and the Guards anough hath bin said alreadie Whom did he protect against the Justice of Parlament Whom did he not to his utmost power Endeavouring to have rescu'd Strafford from thir Justice though with the destruction of them and the City to that end expressly commanding the admittance of new Soldiers into the Tower rais'd by Suckling and other Conspirators under pretence for the Portugall though that Embassador beeing sent to utterly deny'd to know of any such Commission from his Maister And yet that listing continu'd Not to repeat his other Plot of bringing up the two Armies But what can be disputed with such a King in whose mouth and opinion the Parlament it self was never but a Faction and thir Justice no Justice but The dictates and overswaying insolence of Tumults and Rabbles and under that excuse avouches himself op'nly the generall Patron of most notorious Delinquents and approves their flight out of the Land whose crimes were such as that the justest and the fairest tryal would have soonest condemn'd them to death But did not Catiline plead in like manner against the Roman Senat and the injustice of thir trial and the justice of his flight from Rome Coesar also then hatching Tyranny injected
upon his Subjects though no way by them provok'd he sends an Agent with Letters to the King of Denmark requiring aid against the parlament and that aid was comming when Divine providence to divert them sent a sudden torrent of Swedes into the bowels of Denmark He then endeavours to bring up both Armies first the English with whom 8000 Irish Papists rais'd by Strafford and a French Army were to joyne then the Scots at Newcastle whom he thought to have encourag'd by telling them what Mony and Horse he was to have from Denmark I mention not the Irish conspiracie till due place These and many other were his Counsels toward a civil Warr. His preparations after those two Armies were dismiss'd could not suddenly be too op'n Nevertheless there were 8000 Irish Papists which he refus'd to disband though intreated by both Houses first for reasons best known to himself next under pretence of lending them to the Spaniard and so kept them undisbanded till very neere the Mounth wherin that Rebellion broke forth He was also raising Forces in London pretendedly to serve the Portugall but with intent to seise the Tower Into which divers Canoneers were by him sent with many fire works and Granado's and many great battering peeces were mounted against the City The Court was fortifi'd with Ammunition and Souldiers-new listed who follow'd the King from London and appear'd at Kingston som hunderds of Horse in a warlike manner with Waggons of Ammunition after them the Queen in Holland was buying more of which the Parlament had certain knowledge and had not yet so much as once demanded the Militia to be settl'd till they knew both of her going over sea and to what intent For she had pack'd up the Crown Jewels to have bin going long before had not the Parlament suspecting by the discoveries at Burrow Bridge what was intended with the Jewells us'd meanes to stay her journey till the winter Hull and the Magazin there had bin secretly attempted under the Kings hand from whom though in his declarations renouncing all thought of Warr notes were sent over sea for supply of Armes which were no sooner come but the inhabitants of Yorkshire and other Counties were call'd to Arms and actual forces rais'd while the Parlament were yet Petitioning in peace and had not one man listed As to the Act of Hostilitie though not much material in whom first it began or by whose Commissions dated first after such Counsels and preparations discover'd and so farr advanc'd by the King yet in that act also he will be found to have had precedency if not at London by the assault of his armed Court upon the naked People and his attempt upon the House of Commons yet certainly at Hull first by his close practices on that Town next by his seige Thus whether Counsels preparations or Acts of hostilitie be considerd it appeares with evidence anough though much more might be said that the King is truly charg'd to bee the first beginner of these civil Warrs To which may be added as a close that in the I le of Wight he charg'd it upon himself at the public Treaty and acquitted the Parlament But as for the securing of Hull and the public stores therin and in other places it was no Surprisall of his strength the custody wherof by Autority of Parlament was committed into hands most fitt and most responsible for such a trust It were a folly beyond ridiculous to count our selves a free Nation if the King not in Parlament but in his own Person and against them might appropriate to himself the strength of a whole Nation as his proper goods What the Lawes of the Land are a Parlament should know best having both the life and death of Lawes in thir Lawgiving power And the Law of England is at best but the reason of Parlament The Parlament therfore taking into thir hands that wherof most properly they ought to have the keeping committed no surprisal If they prevented him that argu'd not at all either his innocency or unpreparedness but their timely foresight to use prevention But what needed that They knew his chiefest Armes left him were those onely which the ancient Christians were wont to use against thir Persecuters Prayers and Teares O sacred Reverence of God Respect and Shame of Men whither were yee fled when these hypocrisies were utterd Was the Kingdom then at all that cost of blood to remove from him none but Praiers and Teares What were those thousands of blaspheming Cavaliers about him whose mouthes let fly Oaths and Curses by the voley were those the Praiers and those Carouses drunk to the confusion of all things good or holy did those minister the Teares Were they Praiers and Teares that were listed at York muster'd on Heworth Moore and laid Seige to Hull for the guard of his Person Were Praiers and Teares at so high a rate in Holland that nothing could purchase them but the Crown Jewels Yet they in Holland such word was sent us sold them for Gunns Carabins Morters-peeces Canons and other deadly Instruments of Warr which when they came to York were all no doubt but by the merit of some great Saint suddenly transform'd into Praiers and Teares and being divided into Regiments and Brigads were the onely Armes that mischiev'd us in all those Battels and Incounters These were his chief Armes whatever we must call them and yet such Armes as they who fought for the Common-wealth have by the help of better Praiers vanquish'd and brought to nothing He bewailes his want of the Militia Not so much in reference to his own protection as the Peoples whose many and sore oppressions greeve him Never considering how ill for seventeen yeares together hee had protected them and that these