What an illerate Dolt as to the Laws of England have we got here He might as truly argue thus The Petition of Right declared no Oath to be lawful but what should be framed and imposed by Authority of Parliament Ergo The Engagement made by a part of one to be Qui semel modestiae fines transilierit oppor et ut sit gnaviter impudens Cicero Page 182. true and faithful to the Commonwealth without a King or House of Lords is of the nature of those Oathes appointed by Law What the Authority of Parliament is will be easily perceived in the subsequent Discourse wherein you will finde the Opinions of the Reverend Judges and Learned Sages of the Land concerning it more a great deal to be minded then Ipse Dixits then the Chymaerical Dictates of little Mr. Crofton who what he wants in knowledge profoundly supplies with a petty large measure of confidence The Bishop having spoken of what happy days there were before the Covenant came Sure saith d Pa. 53 Crofton those happy days were not real but seeming And why were they seeming For the Covenant he saith doth naturally make for what is truly good What man The Covenant naturally make for what is truly good What have you eaten shame and drunk after it Truly good Sure the goodness that is in it is not real but seeming for the Serpent and your party laid their noddles so together that they would be sure it should tend to nothing but to raise sedition in the State and divisions and sub-divisions in the Church for the Enlargement of the kingdom of your Grand-father the Pope I perceive a lie will not choak these men but a Surplice and a Tippet will make their stomachs wamble The happy days we enjoyed before the devil began to appear in the likeness of an Angel of light and sent forth his sacred Covenant to trap people in his delusions was the envy of all Europe and glory of our English Nation and an everlasting Monument of a gracious Monarch and made evident in the vast mass of Treasure which was so profusely spent afterwards for the maintenance of an horrid and odious Rebellion against His Sacred Majesty and swearing this truly evil Covenant in prosecution thereof which though it was imposed by e See his Speech 5. Dec. 1648. p. 33. 39. a bare Ordinance of part of the two Houses onely without the Kings Royal Assent thereto which by Croftons profound Lawyer Mr. Prynne himself is consessed to be a new Device of that present Parliament as he called it never known nor used in any former Parliaments what ever hath been conceived to the contrary yet our profound Pulpit-prater would needs have us believe that it was imposed by Authority of Parliament And those very words of Mr. Prynne too doth clean overthrow his Brother Classicks dream of the Two Houses Supream Legislative Power What the goodness of that Covenant is which the Irish Parliament declared to be a grand Incentive of Rebellion what Schisms Separations Divisions and Sub-divisions it naturally produced will be pretty well seen in the following Sheets and what the purity of that Discipline and Reformed Religion is which the Covenant was taken for the maintenance of will appear amongst many other Letters that were wrote by this of Gantois a grave and learned Foreigner in the time of that Phaenix Queen Elizabeth who being requested to write his Opinion what effects the Presbyterian Discipline had brought forth in Holland returns this following Answer which is but a part of the whole set down at large by Archbishop Bancroft in his Survey of the Holy Discipline Is any man able saith he to repeat the monstruous Page 456. Heresies and Errors that Holland doth nourish under the shadow of Reformed Religion This is aimed at viz. That the Turpitude of all blasphemies being covered with this cloak may lie hid and that it may be lawful without controulment if any list to recall the old Paganism or to profess Mahomeâ—s Religion or what worse is if there be any thing worse Here 's rare effects of that godly Babe that must be brought forth into the world with a bloody Covenant enough I warrant you to make a man in love with it over the left shoulder Ay but this is not all neither for he tells us That the Magistrates there did suspect this Form of Ecclesiastical Government why because saith he pray mark their reason for it they fear lest it may degenerate into a worse Tyranny then the Spanish Inquisition The Genevians themselves were so hampered with the imperious courses of Calvin and his Companions that they were forced to banish them and after their expulsion they gave this reason for it Tyranni esse voluerunt in Liberam Civitatem voluerunt novum Pontificatum revocare They would have been Tyrants over a free City they would have recalled a new Papacy Calvin ad Farel Epist 6. p. 11. And Carter one of the Disciplinarian Gang writing to his friend Field from Embden in the time of Qu. Elizabeth tells him That if he did see the confused state of the Churches of those Countreys he would say that England how bad soever was a paradise in comparison What a damnable Discipline is this that its very Idolizers as well as others should so terribly exclaim of the mischievous effects of it And that we may see with what wonderful wisdom and with what grave Divines it was at first brought forth into the world Calvin himself the Father of it will give us a clear Testimony f In illa promiscua colluvie suffragiis fuimus superiores In that confused off-scouring of the whole multitude we had the most voices Calvin to Bullinger Epist 107. Here was the first rise and product of it in a confused multitude onely Calvin and his party got the upper hand for it by most voices which makes me throw in this one query amongst the party Where is the divinity or divine institution of that Ecclesistical Government which is clearly beholden to most voices in a confused multitude for its Establishment What the genuine result of Establishment of this confused Discipline so much contended for by the Covenanting party with us in England hath been in forein parts their several Testimonies have made apparent What it hath been in Scotland the Primates Fair Warning hath shown as manifest and what it hath been here in England since they removed the Prelatical Yoke from off their shoulders by their Covenanting endeavors their own serious Confession hereafter inserted is a most convincing testimony against themselves If any shall now demand or enquire why this subsequent Discourse no sooner saw the light Let them be pleased to satisfie themselves with that which follows That the Author having dispatch'd the first part thereof was by extraordinary occasions in the country diverted from further prosecuting of it the last summer season and coming up this Winter time to the City again his worldly
other inferior made without the knowledge of Father Husband or Superior should be at the pleasure of the Superior confirmed or made void Ergo this unsacred Covenant being taken without the consent or knowledge of our Regal Superior or as the Bishop alledges by the †See the 144 page of his book Subjects of England who were by Law and Oaths inferior to and dependents on the King obliged to duty and allegiance by his open Proclamation against it according to that Scripture is frustrate void and of none effect but ingenuons Arguings would have quite and clean spoiled the design of such a * Page 232 Sophistical Caviller and therefore he craftily forbore the pursuit of true Disputations not quarrellings and envious cavillings with his Reverend Adversary lest thereby his k 2 Tim. 3. 9. See p. 10. of Croftons book folly should have been made manifest to all men yea even to his Presbyterian proselytes who are pleased with a sound against the Bishops book and consider not the certainty of it and are ready jurare in verba Presbyteri be they never so groundless with whom the Say-so of a godly Presbyter is esteemed a sufficient reason of their Faith And yet the man thinking how bravely he had drawn the Bishops Arguings to serve the base ends of his own vain talking he presently begins to crow and vapour and cries out of a Syllogism Currens quatuor pedibus running of four feet and tells his Readers a Tale of a tub a story of his godly Brethren the Jesuits Conference at Ratisbone who just like his own Argument here against the Bishop set down thus their profound Determinations of the Articles of their Faith Qui negat articulum fidei est hereticus sed hereticus est qui negat Tobiam habuisse Canem Ergo just like our matchless Disputer sequitur articulum esse fidei quod Tobias canem habuerit He that denies an Article of Faith is an heretick But he is an heretick that denies Tobit had a dog Therefore it follows that it is an Article of Faith that Tobit had a dog Not considering that in his Parallel he fights with nothing but his own shadow that he utters his minde for the disgracing and vanquishing of no body but his own dear self not at all of the Bishop who hath no such rotten Arguments in all his Book And that we may perfectly see the mans design in Writing even to fill up his Book with cavilling he tells us in his Preface side 3. of the Bishops writing Mr. Grafton as if he should answer Dr. Gaudie when as one that could not reade he takes no notice of what the Bishop had set down at the latter end of his book to read Crofton for Grafton through the whole Discourse If his eyes were so dim he could not see it he should have said so and then I should have done my best to have got a clear pair of Spectacles for him that he might by that means have read what the Doctor had said for him to correct as well as others seeing he was one of his Readers but alas he wanted somewhat to say to fill up his Preface and therefore sets down this for a part of it to make appear his invincible ways of disputing His quotations of the Bishops words are such that besides those imperfect un-scholar-like ones I have already set down there are no less then fifteen or sixteen several other quotations which are either imperfect like the former or else absolute false ones as upon a true examination I have found them and such as leads his Readers into a wilderness for to see the truth of them but I consider his cavilling Discourse was made in a great deal of haste and his mad-brain'd tricks have made his Book good for nothing but to be the subject of some mens laughter and indignation for my part Mr. Crofton I * See the 8. page of his book will excuse you for your wrong imperfect false quotations though not for your Antimonarchical seditious Principles and Assertions up and down your Book if your very friends do not with blame to you say You are