miseries of the people are still his own handy work having smitt'n them like a forked Arrow so sore into the Kingdoms sides as not to be drawn out and cur'd without the incision of more flesh He tells us that what he wants in the hand of power he has in the wings of Faith and Prayer But they who made no reckning of those Wings while they had that power in thir hands may easily mistake the Wings of Faith for the Wings of presumption and so fall headlong We meet next with a comparison how apt let them judge who have travell'd to Mecca That the Parlament have hung the majestie of Kingship in any airy imagination of regality between the Privileges of both Houses like the Tombe of Mahomet Hee knew not that he was prophecying the death and burial of a Turkish Tyranny that spurn'd down those Laws which gave it life and being so long as it endur'd to be a regulated Monarchy He counts it an injury Not to have the sole power in himself to help or hurt any and that the Militia which he holds to be his undoubted Right should be dispos'd as the Parlament thinks fitt And yet confesses that if he had it in his actual
disposing he would defend those whom he calls His good Subjects from those mens violence and fraud who would perswade the World that none but Wolves are fitt to be trusted with the custody of the Shepheard and his Flock Surely if we may guess whom he meanes heer by knowing whom he hath ever most oppos'd in this controversie we may then assure our selves that by violence and fraud he meanes that which the Parlament hath don in settling the Militia and those the Wolves into whose hands it was by them intrusted which drawes a cleer confession from his own mouth that if the Parlament had left him sole power of the Militia he would have us'd it to the destruction of them and thir Freinds As for sole power of the Militia which he claimes as a Right no less undoubted then the Crown it hath bin oft anough told him that he hath no more authority over the Sword then over the Law over the Law he hath none either to establish or to abrogate to interpret or to execute but onely by his Courts and in his Courts wherof the Parlament is highest no more therfore hath he power of the Militia which is the Sword either to use or to dispose but with consent of Parlament give him but that and as good give him in a lump all our Laws and Liberties For if the power of the Sword were any where separate and undepending from the power of Law which is originally seated in the highest Court then would that power of the Sword be soon maister of the law being at one mans disposal might when he pleas'd controule the Law and in derifion of our Magna Charta which were but weak resistance against an armed Tyrant might absolutely enslave us And not to have in our selves though vanting to be free-born the power of our own freedom and the public safety is a degree lower then not to have the property of our own goods For liberty of person and the right of selfpreservation is much neerer much more natural and more worth to all men then the propriety of thir goods and wealth Yet such power as all this did the King in op'n termes challenge to have over us and brought thousands to help him win it so much more good at fighting then at understanding as to perswade themselves that they fought then for the Subjects Libertie He is contented because he knows no other remedy to resigne this power for his owne time but not for his successors So diligent and carefull he is that we should be slaves if not to him yet to his Posterity and faine would leave us the legacy of another warr about it But the Parlament have don well to remove that question whom as his manner is to dignify with some good name or other he calls now a many headed hydra of Goverment full of factious distractions and not more eyes then mouthes Yet surely not more Mouthes or not so wide as the dissolute rabble of all his Courtiers had both hee s and shee s if there were any Males among them He would prove that to govern by Parlament hath a monstrositie rather then perfection and grouuds his argument upon two or three eminent absurdities First by placing Counsel in the senses next by turning the senses out of the head and in lieu therof placing power supreme above sense reason which be now the greater Monstrosities Furder to dispute what kind of Government is best would be a long debate it sufficeth that his reasons heer for Monarchy are found weake and inconsiderable He bodes much horror and bad influence after his ecclips He speakes his wishes But they who by weighing prudently things past foresee things to come the best Divination may hope rather all good success and happiness by removing that darkness which the mistie cloud of his prerogative made between us and a peacefull Reformation which is our true Sun light and not he though he would be tak'n for our sun it self And wherfore should we not hope to be Govern'd more happily without a King when as all our miserie and trouble hath bin either by a King or by our necessary vindication and defence against him He would be thought inforc'd to perjurie by having granted the Militia by which his Oath bound him to protect the People If he can be perjur'd in granting that why doth he refuse for no other cause the abolishing of Episcopacy But never was any Oath so blind as to sweare him to protect Delinquents a-against Justice but to protect all the people in that order and by those hands which the Parlament should advise him to and the protected conside in not under the shew of protection to hold a violent and incommunicable Sword over us as readie to be let fall upon our own necks as upon our Enemies nor to make our own hands and weapons fight against our own Liberties By his parting with the Militia he takes to himself much praise of his assurance in Gods protection to the Parlament imputes the fear of not daring to adventure the injustice of their actions upon any other way of safety But wherfore came not this assurance of Gods protection to him till the Militia was wrung out of his hands It should seem by his holding it so fast that his own actions and intentions had no less of injustice in them then what he charges upon others whom he terms Chaldeans Sabeans and the Devill himself But Job us'd no such Militia against those enemies nor such a Magazin as was at Hull which this King so contended for and made VVarr upon us that he might have wherewithall to make warr against us He concludes that Although they take all from him yet can they not obstruct his way to Heaven It was no handsom occasion by faining obstructions where they are not to tell us whither he was going he should have shut the dore and pray'd in secret not heer in the High Street Privat praiers in publick ask something of whom they ask not and that shall be thir reward XI Upon the Nineteen Propositions c. OF the Nineteen Propositions he names none in particular neither shall the Answer But he insists upon the old Plea of his Conscience honour and Reason using the plausibility of large and indefinite words to defend himself at such a distance as may hinder the eye of common judgement from all distinct view examination of his reasoning He would buy the peace of his People at any rate save onely the parting with his Conscience and Honour Yet shews not how it can happ'n that the peace of a People if otherwise to be bought at any rate should be inconsistent or at variance with the Conscience and Honour of a King Till then we may receave it for a better sentence that nothing should be more agreeable to the Conscience and Honour of a King then to preserve his Subjects in peace especially from civil Warr. And which of the
Propositions were obtruded on him with the point of the Sword till he first with the point of the Sword thrust from him both the Propositions and the Propounders He never reck'ns those violent and merciless obtrusions which for almost twenty years he had bin forcing upon tender consciences by all sorts of Persecution till through the multitude of them that were to suffer it could no more be call'd a Persecution but a plain VVarr From which when first the Scots then the English were constrain'd to defend themselves this thir just defence is that which he cals heer Thir making Warr upon his soul. He grudges that So many things are requir'd of him and nothing offerd him in requital of those favours which he had granted What could satiate the desires of this man who being king of England and Maister of almost two millions yearly what by hook or crook was still in want and those acts of Justice which he was to doe in duty counts don as favours and such favors as were not don without the avaritious hope of other rewards besides supreme honour and the constant Revennue of his place This honour he saith they did him to put him on the giving part And spake truer then he intended it beeing meerly for honours sake that they did so not that it belong'd to him of right For what can he give to a Parlament who receaves all he hath from the People and for the Peoples good Yet now he brings his own conditional rights to contest and be preferr'd before the Peoples good and yet unless it be in order to their good he hath no rights at all raigning by the Laws of the Land not by his own which Laws are in the hands of Parlament to change or abrogate as they shall see best for the Common-wealth eev'n to the taking away of King-ship it self when it grows too Maisterfull and Burd'nsome For every Common-wealth is in general defin'd a societie sufficient of it self in all things conducible to well being and commodious life Any of which requisit things if it cannot have without the gift and favour of a single person or without leave of his privat reason or his conscience it cannot be thought sufficient of it self and by consequence no Common-wealth nor free but a multitude of Vassalls in the Possession and domaine of one absolute Lord and wholly obnoxious to his will If the King have power to give or deny any thing to his Parlament he must doe it either as a Person several from them or as one greater neither of which will be allow'd him not to be consider'd severally from them for as the King of England can doe no wrong so neither can he doe right but in his Courts and by his Courts and what is legally don in them shall be deem'd the Kings assent though he as a several Person shall judge or endeavour the contrary So that indeed without his Courts or against them he is no King If therefore he obtrude upon us any public mischeif or withhold from us any general good which is wrong in the highest degree he must doe it as a Tyrant not as a King of England by the known Maxims of our Law Neither can he as one greater give aught to the Parlament which is not in thir own power but he must be greater also then the Kingdom which they represent So that to honour him with the giving part was a meer civility and may be well term'd the courtesie of England not the Kings due But the incommunicable Jewell of his conscience he will not give but reserve to himself It seemes that his conscience was none of the Crown Jewels for those we know were in Holland not incommunicable to buy Armes against his Subjects Being therfore but a privat Jewel he could not have don a greater pleasure to the Kingdom then by reserving it to himself But he contrary to what is heer profess'd would have his conscience not an incommunicable but a universal conscience the whole Kingdoms conscience Thus what he seemes to feare least we should ravish from him is our chief complaint that he obtruded upon us we never forc'd him to part with his conscience but it was he that would have forc'd us to part with ours Som things he taxes them to have offer'd him which while he had the maistery of his Reason he would never consent to Very likely but had his reason maisterd him as it ought and not bin maisterd long agoe by his sense and humour as the breeding of most Kings hath bin ever sensual and most humour'd perhaps he would have made no difficulty Mean while at what a fine pass is the Kingdom that must depend in greatest exigencies vpon the fantasie of a Kings reason be he wise or foole who arrogantly shall answer all the wisdom of the Land that what they offer seemes to him unreasonable He preferrs his love of Truth before his love of the People His love of Truth would have ledd him to the search of Truth and have taught him not to lean so much upon his own understanding He met at first with Doctrines of unaccountable Prerogative in them he rested because they pleas'd him they therfore pleas'd him because they gave him all and this he calls his love of Truth and preferrs it before the love of his peoples peace Som things they propos'd which would have wounded the inward peace of his conscience The more our evil happ that three Kingdoms should be thus pesterd with one Conscience who chiefly scrupl'd to grant us that which the parlament advis'd him to as the chief meanes of our public welfare and Reformation These scruples to many perhaps will seem pretended to others upon as good grounds may seem real and that it was the just judgement of God that he who was so cruel and so remorseless to other mens consciences should have a conscience within him as cruel to himself constraining him as he constrain'd others and insnaring him in such waies and counsels as were certain to be his destruction Other things though he could approve yet in honour and policy he thought fit to deny lest he should seem to dare aeny nothing By this meanes he will be sure what with reason conscience honour policy or puntilios to be found never unfurnisht of a denyal Whether it were his envy not to be over bounteous or that the submissness of our asking stirr'd up in him a certain pleasure of denying Good Princes have thought it thir chief happiness to be alwayes granting if good things for the things sake if things indifferent for the peoples sake while this man sits calculating varietie of excuses how he may grant least as if his whole strength and royaltie were plac'd in a meer negative Of one Proposition especially he laments him much that they would bind him to a generall and implicit consent for what ever they desir'd Which though I find not among the nineteene yet undoubtedly the Oath of his coronation