come a great deal too soon and have verified the old proverb upon your self The more haste the worst speed And truly I am afraid it had been better for your outward and inward safety both that your Book had been like the Bishops which you madly profess and say contrary to the judgements of many sober understanding men l Page 5. whosoever in his right mind doth but read will finde it a Rudis indigestaque moles a meer Chaos of Confusion where by the way whosoever is not of the same judgement therein with you is censured to be out of his wits like your self whose Wits run a wool-gathering rather then that which you are pleased to stile methodical exceptions which denies the onely Supremacy of the King It s but a sad merriment to play with edge-tools to laugh at your Adversary with Rebellion in your mouth and if the mercy of our most Gracious Sovereign prevent not which I know no reason in the world for you will finde it so to your cost before you are let loose from the reins of your Just deserved Imprisonment § 24. Again the Bishop said pag. 196. That he peremptorily determines that the King Lords and Commons have no prudent moral religious and lawful power to change an ancient universal and excellent Government by Bishops To any that is AS new and Schismatical SO far worse and unsutable to England every way Christian Kings and their Parliaments are obliged to the Laws of God and Rules of Christian Piety and Polity too of which the whole Church in its Primitive example and constant custom is the best interpreter As no Legislative power is impowered by Gods Laws to bring in Heresie and Error and Superstition so nor Schism Faction or Confusion by causelesly nuding or taking from the Essentials of sound Doctrine or Christian Communion ever owned and maintained in the Church of Christ Here 's the Docters whole sentence word for word as I took it out of his own Book and not as its mangled by our Presbyters paultry delusive false quotation where he makes the words run thus Doctor Gauden peremptorily determineth That Parliaments Kings Lords and Commons have no Prudent Moral Religious and lawful Authority to change the Ancient Universal and excellent Government by Bishops for Christian Kings and Parliaments are obliged c. leaving out those words of the Doctors which made his learned Assertion unanswerable and true beyond any sound contradiction which are these To any that is AS new and Schismatical SO far worse and unsutable to England every way that so his own arguings might thereby appear the better and sound more pleasingly to the ears of his factious brethren a practise somewhat like unto one that pictures a man with the greatest deformity of body he can for no other end but to make his
authority to change it which must needs have reference to the Laws of God according to the subsequent words of the Bishops where he explaines his meaning by judiciously asserting That Christian Kings and their Parliaments are obliged to the Laws of God and rules os Christian piety and polity too of which the whole Church in its primitive example is the best interpreter and so his position in short is this That they have no lawful authority by the Laws of God and rules of Christian piety and polity to change Episcopal Government which is a cleer evident truth to me for I consider with my self that those Laws and Rules will admit at no hand of any schism ataxy confusion or division in the Church which are contrary to true Christianity for the abounding whereof amongst the Corinthians they were so often taxed of their too much carnality and that Bishops were set up by the Apostles themselves in remedium Schismatis for the preventing of schismes and divisions and that none of those errors and heresies were so prevalent or apparent to humane eyes in the Bishops times as since their Julian extirpation for the setting up of Prsbyterian practical-jesuitism was the ground of a day of fasting and humiliation amongst the Godly rebels and a Sermon thereupon preached by our unsacred Covenanter What shall we say to those things that men should show so much pretence of goodness in appointing a day to humble themselves for the errors and heresies of the times the true proper effects of their arrogant ways of Rebellion in setting up Presbytery as a distinct Government by it self without Episcopacy in direct opposition to the practise of the Catholick Church as well as to the King and his Laws which is and hath bin the head and fountain from whence the unclean muddy streames of heresies and blasphemies have had their rise and product And yet forsooth must have the means still kept for the production of the same ends of disorder and confusion Vpon the consideration of the whole I cannot but subscribe to the great truth of the Bishops words That as no legislative power is impowered by Gods Laws to bring in either Heresie Error Superstition Schisme Faction or Confusion so neither have the King Lords and Commons any prudent moral religious or lawful Authority by those Laws or those of this English Nation and Rules of Christian Piety and Polity to change the Ancient universal and excellent Government by Bishops to any that is As new and schismatical so far worse and unsuitable to England every way If one part of the sentence be true which by Croftons silence is absolutely concluded No man need fear to affirm the other without any derogation to the legal rightful Supremacy of the King That which speakes against Schisme and faction confusion and disorder will not surely give me any lawful power to extirpate Bishops the main preventers of it by being the constant promoters of love and unity § 27. Thus I have examined the words as I found them imperfectly quoted in Croftons Discourse without that additional clause which I have set down in my true Citation of them which he most unworthily and basely had left out that so he might have some what to fill up his rambling discourse with for a true Citation would have fo confounded his understanding as immediately to have commanded him into a becoming silence and ingenuous conviction of the Bishops truths but rather then he would depart from his cavilling art and shiftings he 'l mangle the words of an Antagonist to make his own way the smoother for credulous poor mortals to set their steps in which hath brought to my remembrance the answer of a most Reverend person to the Miltonian Justifier of Regicide and Rebellion depraver of verity and breaker of the Kings Image That he p See the Image unbroken p. 153. broke sentences and truths lest he should breake for want of matter And the words of the Bishops with that additional clause in it is so cleer a truth as can no waies be darkned by a Presbyters Argumentations which was seen evident enough by Crofton himself and so very craftily left it out and therefore needs no other defence but the bare words themselves which carry truth in their forehead to the convincing of any opposer which I have no sooner done but I took a resolution to follow the mans pattern for once and turn Quaerist too Where 's the Premunire that the Bishop hath stept into now Is speaking of a known Truth confronting of King and Parliaments Suppose the Bishop had lived in Queen Maries days and had said That neither Queen nor Parliament had any lawful power by the Laws of God and Rules of Christian Piety and Polity either to change the King Edward-Reformation or to set up and establish Popery in the kingdom Was it fit for any mans mouth but a cursed Jesuits to charge him with sedition and treason against the Queen in confronting her and her Parliaments by saying black is black and white is white by asserting a known truth Blessed be God we live under a Prince that desires not to have His Supremacy stretcht so as to make it an Instrument of Justification of the Lawfulness of His Actings either against God or his Truth or the Defenders of true Christianity that desires to have His Supremacy carryed on and maintain'd for no other ends and purposes then those for which it was first established To make Clergy-men as well as Lay know that he is their onely Supream Governor and in case of offence that His Power will reach to the punishment of both that they shall not be exempted from the Civil Magistrates sword of Justice either by the wicked pretence of a foreign Papal superior Jurisdiction or Antimonarchical Sentence or Determination of the traiterous seditious Consistorians if they do that which is not justifiable either by the Laws of God or this Land Where 's the Bishops sedition I wonder Where 's his treason that he needs to fear to be made less by the head for as this Leaguer cants it Why he saith in affirming the defect of the Kings and Parliaments prudent moral religious and lawful power to change Episcopacy to one that is worse and far unsuitable to England every way for that is it which the Bishop saith which our unsacred Covenanter hath dared to contradict with his shabbed pratling Ay but saith Crofton The Statutes of the Kings declare against the Pope That Holy Church was founded in Prelacy by their own donation power and authority and so by the same way changeable Ergo What That they have any prudent moral religious and lawful authority to change it to a worse After what rate doth this wily Covenanter argue Can they that swear to govern a people well and according to the Laws of the Land have any of that quaternary Power to change one Government for a worse Will the people in such a case think or can