Bishops should have the confidence heer to profess himself so much an Enemie of those that force the conscience For was it not he who upon the English obtruded new Ceremonies upon the Scots a new Liturgie with his Sword went about to score a bloody Rubric on thir backs Did he not forbidd and hinder all effectual search of Truth nay like a beseiging Enemy stopd all her passages both by Word and Writing Yet heer can talk of faire and equall disputations Where notwithstanding if all submit not to his judgement as not being rationally convicted they must submitt and he conceales it not to his penaltie as counted obstinate But what if he himself and those his learned Churchmen were the convicted or the ostinate part long agoe should Reformation suffer them to sit Lording over the Church in thir fatt Bishoprics and Pluralities like the great Whore that sitteth upon many Waters till they would voutsafe to be disputed out Or should we sit disputitg while they sate plotting and persecuting Those Clergimen were not to be driv'n into the fold like Sheep as his Simily runs but to be driv'n out of the Fold like Wolves or Theeves where they sat Fleecing those Flocks which they never fed He beleeves that Presbytery though prov'd to be the onely Institution of Iesus Christ were not by the Sword to be set up without his consent which is contrary both to the Doctrin and the known practice of all Protestant Churches if his Sword threat'n those who of thir own accord imbrace it And although Christ and his Apostles being to civil affairs but privat men contended not with Magistrats yet when Magistrats themselves and especially Parlaments who have greatest right to dispose of the civil Sword come to know Religion they ought in conscience to defend all those who receave it willingly against the violence of any King or Tyrant whatsoever Neither is it therefore true That Christianity is planted or watred with Christian blood for there is a large difference between forcing men by the Sword to turne Presbyterians and defending those who willingly are so from a r fiousfu inroad o bloody Bishops arm'd with the Militia of a King thir Pupill And if covetousness and ambition be an argument that Presbytery hath not much of Christ it argues more strongly against Episcopacy which from the time of her first mounting to an order above the Presbyters had no other Parents then Covetousness Ambition And those Sects Scisms and Heresies which he speaks of if they get but strength and numbers need no other pattern then Episcopacie and himself to set up their ways by the like method of violence Nor is ther any thing that hath more marks of Scism and Sectarism then English Episcopacy whether we look at Apostolic times or at reformed Churches for the universall way of Church goverment before may as soon lead us into gross error as thir universally corrupted Doctrin And Goverment by reason of ambition was likeliest to be corrupted much the sooner of the two However nothing can be to us Catholic or universal in Religion but what the Scripture teaches whatsoever without Scripture pleads to be universal in the Church in being universal is but the more Scismatical Much less can particular Laws and Constitutions impart to the Church of England any power of consistory or tribunal above other Churches to be the sole Judge of what is Sect or Scism as with much rigor and without Scripture they took upon them Yet these the King resolves heer to defend and maintain to his last pretending after all those conferences offer'd or had with him not to see more rationall and religious motives then Soldiers carry in thir Knapsacks with one thus resolv'd it was but folly to stand disputing He imagins his own judicious zeal to be most concernd in his tuition of the Church So thought Saul when he presum'd to offer Sacrifice for which he lost his Kingdom So thought Uzziah when he went into the Temple but was thrust out with a Leprosie for his opinion'd zeal which he thought judicious It is not the part of a King because he ought to defend the Church therfore to set himself supreme Head over the Church or to meddle with Ecclesial Goverment or to defend the Church otherwise then the Church would be defended for such defence is bondage nor to defend abuses and stop all Reformation under the name of New moulds fanct'd and fashion'd to privat designes The holy things of Church are in the power of other keys then were deliverd to his keeping Christian libertie purchas'd with the death of our Redeemer and establish'd by the sending of his free Spirit to inhabit in us is not now to depend upon the doubtful consent of any earthly Monarch nor to be again fetter'd with a presumptuous negative voice tyrannical to the Parlament but much more tyrannical to the Church of God which was compell'd to implore the aid of Parlament to remove his force and heavy hands frō off our consciēces who therfore complains now of that most just defensive force because onely it remov'd his violence and persecution If this be a violation to his conscience that it was hinderd by the Parlament from violating the more tender consciences of so many thousand good Christians let the usurping conscience of all Tyrants be ever so violated He wonders Fox wonder how we could so much distrust Gods assistance as to call in the Protestant aid of our Brethren in Scotland why then did he if his trust were in God and the justice of his Cause not scruple to sollicit and invite earnestly the assistance both of Papists and of Irish Rebels If the Scots were by us at length sent home they were not call'd to stay heer always neither was it for the peoples ease to feed so many Legions longer then thir help was needfull The Goverment of thir Kirk we despis'd not but thir imposing of that Goverment upon us not Presbytery but Arch-Presbytery Classical Provincial and Diocesan Prebytery claiming to it self a Lordly power and Superintendency both over Flocks and Pastors over Persons and Congregations no way thir own But these debates in his judgement would have bin ended better by the best Divines in Christ'ndom in a full and free Synod A most improbable way and such as never yet was us'd at least with good success by any Protestant Kingdom or State since the Reformation Every true Church having wherewithall from Heav'n and the assisting Spirit of Christ implor'd to be complete and perfet within it self And the whole Nation is not easily to be thought so raw and so perpetually a novice after all this light as to need the help and direction of other Nations more then what they write in public of thir opinion in a matter so familiar as Church Goverment In fine he accuses Piety with the want of Loyalty and Religion with the breach of Allegeance as if God and he were one Maister whose commands were