23. of Jan in the first year of her Majesties Reign the Lords and Commons assembled by force of the same Writ the 21. day the Queen fell sick and could not appear in her person in Parliament that day and therefore Prorogued it until the 25. of the same month of January Resolved by all the Judges of England That the Parliament began not the day of the Return of the Writ viz. the 23. of January when the Lords and Commons appeared but the 25. of the said moneth when the Queen came in person What think you now Sir Presbyter You see the Queens presence and the reason of her absence was so far looked upon and esteemed in those daies in relation to the Authority of a Parliament that her absence but for two daies by the resolution of all the English Judges was enough to degrade them of their Parliamentary title till her Personal appearance amongst them gave them the denomination of a Parliament And unless this man can make it out That the late blessed Carolian Martyr had not the same place and Authority over these Nations as that noble Queen had the same Conclusion will follow upon his Assertion That the place of his Royal retirement and reason of his absence did so far add and abstract to the Authority of that which our Presbyterian Jugglers so often miscal a Parliament that they were neither Titular nor Real neither Name nor Thing without him For c See Lex terrae p. 51 the King is the head of the Kingdom and Parliament How then can a body act without a head There hath one long since told us to whom for knowledge in the Laws and Customs of the Realm our Caviller is not worthy to be compared That d Pag. 156 157. the two Houses are no more a Parliament then a body without a head a man Two Houses and a Parliament are several things Cuncta fidem vera faciunt all circumstances agree to prove this truth Before the Norman Conquest and since to this day the King is holden Principium caput finis the Beginning Head and chief end of the Parliament as appeareth by the Treatise of the maner of holding Parliaments made before the Norman Conquest by the Writ of Summons of Parliament whereby the Treaty and Parier in Parliament is to be had with the King onely by the Common Law by the Statute Law by the Oath of Supremacy taken at this and every Parliament it doth manifestly appear that without the King there can be no colour of a Parliament e See the Royal Buck ler p. 62. The two Houses saith Mr. Duncomb frame the body the King giveth the soul for without him it is but a dead Carcase Nay further saith the learned Judge in the Table of his Book concerning Parliaments This became no Parliament when the King with whom they should parley was driven away By what hath been said and many more instances that I could produce for this purpose I leave it to every understanding person to consider whether His Presence or his Absence without whom there can be no colour of a Parliament doth add or detract the Authority of Parliament And leaving Crofton to the just deserved censure and punishment of Majesty for his Rebellious Malignant Principles I shall proceed on to his next Arrogant and yet Ignorant pratling for his Seditious Vow and Covenant which hath been the cause of so many direful plagues amongst us § 34. Whatever the Libeller i. e. Dr. Burges his sweet-tooth'd Sacrilegious Brother did Mr. Crofton he f Pag. 37. saith allowed the Doctor this Text i. e. Numb 30. before mentioned in its Latitude and referred him to be judged by it and now granteth That the inferior in things not sui juris may have the action vowed superseded by the declared pleasure of the superior and that whether it be son or servant Doth he so Doth Mr. Crofton grant then the truth of the Doctors Arguments What doth he keep a kackling for then What doth he make such a buzzing then in the peoples ears with his perjurious Covenant Doth he first confess his Antagonists Arguments to be good by granting what the Doctor wrote for and yet set out another vain glorious discourse against them so far as to run into seditious principles to keep his faithful Covenant on foot Ay but in our case he then affirmed he said The Parliament sitting had over us a Legislative power to which we owed subjection They were in their National capacity the Nation Collective and sui juris and to be obeyed during their session by those whom they represented The Parliament What is that It is the King the Lords and the Commons saith the Covenant at the trial of the Regicide Harrison That the world may not be abused by the insinuations of a man who acts as if he had a spirit and in truth is possessed I will say saith his Majesties Learned Councel That the Lords and Commons are not a Parliament That the King and Lords cannot do any thing without the Commons Nor the King and Commons without the Lords Nor the Lords and Commons without the King especially against the King if they do they must answer it with their heads g See judge Jenkins Lex Terrae p. 80. The Lords and Commons make no more a Parliament by the Law of the Land then a body without a head makes a man for a Parliament is a body composed of a King their Head the Lords and Commons the Members All three together saith Judge Jenkins make one body and that is the Parliament and no other The Two Houses are not the Parliament but onely part thereof and by the abuse and misunderstanding of this word Parliament they have miserably deceived the people So then we see what is become of our zealous Presbyters Parliament consisting of Two Houses without a King for its clear by the preceding words he meanes them and them onely when he prattles of the Parliaments having a Legislative power over us Here we finde the judgement of the Reverend Judges and learned Sages of the Law to be cleerly against him and his Titular Parliament and telling us how the faction miserably deluded the people with the name when they were destitute of the true nature of a Parliament by applying it to them to whom it no more belonged then the title of a man appertaines to him who wants the conveniency of a Head As for their Legislative power It s huge like their empty title of Parliament and both Phantasmes of their own braines and that it may apppear to be such I shall bring in Croftons profound Lawyer Mr. Prynn in the front to bear witness against him for he tells us That h See his plea'gainst illegal Taxes p. 5. the Parliament Rolls and the Printed Prologues to the statutes of c. and names a great many run all in this form At the Parliament holden c. By the advice and assent
of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and at the special instance and request of the Commons of the Realm our Lord the King hath caused to be ordained or ordained certain Statutes where the advising assenting to Laws is appropriated to the Lords the ordaining of them to the King and nothing but the requesting of and petitioning for them to the Commons Thus he Other Statutes saith i See his impartial inquiry into the nature of sin p. 211. See his Lex Terrae p. 26. the Reverend Doctor Peirce which have the force of Acts of Parliament are known to be directed as private Writs with a Teste Meipso And the Common stile of most others is found to run in this form The King with the advice of the Lords at the Humble Petition of the Commons Wills this or that where by the way take notice of the saying of Judge Jenkins That Consilium non preceptum Confiliarii non preceptores Counsel is not a command nor to be Counsellors is not to be Commanders So the form of passing Bills is still observed to be this Le Roy le vieult The King will have it And Soit fait il comme est desire Let it be done as t is desired plainly speaking by way of grant to something sought or petitioned for from whence saith he by some it hath bin gathered That Rogation of Laws doth rightly belong to the two Houses but the Legislation to the King that their Act is preparative his only jussive The Acts of Parliament saith the learned Mr Duncomb are called the King Laws And why not the Kings Laws Doth not he make See his Royal Buckler p. 306. 307 308. them The whole body and volumes of the Statutes proclaim the King the sole Legislator What is Magna Charta but the Kings Will and gift The very beginning of it will tell you t is no more viz. Henry by the grace of God c. Know yee that we of our meer and free will have given these Liberties In the self same stile runs Charta de forresta But wherefore evidences to prove that which no man can deny The stiles of the Statutes and Acts printed to the 1 of Henry VII are either the King willeth the King ordaineth the King provideth the King grants the King ordains at his Parliament or the King ordaineth by the advice of his Prelates and Barons and at the humble petition of the Commons c. But in Henry VII his time the stile altered and hath sithence continued thus It is ordained by the Kings Majesty and the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons in this present Parliament assembled And why do the Lords and Commons ordain Is it not onely because the King doth It is so they do because the King doth which onely denotateth their assent for the Kings Majesty giveth life to all as the Soul to the body For did ever the Lords and Commons make an Act without the King Never They cannot The Lords advise the Commons consent but the King makes the Law Their Bills are but Inanimate scriblings until the King breaths into their Nostrils the breath of life and so that which was mould before becometh a Law which ruleth living souls And as Sir Edward Cook observeth In ancient times all Acts of Parliaments were in form of petitions which the King answered at his pleasure Now if it be the duty of the Parliament to petition and in the power of the King to receive or reject their petitions at their will Judge you who hath the supream power Thus far he § 35. By what hath been said I leave it to any understanding person to judge where the Legislative power lies whether in the Two Houses who most humbly beseech His Majesty under the notion of dutiful and loyal Subjects for making new Laws Or in the King who grants their petitions makes the Law and ordains it to be observed who both by the Law and a Sacred Oath is declared and sworn to be the onely Supream Governor of the Land That there is no difference between a Son and Servant to his Father and Master and the Two Houses to the King is clear by one oath they took wherein they swear To bear true faith and allegiance to our Sovereign Lord the King and by the other they acknowledge cutting off all pretences of Co-ordination His Majesty to be the onely Supream Governor of the Land which implies His Lordship and Dominion over them And they in all their Addresses and Declarations stile themselves His dutiful and loyal subjects and so servants and in relation to the Kings stile of Pater Patriae may be very well called sons too And seeing the Two Houses imaginary Legislative power by the Laws of this Land is not able to impower and authorize them either to make new Laws or to repeal old ones without the Royal Consent of Majesty it clearly follows That their vowing to extirpate Bishops established by Magna Charta confirmed by 32 Acts of Parliament and irrepealable was not sui Juris it lay not in their power nor had no right to do it without His Majesties consent and so having not that according to Croftons own grant the Action vowed was superseded and might very well be so by His Majesties publick Proclamation his declared pleasure against the taking or imposing of it in regard it was a traiterous and seditious Vow and Covenant and therefore null and void to all intents and purposes But further our Leaguer affirms That § 36. Their power in this Covenant was no less Legislative then in the Protestation of May 1641. What doth he Jabber thus for of non entities of things that never had a being of a Legislative power in the Two Houses which they never had which neither Divine nor English Lawes ever gave them If I should for once allow of his non-sense and lawless Assertions yet I should spoil his sport there too for their power in the Covenant was not so Legislative I speak according to the Presbyters canting tone upon these grounds The Protestation was made and taken in the presence of all the Members of both Houses and giving their free consent it was confined to established Laws had a Parliamentary authority as it were by His Majesties deep silence though nigh at hand and thereby implying His tacit consent to the doing of it many thousands took it who yet utterly damned the wretched Covenant detesting it as the venome of hell and not without just cause But when by the Midwifery of Tumults and Armies this devouring Brat of Abiram was brought forth k See Iudge Jenkins Lex Terrae p. 126. All men know That of 120 Peers of the kingdom who were Temporal Peers before the Troubles there were not above thirty left in the Lords House and in the House of Commons about 200 of the principal Gentlemen of the kingdom left the Houses and adhered to His Majesty The Covenant it self destructive to the former directly
from rendring rayling for rayling and yet rayl your self for several times in several pages against that very person whom you so strangely exclaim against for the very same thing which clearly manifests an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a notorious self-condemnation and brings you within the reach and lash of the Apostles sentence which in his Epistle to the Romans he pronounces with a Therefore thou art inexcusable O man who ever thou Rom. 2. 1. art that judgest for wherein thou judgest another thou condemnest thy self for thou that judgest dost the same things § 39. But Crofton hath not done yet but continues belching forth his own wickedness and folly against the Reverend Prelate with a z Page 51. Thus he supposeth the Two Houses into a non-entity as to their Supream Legislative power by the temper they were a Page 52 then in and the absence of the King though they were animated by an express Statute Law which some upon good grounds and reasons beyond the reach of Dr. Gauden or little Mr. Crofton to resolve have openly averred to continue them yet in being And thus he profoundly supposeth a Parliament swearing qua Parliament in the fullest formality and profession of their National capacity was a personal Covenanting Bless me what doth this Presbyter prattle thus for of things he lets us know by his fanciful jabbering he hath no more skill or knowledge in then his neer acquaintance the Ass The man is out of his element sure he is got into a wrong way and fancies to himself that he 's going the direct right way on to his journeys end and therefore I le do what lies in my power to manifest his error and mistake unto him And therefore first Doth the Doctor suppose such a thing Doth he suppose nothing to be nothing that to be a non-entity which never had a being A terrible cause indeed of a Presbyters exclamation for we finde that the Supream Legislative Bauble of the Two Houses is the very very Loadstone that draws up a sanctified Puritans zeal and affection to them to shew us a Presbyters inclinations more to fictions and whimsies then to those which are visible undoubted Truths Supream What Gimcrack or New-nothing have we got here That the Body should be affirmed to be above the Head The Legs Arms and Trunk of the Body indeed as Judge Jenkins b See his Lex Terrae p. 49. saith are greater then the Head and yet not above nor with life without it Certainly the man hath a mind to show the profound depth of his skill in Corah's art of murmuring and rebellion against the Supremacy of the Prince and Priest He tells us of an Observation in his Book That it hath been the fatal chance of the Bishops of England Page 25. to run themselves into a premunire If he speak of any since the Reformation I defie him to show me one example of any Protestant Bishop that ever since then proved disloyal either in words or actions to either King or Queen except Bishop Williams when he began in his old age to dote and lean too much on that rotten prop of Presbytery which taught him to fortifie his House against his Gracious Sovereign I do not mean those pretended premunire's for which the incomparable Laud was so infamously murthered nor by which sundry others of the Royal Adherents were the very same way dealt withal as Traytors against His Majesty and the Bauble which they call'd The Parliament for assisting him by that Black Cabale that Assembly of Treacherous Men before in and after the year 1644. But certainly there 's none but can observe the Presbyters Loyalty is good enough when they are deficient in power that is to say when they cannot help it for it is as clear as noon-day that a Puritan never wants a will to rebel if he hath at any time any power and opportunity and that the Magistrate refuse to set up the Consistorian Slavery which made the Learned Dr. Pierce cry out c See his Self-Revenger exemplified p. 100. Blessed and happy is that Nation where such mens Loyalty consisteth in their want of power or opportunity to make resistance In good earnest Mr. Crofton I le for once make answer by a retortion and ask you your own questions you so weakly and impertinently to say no worse propounded Page 25. to the Bishop Sir have you not stretcht too far and stept into a premunire I should fear to be made less by the head as guilty of Treason Sedition at the least should I thus confront the King and Loyal Parliaments in what all their Statutes and an Oath of Supremacy declare to be the peculiar Prerogative of the King And that they do so need no further demonstration then that which follows even the words of the Lord Chief Baron now Lord Chief Justice Bridgeman in his Speech to the Grand Jury at the Regicides Tryal where we thus finde his learned Language Gentlemen Let me tell you what our Law-books say for there 's the ground out of which and the Statutes together we must draw all our conclusions for matter of Government How do they stile the King They call him The Lieutenant of God and many other expressions in the Book of Primo Henrici Septimi Says that Book there The King is immediate from God and hath no Superior The Statute says That the Crown of England is immediately subject to God and to no other power The KING say our Books He is not onely Caput Populi the Head of the People but Caput Reipublicae the Head of the Commonwealth the Three Estates And truly thus our Statutes speak very fully common experience tells you when we speak of the KING and so the Statutes of Edward the Third we call the King Our Sovereign Lord the King Sovereign That is Supream And when the Lords and Commons in Parliament apply themselves to the King they use this expression Your Lords and Commons your faithful subjects humbly beseech I do not speak any words of mine own but the words of the Laws Stat. 24. Hen. 8 cap. 12. Whereas by divers sundry old authentique Histories and Chronicles it is manifestly declared and expressed That this Realm of England is an Empire and so hath been accepted in the world governed by one Supream Head and King having the Dignity and Royal Estate of the Imperial Crown of the same c. 25 Hen. 8. cap. 21. There it is the people speaking of themselves That they do Recognize no Superior under God but the Kings Grace Thus that learned Person To the Judge let me add Mr. Duncomb who telling us d See his Royal buckler or a Lecture to Traytors p. 108. That the Law of Nature shall perish and the heavens and earth shall pass away before Lex Terrae the Law of the Land shall deny this Oracle Omnis sub Rege ipse sub nullo nisi tantum sub Deo All men are under the King and
the personal consent of the King as they must certainly have if what Croftons dreaming fancy suggests to him be true That they have the Supream Legislative power is such a ridiculous Bull as never was heard or thought of until this frantick Parliament Therefore when either or both Houses without the King take upon them to make Laws they extend beyond the bounds of their Commission they thereby act of their own head not as Representatives And as he saith in another place * p. 109. These things are done by the Members not in their Politick but in their Natural capacities they are not Acts of Parliament but unlawful Facts of Parliament men Thus that Author If he be King of a kingdom saith g Mr. Duncomb then all the people joyntly or severally in his kingdom are under his command and if under his command then he onely hath power to give them Laws be they in one Collective body as in Parliament at the Kings House or Simple bodies at their private dwellings Le Roy fait les Leix avec le consent du Seigneurs et Communs et non pas les Seigneurs et Communs avec le consent du Roy Is the voice of the Common Law the King makes Laws in Parliament with the consent of the Lords and Commons and not the Lords and Commons with the consent of the King Virg. 7. Aeneid Hoc priami gestamen erat cum Jura vocatis More daret Populis And 5. Aeneid Gaudet Regno Trojanus Arestes Indicitque forum patribus dat Jura vocatis The Lords and Cowmons have power onely to propound and advise it is onely the Kings Le Roy le vieult which makes the Law their Propositions and advice signifie nothing if the King saith Le Roy se Avisera It would be strange if the Assembly of the Subjects together should make them Masters over their Sovereign who gave them power to assemble and hath power to turn them home again when he pleaseth Legum ac Edictorum probatio aut publicatio quae in Curia vel Senatu fieri solet non arguit imperii Majestatem in Senatu vel Curia inesse saith Bodin De Repub. lib. 1. cap. 8. The publishing and approbation of Laws and Edicts which is made ordinarily in the Court of Parliament proves not the Majesty of the State to be in the said Court or Parliament It is the Kings Scepter which giveth force to the Law and we have no Law but what is his will Thus far he That there is enough already cited to prove that all our Presbyters prating about the two Houses Co-ordinacy and share and yet their Supremacy too in the Legislative power * Observe this puddle of Treasonable Lawless contradictions but Sharers in a thing and yet Supream which admits of no Co-ordinacy are meer nullities as King James told Cardinal Perron h See his Defence of the Right of Kings