Parlament admire his self Encomiums and be flatter'd with that Crown of patience to which he cunningly exhorted them that his Monarchical foot might have the setting it upon thir heads That trust which the Parlament faithfully discharg'd in the asserting of our Liberties he calls another artifice to withdraw the people from him to their designes What piece of Justice could they have demanded for the people which the jealousie of a King might not have miscall'd a designe to disparage his Goverment and to ingratiat themselves To be more just religious wise or magnanimous then the common sort stirrs up in a Tyrant both feare and envy and streight he cries out popularitie which in his account is little less then Treason The summ is they thought to limit or take away the Remora of his negative voice which like to that little pest at Sea took upon it to arrest and stopp the Common-wealth stearing under full saile to a Reformation they thought to share with him in the Militia both or either of which he could not possibly hold without consent of the people and not be absolutely a Tyrant He professes to desire no other liberty then what he envies not his Subjects according to Law yet fought with might and maine against his Subjects to have a sole power over them in his hand both against and beyond Law As for the Philosophical Libertie which in vaine he talks of we may conclude him very ill train'd up in those free notions who to civil Libertie was so injurious He calls the conscience Gods sovrantie why then doth he contest with God about that supreme title Why did he lay restraints and force enlargements upon our consciences in things for which we were to answer God onely and the Church God bids us Be subject for conscience sake that is as to a Magistrat and in the Laws not usurping over spiritual things as Lucifer beyond his sphere And the same Precept bids him likewise for conscience sake be subject to the Parlament both his natural and his legal superior Finally having layd the fault of these Commotions not upon his own mis-goverment but upon the ambition of others the necessity of some mens fortune and thirst after noveltie he bodes himself much honour and reputation that like the Sun shall rise and recover it self to such a Splendour as Owles Batts and such fatal Birds shall be unable to beare Poets indeed use to vapor much after this manner But to bad Kings who without cause expect future glory from thir actions it happ'ns as to bad Poets who sit and starve themselves with a delusive hope to win immortality by thir bad lines For though men ought not to speak evil of Dignities which are just yet nothing hinders us to speak evil as oft as it is the truth of those who in thir Dignities doe evil thus did our Saviour himself John the Baptist and Steev'n the Martyr And those black vailes of his own misdeeds he might be sure would ever keep his face from shining til he could refute evil speaking with wel doing which grace he seems heer to pray for and his prayer doubtless as it was prayd so it was heard But eev'n his prayer is so ambitious of Prerogative that it dares ask away the Prerogative of Christ himself To become the head soone of the Corner XVI Vpon the Ordinance against the Common-Prayer Book VVHAT to think of Liturgies both the sense of Scripture and Apostolicall practice would have taught him better then his human reasonings and conjectures Nevertheless what weight they have let us consider If it be no newes to have all innovations usherd in with the name of Reformation sure it is less news to have all reformation censur'd and oppos'd under the name of innovation by those who beeing exalted in high place above thir merit fear all change though of things never so ill or so unwisely settl'd So hardly can the dotage of those that dwell upon Antiquitie allow present times any share of godliness or wisdom The removing of Liturgie he traduces to be don onely as a thing plausible to the People whose rejection of it he lik'ns with small reverence to the crucifying of our Saviour next that it was don to please those men who gloried in their extemporary vein meaning the Ministers For whom it will be best to answer as was answer'd for the man born blind They are of age let them speak for themselves not how they came blind but whether it were Liturgie that held them tongue-ti'd For the matter contain'd in that Book we need no better witness then King Edward the sixth who to the Cornish Rebels confesses it was no other then the old Mass-Book don into English all but some few words that were expung'd And by this argument which King Edward so promptly had to use against that irreligious Rabble we may be assur'd it was the carnal fear of those Divines and Polititians that model'd the Liturgie no furder off from the old Mass least by too great an alteration they should incense the people and be destitute of the same shifts to fly to which they had taught the young King For the manner of using sett formes there is no doubt but that wholesom matter and good desires rightly conceav'd in the heart wholesom words will follow of themselves Neither can any true Christian find a reason why Liturgie should be at all admitted a prescription not impos'd or practis'd by those first Founders of the Church who alone had that autority Without whose precept or example how constantly the Priest puts on his Gown and Surplice so constantly doth his praier put on a servile yoak of Liturgie This is evident that they who use no set formes of prayer have words from thir affections while others are to seek affections fit and proportionable to a certain doss of prepar'd words which as they are not rigorously forbidd to any mans privat infirmity so to imprison and confine by force into a Pinfold of sett words those two most unimprisonable things our Prayers that Divine Spirit of utterance that moves thē is a tyranny that would have longer hands then those Giants who threatn'd bondage to Heav'n What we may doe in the same forme of words is not so much the question as whether Liturgie may be forc'd as he forc'd it It is true that we pray to the same God must we therfore always use the same words Let us then use but one word because we pray to one God We profess the same truths but the Liturgie comprehends not all truths wee read the same Scriptures but never read that all those Sacred expressions all benefit and use of Scripture as to public prayer should be deny'd us except what was barreld up in a Common-praier Book with many mixtures of thir own and which is worse without salt But suppose them savoury words and unmix'd suppose them Manna it self yet if they shall be hoarded up and enjoynd us while God every morning