p. 14. upon another account Chimerical projects matters of a floating imagination and built upon false pre-suppositions is evident enough to my shallow understanding whatever it may be to those of deeper reach and unless Mr. Crofton thought he should meet with none but Notorious blockheads * P. 195. more blunt witted then a Whetstone as King James tells the Presbyters Compeer the Cardinal upon the Common account for the Popes and Discipliniarians power over Kings he would never have endeavoured to draw people to believe by his perswasion that the two Houses are not onely Co-ordinate and sharers but also rightful owners of the Supream Legislative power But that I may hasten to a final period of my discourse I shall in order thereunto consider Mr. Croftons ready consent to that Seditious Book which the Dreaming Author entitused The long Parliament revived set forth by his Sacred Malignant Brother Drake under the disguised name of Thomas Phillips which first implies the Seditious and Treasonable nature of the subject matter of it and his being ashamed or at lest fearful to own or avow by setting his right name to it And then Secondly his carrying on his Factious ends and purposes with colourable pretences of Loyalty according to the constant practise of the Covenanting Party i See Pres. bytery Popish not Episcopacy P. 7. The credit of whose false Doctrine is well enough known from Dan to Beersheba was the very leaven wherewith the people were first moulded into a sour lump of armed malice against their Sovereign for he knew well enough nothing could be more destructive to his Majesties interest then that Pestiferous Pamphlet he then set forth which being Examined by the Lords and Commons in Parliament in the moneth of November 1660. was found as the Journal saith to be Scanda'ous and Seditious and a charge by them ordered to be drawn up against the Author and the Book to be burned by the hand of the Common Hangman So easie and usual is it for Presbyters to gainsay the truth of what upon serious consideration of the whole loyal body of the Lords and Commons in Parliament was voted Seditious and to be burnt by the hands of Sacred Doctor Dunne the only Phisician for a certain infallible cure of a Covenanters brainsick disease of Sedition and Rebellion and yet so ready to brand others with the black mark of Malignant Popish vipers Illiterate Ignorant Injudicious Court Doctors and Lawyers and Anti-Parliamental Momusses who should so far dare to be honest as to resist a Covenanter in standing up in the defence of the good old English Laws and rejecting and disalowing of the Legislative power so called of the Illegal Arbitrary Votes and Orders of that unparellel'd Rebellious Faction in the two Houses of that Long Parliament which is so Seditiously affirmed to be Revived to embrew the Nation again in Treason and Rebellion in Murther and King-killing for the enlargement of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. As for his disloyal fancy of the Long-Parliament-Rebels continuance nothwithstanding the Murder of their Onely Supream Head and Governour let him but read Judge Jenkins at large proving before the Regicide what I shall give now but the heads of in brief k That the two Houses did not then act by the Kings Writ but contrary unto it and so their Acts were null That the Act for continuing the Parliament so long as both houses please is void because it is First Against Common right for thereby Parliament men will not pay their debts and they may do wrong to others Impune besides the utter destruction of all mens actions who have to do with Parliament men by the Statute of Limitations 21. Jac. Secondly Against Common reason for Parliaments were made to redress publick grievances not to make them Thirdly Impossible the death of his Majesty * For the King was then alive whom God long preserve dissolving it necessarily Fourthly Repugnant to the Act for a Triennial Parliament and to the Act for holding a Parliament once a year That the end of continuing that
made by those who had nothing else to say for themselves and their illegal courses being assisted too by such a Learned Assembly of so many Divines who after a Three years Conference most profoundly voted God to be the Father § 9. And yet notwithstanding this Anti-monarchical limitation they declare they did set it down that the world might bear witness of their Loyalty they might have said Jugling and Rebellion for that is the true english of such a limited Loyalty and that they have no thoughts to diminish His Majesties just power and greatness No question but the world would did and have sufficiently taken notice of that which they call their Loyalty and have found it to be such as their Guisian Leaguing Brethrne practised who under pretence of x 2 Sam. 15. 7 8. maintaining w See The Right of Kings in Marg. the Roman Catholick Religion as these did for that which they usually mis-called the Reformed undermined the Kings Authority and sought to advance themselves the very same which Absalom the Beautiful Rebel showed to his Father when under a fair colour of Evil Councellors at Court and under a plausible pretence of paying his vow he made to the Lord in Hebron he * verse 6. stole the hearts of the men of Israel from their due allegiance to their King and drew them †verse 11 in their simplicity into a damnable Rebellion with him and therefore he that is loyal in practises and works will never approve of these Westmonasterian Leaguers loyalty which onely consists in words whilest their actions declares nothing else but Treason and Rebellion unless y See A Vindication of King Charls by noble Mr. Symmons p. 40. when they are in Cathedris in their seats as Parliament-men they are all as infallible as the Pope and have a power as well as he to do what they please to make evil good and good evil to make Rebellion and Treason to be Duty and Loyalty and duty and loyalty to be Rebellion and Treason to vote sacriledge murder and theft to be no sins killing slaying and destroying to be acts of zeal and christian duty Till then their loyalty will appear in the eyes of all judicious men to be no better then a Wolf in Sheeps clothing As for their disclaymer of diminishing His Majesties just power and greatness upon search and inquiry after it we shall find it to be a chip of the old block a parcel of contradictions like the other of preserving the Kings person with a destructive limitation and therefore I again thus Quaere Is the taking the Antient right of the Militia from him which was never for z See The Royalists Defence p. 97. the space of 1700. years past questioned or disputed until by these usurpers injuriously wrested from the Crown but hath been time out of mind inherent in the King a See Iudge Jenkins Lex Terrae p. 37. The practise of all times and the custom of the Realm no diminishing his Majesties just power Was the justifying the war by a party of the two Houses the Kings sworn Subjects against the Martyr to be warrantable both in point of law and conscience and making a deforming Reformation without the consent and against the express prohibition of their Dread Soveraign and not onely so but justifying for a commendable practise the iniquity of Witchcraft which Rebellion is termed by the Prophet was this no diminishing His Majesties just greatness What do they think English men are made of What are all made up of a bundle of contradictions that they impose such juglings upon us Surely the power of the Militia in the King was a very just necessary power and he being b See A Letter to a Member p. 5. under God the Protector of the Law I wonder how he could could defend it and the d Priviledges of Parliament without the power of the sword and the greatness of His Majesties over all in his dominions was very just too if either the laws of God or of this Land or an oath of Supremacy are able to make it so And yet forsooth people must be forced by vertue of an illegal Anti-parliamentary League not onely to be c See The Animadversions upon General Monk's Letter to the Gentry of Devon p. 4. ingaged in the wars against the King and so thereby become perjured and faithless persons and to swear to assist all those that shall do so too in order to the taking away the Kings Negative voice and the power of the Militia from him which was one of those jurisdictions priviledges preeminencies and authorities belonging to the Kings Highness His Heirs and successors and united and annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Realm which every one of the Parliamenteers as they were called had by a solemn legal Sacred oath of Supremacy sworn to assist and defend to his power but also hipocritically to say no worse to sware too that for all that they have no thoughts of diminishing His Majesties just power and greatness Was there ever such jugling seen that men should endeavour to take away that from their King which is his just right and yet sware with their right hands lifted up to the most high God that they have no thoughts to diminish it Ay and sware too that they had before their eyes at this present the honor and happiness of the Kings Majesty and his posterity in what part of the world can these mens peers be found as to the art of jugling and contradictions in their oaths Where may we find a pattern of their venemous courses but among the damned Guisian leaguers in France who murdered their King with a promise of fidelity and of their being his true and faithful Subjects And yet this this is that Covenant God wot that notwithstanding it set us together by the ears and put us all in blood and confusion must be still kept to inrol us amongst mad men for ever This jugling and contradictions in this ungodly Covenant cannot but be contrary to the nature of a true oath which as the Prophet saith must be made in Truth righteousness and in Judgement and therefore unlawful and not to be kept by any without an evident disobedience to the command of the Lord expressed by the said Prophet to the men of Israel § 10. And though they can tell us in their sixth Article That this Cause and League of theirs so much concerns the glory of God the good of the kingdoms and the honor of the King yet I demand and they may answer me if they can Was is it ever heard spoke before by men that pretend a fear towards God that that which is a most horrible breach of the Laws of God could ever tend to his glory and was not this Rebellions Covenant and covenant Rebellion against the Martyr directly a breach of the Divine Precept spoken by the mouth of his blessed St. Peter d 1 Pet. 2. 13.
To submit our selves to the King as Supream and that for the Lords sake and did they not swear his Supremacy yea that he was the onely Supream Governor thereby implicitely denying upon Oath any Co-ordinates with him in the exercise of the Supremacy and therefore can perjury and disobedience to the Laws of our Creator be affirmed by any one not possessed with a deep frenzy to concern the glory of God It s true indeed when the Jews crucified our Savior it was out of a pretended tenderness to the glory of God and when our English-Jewish Tygres had murthered their lawful Sovereign it was meerly as they pretended for the advancement of Christs kingdom but that such actions as either of those concerned either the glory of God or the advancement of his Sons kingdom is onely a demonstration of the Assertors strong delusions for it plainly intimates unto us e See the Right Rebel p. 121. That there is a special work of Satan in it when such a strong delusion is sent unto men that they should believe such an Antichristian Lie tendred unto them under the colour of a Christian truth as the Doctrine of Rebellion is But this is just like the Second of the good of the kingdoms and therefore to that I again thus Quaere Was there not a War begun by a pack of true Delinquents got into the House of Commons and that they were such I appeal to the judgement of the Law Did not that war as all wars do tend to impoverish and oppress the Kingdom Was not this League sworn to carry it on and not to leave off whether to make defection to the contrary part or to give themselves to a detestable indifferency or neutrality in this cause of rebellion till they had fulfilled their mischeivous traiterous ends Can then that Covenant which binds people as this certainly did and doth to continue the imbroyling of a Nation or Kingdom in blood confusion perjury and Rebellion concern so much the good of it Can that which stirs up people to pursue the impoverishing taxing and inslaving of a kingdome for whither did the Rebelling and rising up in Arms and swearing men to continue therein tend but to that be affirmed by any except Frantick bedlamers to concern the good and benefit of it And lastly for the honor of the King for he and his honor are put at the fag end of all in this perfidious League I further again Quaere Is it for the honor of the King to have his subjects rebel against him Is it for the happiness of the King and his Posterity to have all his Assistants and Adherents destroyed as much as their fellow-subjects can under the black false notion of Evil Councellors and Malignants Did not the Covenant binde the takers to such things as those Let them deny it with truth if they can Can that Covenant which binds men to disloyalty and treason though hypocritically and lyingly pretending loyalty which doth not better the evil nor antidote the venome in it The devil though he appeares as an angel of light sometimes to ensnare men the more easily in his delusions yet he is but a black devil still for all that and therefore I may justly and truly make my Question thus Can that Covenant which binds men to disloyalty and treason and to break the Laws of this Land be any thing less then Antichristian And is it not therefore damnable and abominable and to be abhorred of every one that desires to observe the dictates of Gods good Spirit in the sacred Canon of Scripture Undoubtedly every one that understands the true ways of advancing the glory of God the honor of the King and the good of the kingdoms will hold himself obliged and bound to desie this Covenant as the very sink of Jesuitism and high-way to hell it self and he that hath ever read and considered well the Sacred Canon and the undeniable truth of what our Carolian Martyr bid the Scotch Parliament always f See Reliquiae Sacrae Carolinae the last printed Letter ☞ remember That as the best foundation of Loyalty is Christianity so trâ—e Christianity teaches perfect Loyalty for without this Reciprocation neither is truly what they pretend to be will finde cause enough to refuse the taking of and if taken to renounce and abjure such a seditious Vow and Covenant which ties men to continue Rebels all the days of their lives for he that shall swear to extirpate a sort of men whose Function is establish'd by the great Charter of our Liberties in absolute breach of the Law and against the Command of his Prince and endeavour to bring to pass his extirpation by force of Arms which is high Treason and swear that he will all the days of his life zealously and constantly continue therein against all opposition That man by any reasonable person will be concluded a sworn Rebel and to continue by vertue of his Oath without a just renunciation a Traitor to his King as long as breath remains in his body to enable him to carry on the intentions and purposes of it And yet this is the League that such a stir and clutter is kept about some mens Christian and loyal breaking of it and though some of its unlucky Patrons are pleased to alledge for its goodness that part of the Clause of the first Article wherein it is said according to the word of God and the examples of the best Reformed Churches yet I affirm That that doth no more prove what they intend by bringing of that Allegation then the * 2 Cor. 11. 14. devils being transformed into an angel of light doth prove that he was in reality that into which he was transformed then the †Matth. 7. 15. false prophets coming to us in sheeps clothing doth prove that they are not inwardly ravening wolves then the Pharisees ‖ Matth. 23. 21. appearing outwardly righteous unto men is a convincing Argument to prove that within they were not full of hypocrisie and iniquity § 11. But lastly they tell us That they profess and declare before God and the world their unfeigned desire to be humbled for their own sins and for the sins of these Kingdoms especially that they have not as they ought valued the inestimable benefits of the Gospel that they have not laboured for the purity and power thereof and that they have not endeavored to receive Christ in their hearts nor to walk worthy of him in their Lives No it 's very true for if they had we should never have seen an ungospel-like unchristian Rebellion raised and sworn to be upholden against our gracious King painted over with a plausible pretence against some pretended evil Councellors nor an Anti-legal jugling self-contradictory League sworn for the Dathanian extirpation of the great upholders of Monarchy and it's just Rights Priviledges Preeminencies and Authorities against the several Incroachments of Papists and Presbyters of Jesuites and Sectaries They complain there indeed
p See their Reasons p. 15 16. To pray say those reverend persons to the purpose in the conclusion of the Covenant seemeth to us all one in effect as to beseech Almighty God the God of love and peace 1. To take all love and peace out of the hearts of Christians and to set the whole Christian world in a combustion 2. To render the Reformed Religion and all Protestants odious to all the world Mark the third To provoke the Princes of Europe ☞ to use more severity towards those of the Reformed Religion if not for their own security to root them quite out of their several Dominions 4. The tyranny and yoke of Antichrist if laid upon the subjects necks by their lawful Sovereigns is to be thrown off by Christian boldness in confessing the truth and patient suffering for it not by taking up arms or violent resistance of the higher Powers and yet forsooth this is that sacred Covenant that must be so strictly kept to set the whole Christian world in a combustion This is that League which must be so zealously continued in to render the true Protestant Religion and professors thereof odious and detestable to all the world yes and for the enlargement of the kingdom of Jesus Christ too they tell us I remember a very good observation of one upon this very account q See the Right Rebel p. 145. That as none of the Disciples denyed cursed and forswore his Master but Peter onely who alone without his leave drew a sword in his defence so neither is it said of the rest that they forsook him and sted till after that Peter had rashly attempted to defend him by force as if the Holy Ghost would have Christians observe That fighting for Christ without warrant from him is the next fore-runner of forsaking him That * Pag 139 if there be any one thing above others which The Antichrist may properly challenge as peculiar to himself it is the professed practise of Rebellion of purpose to promote pretended Religion for nothing can be more directly opposite both unto the Doctrine and Practise of Christ himself and his Apostles of Orthodox Christians in the times of the Primitive Church and of all genuine Protestants since the Reformation and yet that was the absolute tenour of the Covenant to resist King Charles to fight with a pretence for the advancement of King Jesus which how contrary to his Will Practise and Command may very well be gathered out of what hath been already set down as well as what Croftons profound Lawyer Mr. Prynne himself hath said upon that subject in his True and perfect Narrative Pag. 68 74 75 76. In which last page he sets down one of the express affirmations of the Jesuits plainly declaring the great union between them and our English Leaguers in that unchristian Practise That their Gospel and Religion is to be propagated set up the Heroticks and Evangelical Sectaries who resist them Refuted how Extirpated Abolished with Fire Sword and War like holy Leaguers and therefore upon all that hath been said in my Animadversions upon the several Articles of the Sacred Covenant so called I hope there is no man of any ingenuity or understanding but will conclude with me the damnable sinfulness thereof both in the Form and matter of it and so according to the Leaguers own Assertions in the number of those unlawful Oathes which must at no hand be kept by any takers of them § 14. Having thus dispatcht my Animadversions on this illegal League I shall now proceed to set down their own words to prove the unlawfulness and sin of keeping of their so much idolized Diana and so the necessity of repentance from all its takers Their words are these in their exhortation to take the Covenant That if there should any oath be found into which any Ministers or others have entred not warranted by the Laws of God and the land in this case they must teach themselves and others that such oathes call for repentance not pertinacy in them which words being suitable to what the Reverend Dr. Hardy said I shall here adjoyn his words That r See his Pious Votary p. 16. those Covenants which ingages men instead of keeping the Laws of God injuriously to violate both the Laws of God and perfidiously to break their own former oaths are no better then Leagues with hell and Covenants with the Devil Now mark will the Law of God warrant any persons whatsoever in the swearing a Reformation against their Kings consent will that Law which commands me to yeild obedience to the King as Supream warrant me in my disobedience and rebellion