sacred History and times of Reformation that the Kings of this World have both ever hated and instinctively fear'd the Church of God Whether it be for that thir Doctrin seems much to favour two things to them so dreadful Liberty and Equality or because they are the Children of that Kingdom which as ancient Prophesies have foretold shall in the end break to peeces and dissolve all thir great power and Dominion And those Kings and Potentates who have strove most to ridd themselves of this feare by cutting off or suppressing the true Church have drawn upon themselves the occasion of thir own ruin while they thought with most policy to prevent it Thus Pharaoh when once he began to feare and wax jealous of the Israelites least they should multiply and fight against him and that his feare stirr'd him up to afflict and keep them under as the onely remedy of what he feard soon found that the evil which before slept came suddenly upon him by the preposterous way he took to shun it Passing by examples between not shutting wilfully our eyes we may see the like story brought to pass in our own Land This King more then any before him except perhapps his Father from his first entrance to the Crown harbouring in his mind a strange feare and suspicion of men most religious and thir Doctrin which in his own language he heer acknowledges terming it the seditious exorbitancie of Ministers tongues and doubting least they as he not Christianly expresses it should with the Keys of Heav'n let out Peace and Loyaltie from the peoples hearts though they never preacht or attempted aught that might justly raise in him such apprehensions he could not rest or think himself secure so long as they remain'd in any of his three Kingdoms unrooted out But outwardly professing the same Religion with them he could not presently use violence as Pharaoh did and that course had with others before but ill succeeded He chooses therfore a more mystical way a newer method of Antichristian fraud to the Church more dangerous and like to Balac the Son of Zippor against a Nation of Prophets thinks it best to hire other esteemed Prophets and to undermine and weare out the true Church by a fals Ecclesiastical policy To this drift he found the Goverment of Bishops most serviceable an order in the Church as by men first corrupted so mutually corrupting them who receave it both in judgement and manners He by conferring Bishoprics and great Livings on whom he thought most pliant to his will against the known Canons and universal practice of the ancient Church wherby those elections were the peoples right sought as he confesses to have greatest influence upon Church-men They on the other side finding themselves in a high Dignity neither founded by Scripture nor allow'd by Reformation nor supported by any spiritual gift or grace of thir own knew it thir best cours to have dependence onely upon him and wrought his fansie by degrees to that degenerat and unkingly perswasion of No Bishop no King When as on the contrary all Prelats in thir own suttle sense are of another mind according to that of Pius the fourth rememberd in the Trentine storie that Bishops then grow to be most vigorous and potent when Princes happ'n to be most weak and impotent Thus when both Interests of Tyrannie and Episcopacie were incorporat into each other the King whose principal safety and establishment consisted in the righteous execution of his civil power and not in Bishops and thir wicked counsels fatally driv'n on set himself to the extirpating of those men whose Doctrin and desire of Church Discipline he so fear'd would bee the undoing of his Monarchie And because no temporal Law could touch the innocence of thir lives he begins with the persecution of thir consciences laying scandals before them and makes that the argument to inflict his unjust penalties both on thir bodies and Estates In this Warr against the Church if he hath sped so as other haughty Monarchs whom God heertofore hath hard'nd to the like enterprize we ought to look up with praises and thanksgiving to the Author of our deliverance to whom victorie and power Majestie Honour and Dominion belongs for ever In the mean while from his own words we may perceave easily that the special motives which he had to endeere and deprave his judgement to the favouring and utmost defending of Episcopacie are such as heer wee represent them and how unwillingly and with what mental reservation he condescended against his interest to remove it out of the Peers house hath bin shown alreadie The reasons which he affirmes wrought so much upon his judgement shall be so farr answerd as they be urg'd Scripture he reports but distinctly produces none and next the constant practice of all Christian Churches till of late yeares tumult faction pride and covetousness invented new models under the Title of Christs Goverment Could any Papist have spoke more scandalously against all Reformation Well may the Parlament and best-affected People not now be troubl'd at his calumnies and reproaches since he binds them in the same bundle with all other the reformed Churches who also may now furder see besides thir own bitter experience what a Cordial and well meaning helper they had of him abroad and how true to the Protestant cause As for Histories to prove Bishops the Bible if we mean not to run into errors vanities and uncertainties must be our onely Historie Which informs us that the Apostles were not properly Bishops next that Bishops were not successors of Apostles in the function of Apostleship And that if they were Apostles they could not be preciselie Bishops if Bishops they could not be Apostles this being Universal extraordinarie and immediat from God that being an ordinarie fixt particular charge the continual inspection over a certain Flock And although an ignorance and deviation of the ancient Churches afterward may with as much reason and charity be suppos'd as sudden in point of Prelatie as in other manifest corruptions yet that no example since the first age for 1500 yeares can be produc'd of any setled Church wherin were many Ministers and Congregations which had not some Bishops above them the Ecclesiastical storie to which he appeals for want of Scripture proves cleerly to be a fals and over-confident assertion Sczomenus who wrote above Twelve hundred years agoe in his seventh Book relates from his own knowledge that in the Churches of Cyprus and Arabia places neer to Jerusalem and with the first frequented by Apostles they had Bishops in every Village and what could those be more then Presbyters The like he tells of other Nations and that Episcopal Churches in those daies did not condemn them I add that many Western Churches eminent for thir Faith and good Works and settl'd above four hundred years agoe in France in Piemont and Bohemia have both taught and practis'd the same Doctrin and not admitted of