against him for to carry on my work of reformation Can that Law which enjoyns me to be subject to Principalities and Powers warrant my throwing that subjection off because I have the face to affirm and pretend it is for the fulfilling of it That this is the tenour of this impious Covenant we need no other witness then it self which plainly testifyeth to all the world that the swearers thereof took up arms meerly to alter Religion And that disobedience to God in the rebellion against the King was the very matter and subject of the Covenant is exceeding plain to any who consider the famous assertion of the now most learned Primate of Armagh one of whose words weighs more in the judgement of any understanding person then ten thousand of of such bablings as our wily factious Presbiters keep such a chatting in the Nation with s See his fair warning p. 30. Subjects saith that most accomplished Speaker vow to God and swear one to another to change the Laws of the Realm to abolish the discipline of the Church and the Liturgy lawfully established by the sword which was never committed to their hands by God or man without the King against the King which no man can deny in earnest to be plain Rebellion So that unless they can make the Law of God to warrant that which it no where commands but severely condemns Their League and Covenant according to the exhorters own affirmation calls for repentance and not continuance in the keeping of that which the several takers had either the confidence at first rebelliously to swear or through the horrible seductions or threats and menaces of the Delinquent Imposers took it not considering the venom in it without and against the Carolian Martyrs consent in perfect defiance of his legal sworn onely supream authority And as for its being warranted by the Laws of the Land hear in the first place what the reverend Judge Jenkins saith in general It is an oath saith t See his Lex Terrae p. 158. that famous Lawyer against the Laws of the Land against the Petition of Right and he gives us a reason for it presently after thus No man saith he by the Law can give an oath in a new case without an act of Parliament and therefore saith he again the
they that they are well governed or that their Prince mind their peace and safety If I may be so bold with the world as to tell them my simple judgement of those words of the Kings I humbly conceive with submission to those that are wiser That those Statutes were made meerly to cut off the spring of the Popes universal Supremacy and as much as in them lay to cast out his bold unwarrantable antichristian Encroachment upon the English Liberties and to give acheck to his Lordly domineering over them that the Kings as now might have their due rightful Supremacy over all persons in all causes within their dominuous Over Clergymen who were humble servants to the principles and injunctions of the Papal Vsurper as well as over Common people who were led by the nose by them In all causes Ecclesiastical to reform Abuses in the Church and punish Clergy-men for their Errors Heresies and Seditious principles aswel as Civil To execute wrath upon those that do evil either by Rebellion or Treason or Speaking or bellowing out from Press or Pulpit their damnable positions against their Persons Crowns Dignities or Governments upon any accompt with any person or persons joynt or seperate whatsoever This I understand to be the grounds of that Royal saying That holy Church was founded in prelacy by their own donation power and authority and not for any intentions of theirs to extirpate Episcopal Government or the manifestation of the lawfulness of their power by the Laws of God and Rules of Christian Piety and Polity for the doing of it § 28. But the man hath not done yet but hath some more questions such as they are to be answered still and therefore I le hasten to the consideration of them and what should they be but these paultry impertinent ones that follow which are as proper Queries for the Bishops true position as if he should have put his pen in 's tail and held them both up to the Sun to look at Where is Sir the Kings Prerogative over all persons in all causes Ecclesiastical What is become of your Oath of Supremacy Can you make this peremptory determination as your self calls it consist with it any more then with your Covenant Weighty questions indeed but such as are more worthy of laughter at his folly then of any answer to his proud boasting Quaeries but seeing the Scotized Presbyters aim therein if I hit him right if not let him or any of the gang inform me how I shot amiss is to make the learned Bishop by his saying to savour of the guiltiness of perjury by his pretended contradictory assertion to the noble Oath of Supremacy which he like a true Christian and faithful Subject had sworn its high time to look about us and stand up in defence of this vilely slander'd Prelate against this Covenanting Goliath of the City of London and make answer to his sorry though insolent Quaeries which though they seem to be of a ternary quality yet in sum the three amount but to one and first he asks Where is Sir the Kings Prerogative over all persons in all Causes Ecclesiastical Good lack what a great Upholder of the Regal Supremacy you are become Mr. Caviller What Sir do you turn Quaerist after it Do Presbytery begin to shake hands with the Supremacy of His Sacred Majesty Doth the devil plead for God and Baal for the worshipping of Christ Certainly then there needs no great fear of danger from the Apostatical Calvinian Hierarchy or of Letters of horning from the Scotized Presbytery But good now Sir Presbyter Why Prerogative Why not Supremacy Was that word like a Bishops Lawn Sleeves to your party that it would have choaked you to have named it In all my little reading did I never meet with that word Prerogative joyned with that sentence before put in in stead of the rightful word Supremacy which makes me think of a tacit denial of the thing at that very time he saucily corrects the Bishop for his seeming contradictory Position to it as giving a back-blow to the Kings Supremacy in his seeming paultry defence of it else surely he would have made use of the usual word Supremacy and not impotently ask Where is the Kings Prerogative over all persons in all causes Ecclesiastical Come come Mr. Zechary you are a cunning companion and lie altogether upon the catch to see how you can take away a Prelates credit from him but all wont do you are horribly deceived if you think to meet with any unbyassed persons to trap them into your cheating Snare with you for there 's none that compares one Book with the other as I have done but will see your cunning Sophistry and infamous ways of arguing and thereby learn to detest the Leaguing Author of the one and honor the reverend Writer of the other If he that saith That the King hath no prudent moral religious and lawful Authority by the Laws of God and Rules of Christian Piety and Polity to change Episcopal Government unto any one else that is AS new and schismatical SO far worse and unsuitable to England every way and so not to bring in Schism or Heresie denies the Supremacy of the King certainly the great and invincible maintainers of it against the joynt encroachments of Papist and his brother Presbyter will be quickly found to be against it and so indeed every one else that understands Christianity sense or reason Take the Supremacy in that notion for which it was first established and this Assertion of the Prelates may very well consist with the Oath but if this Calvinian prater for a little cavilling sport for it s for no other end be be sure for he is either no Presbyter or if he be he is no more a friend to or pleader for the Kings lawful Supremacy according to the true intent and meaning of the Framers of the Oath then the rigidest Jesuit at Rome will take it to reach to every thing that he that denies the Kings lawful power to do that which is unrighteous by the Laws of God is presently against His legal Supremacy Then not onely the reverend Prelates and Episcopal Divines the onely constant Assertors of it all along against the several wilde fancies of Jesuits and Scotized Presbyters but the Kings Sacred Majesty himself wil be found to be vehement opposers of it I 'm confident His Highness desires no such thing but that His Supremacy might onely reach so far as he may lawfully exercise it without breach of the Laws of God § 29. But this is not all for there is one Question still behinde a shrewd one indeed which follows immediately upon the back of the former and that 's this Hath a Gracious King lately advanced you to debase nay dethrone Him and His Parliament too What a huge careful man this Presbyter would fain make himself appear to be of his Princes honor so far as to question a learned Prelate for his seeming sedition and
about the Church doth restrain its exorbitances and direct its administrations but neither Canon nor Common Law doth establish it and in terminis declare and authorize it to be the Government of the Church of England That neither Canon nor Common Law doth establish Episcopacy is notoriously false by your good leave Mr. Shifter And that neither do in terminis declare it to be the Government of the Church of England is clearly beside the purpose T is not your I averr nor mine neither will weigh any thing in the way of Argumentation but good solid Grounds and Reasons raised upon a Foundation of Truth must be the way and Method for the satisfaction as well as conviction of an opponent and I am sure there is none at all in this and mine I am sure is as good a proof of the truth of my expression as your I averr is of yours but are both of the same mettal both a kin to the Scotchmans confutation of Bellarmine Bellarmine saith thus but I say the contrary where is he now You say That neither Canon nor Common Law do in terminis declare and authorize Episcopacy to be the Government of the Church of England Well What of that Because neither do in express tearms name Episcopacy to be the Government of the Church of England to say presently it s not established by the Law notwithstanding the express mention of Bishops and their Liberties in the very first Article of Magna Charta signifies little to me but onely the shallowness of the Authors brains and yet his proud confidence too to strive with a Father of the Church with an ipse dixit who avers nothing but his own folly mixed with a Turbulent and Seditious spirit I had not read much further beyond these last words but I meet with a Trayterous expression of his in his venemous Answer to the Reverend Bishop which makes as clear as the Sun what a Factious Seditious spirit a Sacred Covenanter is composed of even such That if the Law makes once a strict enquiry will send his head to accompany his Brethren in Iniquity upon London Bridge and to that end observe the words of this factious Pulpiteer § 32. The Bishop having said That the Parliament he means the the two Houses can Act Vote Determine and Execute nothing under the Kings withdrawing from them into any part of his own Countrey Who may