into Heav'n he them in his Book they him in the Portrature before his Book but as was said before Stage-work will not doe it much less the justness of thir Cause wherin most frequently they dy'd in a brutish fierceness with Oaths and other damning words in thir mouths as if such had bin all the Oaths they fought for which undoubtedly sent them full Sail on another Voyage then to Heav'n In the mean while they to whom God gave Victory never brought to the King at Oxford the state of thir consciences that he should presume without confession more then a Pope presumes to tell abroad what conflicts and accusations men whom he never spoke with have in thir own thoughts We never read of any English King but one that was a Confessor and his name was Edward yet sure it pass'd his skill to know thoughts as this King takes upon him But they who will not stick to slander mens inward consciences which they can neither see nor know much less will care to slander outward actions which they pretend to see though with senses never so vitiated To judge of his conditions conquerd and the manner of dying on that side by the sober men that chose it would be his small advantage it being most notorious that they who were hottest in his Cause the most of them were men oftner drunk then by thir good will sober and very many of them so fought and so dy'd And that the conscience of any man should grow suspicious or be now convicted by any pretentions in the Parlament which are now prov'd fals and unintended there can be no just cause For neither did they ever pretend to establish his Throne without our Liberty and Religion nor Religion without the Word of God nor to judge of Laws by thir being establisht but to establish them by thir being good and necessary He tells the World He oft'n prayd that all on his side might be as faithfull to God and thir own souls as to him But Kings above all other men have in thir hands not to pray onely but to doe To make that prayer effectual he should have govern'd as well as pray'd To pray and not to govern is For a Monk and not a King Till then he might be well assur'd they were more faithfull to thir lust and rapine then to him In the wonted predication of his own vertues he goes on to tell us that to Conquer he never desir'd but onely to restore the Laws and Liberties of his people It had bin happy then he had known at last that by force to restore Laws abrogated by the Legislative Parlament is to conquer absolutely both them and Law it self And for our Liberties none ever oppress'd them more both in Peace and Warr first like a maister by his arbitrary power next as an enemy by hostile invasion And if his best freinds fear'd him and he himself in the temptation of an absolute Conquest it was not only pious but freindly in the Parlament both to fear him and resist him since their not yeelding was the onely meanes to keep him out of that temptation wherin he doubted his own strength He takes himself to be guilty in this Warr of nothing els but of confirming the power of some Men Thus all along he signifies the Parlament whom to have settl'd by an Act he counts to be his onely guiltiness So well he knew that to continue a Parlament was to raise a War against himself what were his actions then and his Government the while For never was it heard in all our Story that Parlaments made Warr on thir Kings but on thir Tyrants whose modesty and gratitude was more wanting to the Parlament then theirs to any of such Kings What he yeelded was his feare what he deny'd was his obstinacy had he yeelded more fear might perchance have sav'd him had he granted less his obstinacy had perhaps the sooner deliverd us To review the occasions of this Warr will be to them never too late who would be warn'd by his example from the like evils but to wish onely a happy conclusion will never expiate the fault of his unhappy beginnings T is true on our side the sins of our lives not seldom fought against us but on their side besides those the grand sin of thir Cause How can it be otherwise when he desires heer most unreasonably and indeed sacrilegiously that we should be subject to him though not furder yet as farr as all of us may be subject to God to whom this expression leaves no precedency Hee who desires from men as much obedience and subjection as we may all pay to God desires not less then to be a God a sacrilege farr wors then medling with the Bishops Lands as he esteems it His Praier is a good Praier and a glorious but glorying is not good if it know not that a little leven levens the whole lump It should have purg'd out the leven of untruth in telling God that the blood of his Subjects by him shedd was in his just and necessary defence Yet this is remarkable God hath heer so orderd his Prayer that as his own lipps acquitted the Parlament not long before his death of all the blood spilt in this Warr so now his prayer unwittingly drawes it upon himself For God imputes not to any man the blood he spills in a just cause and no man ever begg'd his not imputing of that which he in his justice could not impute So that now whether purposely or unaware he hath confess'd both to God and Man the bloodguiltiness of all this Warr to lie upon his own head XX. Upon the Reformation of the times THis Chapter cannot punctually be answer'd without more repetitions then now can be excusable Which perhaps have already bin more humour'd then was needfull As it presents us with nothing new so with his exceptions against Reformation pittifully old and tatter'd with continual using not onely in his Book but in the words and Writings of every Papist and Popish King On the Scene he thrusts out first an Antimasque of two bugbeares Noveltie and Perturbation that the ill looks and noise of those two may as long as possible drive off all endeavours of a Reformation Thus sought Pope Adrian by representing the like vain terrors to divert and dissipate the zeal of those reforming Princes of the age before in Germany And if we credit Latimers Sermons our Papists heer in England pleaded the same dangers and inconveniencies against that which was reform'd by Edward the sixth Whereas if those fears had bin available Christianity it self had never bin receav'd Which Christ foretold us would not be admitted without the censure of noveltie and many great commotions These therfore are not to deterr us He grants Reformation to be a good work and confesses What the indulgence of times and corruption of manners might have deprav'd So did the foremention'd Pope and our Gransire Papists in this Realm Yet
new disguise He layes down his Armes but not his Wiles nor all his Armes for in obstinacy he comes no less arm'd then ever Cap a pè And what were they but wiles continually to move for Treaties and yet to persist the same man and to fortifie his mind before hand still purposing to grant no more then what seem'd good to that violent and lawless Triumvirate within him under the falsifi'd names of his Reason Honour and Conscience the old circulating dance of his shifts and evasions The words of a King as they are full of power in the autority and strength of Law so like Sampson without the strength of that Nazarites lock they have no more power in them then the words of another man He adores Reason as Domitian did Minerva and calls her the Divinest power thereby to intimate as if at reasoning as at his own weapon no man were so able as himself Might we be so happy as to know where these monuments of his Reason may be seen for in his actions his writing they appeare as thinly as could be expected from the meanest parts bredd up in the midst of so many wayes extraordinary to know somthing He who reads his talk would think he had left Oxford not without mature deliberation Yet his Prayer confesses that he knew not what to doe Thus is verifi'd that Psalme He powreth contempt upon Princes and causeth them to wander in the Wilderness where there is no way Psal. 107. XXIII Vpon the Scots delivering the King to the English THat the Scots in England should sell thir King as he himself here affirmes and for a price so much above that which the covetousness of Judas was contented with to sell our Saviour is so foule an infamy and dishonour cast upon them as befitts none to vindicate but themselves And it were but friendly Counsel to wish them beware the Son who comes among them with a firme beleif that they sould his Father The rest of this Chapter he Sacrifices to the Echo of his Conscience out-babling Creeds and Ave's glorying in his resolute obstinacy and as it were triumphing how evident it is now that not evill Counselors but he himself hath been the Author of all our troubles Herein onely we shall disagree to the worlds end while he who sought so manifestly to have annihilated all our Laws and Liberties hath the confidence to perswade us that he hath fought and suffer'd all this while in thir defence But he who neither by his own Letters and Commissions under hand and Seale nor by his own actions held as in a Mirror before his face will be convinc'd to see his faults can much less be won upon by any force of words neither he nor any that take after him who in that respect are no more to be disputed with then they who deny Principles No question then but the Parlament did wisely in thir decree at last to make no more addresses For how unalterable his will was that would have bin our Lord how utterly averse from the Parlament and Reformation during his confinement we may behold in this Chapter But to be ever answering fruitless Repetitions I should become liable to answer for the same my self He borrows Davids Psalmes as he charges the Assembly of Divines in his twentith Discourse To have set forth old Catechisms and confessions of faith new drest Had he borrow'd Davids heart it had bin much the holier theft For such kind of borrowing as this if it be not better'd by the borrower among good Authors is accounted Plagiarie However this was more tolerable then Pammela's Praier stol'n out of Sir Philip. XXIV Vpon the denying him the attendance of his Chaplains A CHAPLAIN is a thing so diminutive and inconsiderable that how he should come heer among matters of so great concernment to take such room up in the Discourses of a Prince if it be not wonderd is to be fmil'd at Certainly by me so mean an argument shall not be writt'n but I shall huddle him as he does Prayers The Scripture ownes no such order no such function in the Church and the Church not owning them they are left for ought I know to such a furder examining as the Sons of Sceva the Jew met with Bishops or Presbyters we know and Deacons we know but what are Chaplains In State perhaps they may be listed among the upper Servingmen of som great houshold and be admitted to som such place as may stile them the Sewers or the Yeomen-Ushers of Devotion where the Maister is too restie or too rich to say his own prayers or to bless his own Table Wherfore should the Parlament then take such implements of the Court Cupbord into thir consideration They knew them to have bin the main corrupters at the kings elbow they knew the king to have bin always thir most attentive Scholar Imitator of a child to have suckt from them thir closet work all his impotent principles of tyranny superstition While therfore they had any hope left of his reclaiming these sowers of Malignant Tares they kept asunder from him and sent to him such of the Ministers and other zealous persons as they thought were best able to instruct him and to convert him What could religion her self have don more to the saving of a soule But when they found him past cure that he to himself was grown the most evil Counseler of all they deny'd him not his Chaplains as many as were fitting and som of them attended him or els were at his call to the very last Yet heer he makes more Lamentationfor the want of his Chaplains then superstitious Micah did to the Danites who had tak'n away his houshold Priest Yee have tak'n away my Gods which I made and the Priest and what have I more And perhaps the whole Story of Micah might square not unfitly to this Argument Now know I saith he that the Lord will doe me good seeing I have a Levite to my Priest Micah had as great a care that his Priest should be Mosaical as the King had that his should be Apostolical yet both in an error touching thir Priests Houshold and privat Orisons were not to be officiated by Priests for neither did public Prayer appertain onely to their Office Kings heertofore David Salomon and Jehosaphat who might not touch the Priesthood yet might pray in public yea in the Temple while the Priests themselves stood and heard VVhat aild this King then that he could not chew his own Mattins without the Priests Oretenus Yet is it like he could not pray at home who can heer publish a whole Prayer-book of his own and signifies in some part of this Chapter almost as good a mind to be a Priest himself as Micah had to let his Son be There was doubtless therfore some other matter in it which made him so desirous to have his Chaplaines about him who were not onely the contrivers but very oft the