yet saith a Pag. 31. Crofton do all things in his infancy or while in a Forreign Countrey As if the place ☞ of his Retirement or reason of his Absence did add or abstract to the Authority of Parliament A right Rebellious Covenanter One ready for the work of Treason Perfectly opinionated of the Sovereign power of the two Houses over the King and ready prepared for a Second Rebellion upon the old false thredbare grounds of Loyalty and Religion He offers first as an argument against the Legislative power of his Sovereign for that feigned suppositious one of the two Houses That they may do all things in his infancy or whilest in a Forreign Countrey Either the man is very short sighted and simply versed in the Royal English Laws and yet before we finde him pretending to it or else he is a wilful Sophisticator If he is not knowing in our Laws Why is he so arrogant and presumptuous as to offer his shallow Arguments against the Bishops undeniable Assertion and to stand to contradict him in that wherein he hath no skill If he doth know the Laws he is the blindest of all Beetles by being wilfully blinde and speaking contrary to his knowledge I do not mean contrary to his desire or his Trayterous Seditious spirit for its a thing too well known and evident to be denied by any whose face is not perfect mettal and free from all the sparks of Modesty That in the infancy of a King there is a Protector appointed in the Princes Supream Legislative place of Calling Proroguing and Dissolving of Parliaments of setting the Stamp of the Regal Sanction upon the Writings and requests of the Two Houses for the making of them Laws for without the Royal consent no Law and Repealing of old Laws if it be thought convenient and this that I say is confirmed by that learned and Reverend Judge Jenkins who tells us That b Lex terrae p. 52. the Protector assisted by the Counsel of the King at Law his twelve Judges the Counsel of State his Attorney Sollicitor and two Serjeants at Law his twelve Masters of the Chancery hath in the Kings behalf and ever had a Negative voice And whilest the Prince is in a Forreign Countrey there are certain Noble men Commissioned under the great Seal of England to supply his place while he comes himself as the Histories of our Kings whilest in Forreign parts do attest as well as the practises of our present Prince whom God long preserve out of the juggling murdering Clutches of Presbyterian Judasses in relation to Scotland and Ireland by appointing a Lord Commissioner in the one and a Lord Lieutenant in the other to supply the place of Majesty in both Kingdoms So that his may yet do all things in his infancy or whilest in a Forreign Countrey without either Protector at the one time or Deputed Nobles at the other is nothing else but a meer fiction a delusive Cheat the effects of his Crazy brain endeavoured to be put into peoples belief and therefore I 'le trouble my self no further with it § 33. But behold the spirit of the man That neither the place of his Majesties Retirement nor reason of his Absence doth add or abstract to the Authority of Parliament Is the issue and fruits of his wilde seditious humor He without whom there can be neither Parliament nor Law is concluded by this hair-braind Presbyter to be but as a Cypher and that the two Houses are a compleat Parliament of themselves alone without his Sacred Majesty their Only Supream head and Founder By what Warrant were they at first called together Was it not by vertue of his Majesties Writ And was not the tenor of that Writ the Treating and Advising with the King And did they perform the ends for which they were summoned together when they raised Tumults against their Prince and forced him away from them and at last had the confidence to declare by their Votes of non-Addresses that they would neither Treat nor Advise with him If not then t is clear they sate to no purpose in the world but ingraved the name of Rebels upon their foreheads and made themselves to be no Parliament by destroying the ends for which they were called together But because Crofton is so arrogant in denying the Kings Presence or Absence to be of any force or validity in adding or diminishing the Authority of a Parliament I shall make bold to present him with this one Example Queen Elizabeth summoned 3. Eliz. Dyer 203. her first Parliament to be held the
not break nor yet to abrogate or change without his Majesties consent And that the House of Commons have not power to require an Oath of any except perhaps of their own Members And you in opposition to him affirm That the Resolves of the House declare it to have been Authoritative very good I pray answer me then Was not the detestable Rebellion against the Carolian Martyr Resolved to be Authoritative too and O strange parcel of non-sense to be Loyalty and Obedience and in the then blinde Conscience of your profound Lawyer to be lawful and necessary both in point of Law and Conscience Was not their Votes of Non-Addresses to be made or had to or from their Supream Lord and Governour with its immediate attendant unmatchable perjury Resolved to have been Authoritative too Did they not Resolve all the Villanies Murthers Blasphemies Sequestrations Imprisonments and utter Ruine of his Majesty and his Noble Adherents and in fine all their Actions from beginning to end to be Authoritative too Was not his execrable and perfidious Murder Declared to have been Authoritative when that Perjured perjured perjured Infamous Lower House next door to Hell Declared and Adjudged 10. January 1648 for a New-years-gift to the Nation That by the Fundamental Laws which was the creator of the two Houses fictious Legislative power it is Treason in the King of England for the time being to levy War against the Parliament and Kingdom Was not the lawfulness of their Perjuries and violent Murthers Oppressions and lawless Actings Justified and Declared to be Authoritative too when by a couple of Trayterous Votes three daies after they had the impudence to tell the Nation 1. That themselves being chosen by and representing the people had the Supream power in the Nation and 2. That whatsoever was Enacted or Declared for Law by the Commons in Parliament hath the force of a Law and the people concluded thereby though consent of King and Peers be not had thereunto Alas Mr. Crofton It s not the Resolve or Vote of a Party much less of that dismal black Faction in the long Parliament that can make their Treason and Rebellion their Perjuries and Blasphemies their unparellel'd Murthers Violence and Oppressions seem the less wicked and abominable or pretend to be more lawful and Authoritative either by the Divine or English Royal Laws It is not the Thieves justification of his action that will any whit the more extenuate the nature of his horrid crimes nor the Turbulent spirit 's applauding his Faction and Sedition speaking evil of Dignities and declaiming against the Legal Supremacy of his Prince and then cry out with his Brother Jehu See my zeal for the Lord of hosts and think that all this while he is beating down the enemies of the Lord Jesus that will make his Rebellion less odious or his blinde zeal without knowledge to be ever a whit the more rewardable but the Laws of God and man must be the Touchstone the Judge to justifie or condemn their respective actions according to their different waies of obedience or neglect and refusal to obey So that to conclude this particular I say It s not the Resolves of the two Houses that will make that to be lawful and Authoritative which neither the Laws of God nor of this Land declare to be justifiable and blameless their Votes and Resolves you speak of do proclaim nothing else but their matchless Treason and Rebellion You tell us further That the Priviledges of Parliament That the King can take no notice of what is debated or voted ordered or acted until it be by themselves Formally presented unto his Majesty And the very nature of Co-ordinate power if the Doctor understands it What do you think the Doctor to be such a learned Coxcomb such a Legislative dreamer as your self that you question his understanding of a Co-ordinate power with an If with their actings in case of his absence by Minority or otherwise doth determine it What It doth it determine Oh! you mean I suppose your so much adored Diana the Legislative Fiction placed in the two Houses You are an egregious Arguer but like all the rest of the Scotized party arguing from the momentary prosperity of an execrable Rebellion the Legality of the Traytors actions and because in the contriving and devising of a Statute the two Houses have a Priviledge excluding the Kings taking notice of them till such time as it is finished and presented for the Royal assent for without that it s no Law Therefore this wilful Sophisticator concludes or would have others believe that from thence it follows by good consequence That the Rebellious two Houses after they had taken the Oathes of Allegiance and Supremacy which bound them to assist and defend the King against all his enemies might by vertue of their Legislative whimsie take and impose a Negative Oath and stoutly swear with Perjury in their brazen brows not to assist the Forces raised by their Gracious Sovereign for his own defence against his Rebels against the Treasons and villanies of themselves who had the face without his presence or consent to call themselves A Parliament That they might by vertue of such Priviledges raise a Rebellion and swear to extirpate the Legal established Government of the Church justifie their Members in their Conspiracies and mischiefs send armed men against their Prince to fight with and shoot at him and his Loyal Subjects and other Abominations not to be parellelled like their Matchless Covenant and all this without and against the Kings consent because as I have said they have a Priviledge to be free in their debates and consultations about the devising of a New or repealing of an Old Law without the Kings taking notice of it until such time as they present it to him for his Fiat Truely Sir Presbyter you are fitter a great deal to dispute with Females with a rod of Correction in your hand then to prate with a Reverend Prelate with such shallow arguments as these which discovers nothing else but the Authors folly on the one side as well as his high imperious spirit on the other As for their Co-ordinacy in the Legislative power which our godly Rebel jabbers so much of and their actings in case of his Majesties absence by Minority or otherwise which he fondly supposeth doth determine the truth of his bold frantick assertion If the I say so of himself will be taken for a sufficient proof thereof the business then I must confess is clear beyond any contradiction but that they cannot Legally act any thing for I do not come here to contradict the prosperous Rebels actions when they hold the murthering sword of lawless Treasons and murthers in their hands instead of the sword of Justice but I say that they cannot Legally act any thing in the time of the Regal Minority without a Protector nor in the interim of his absence without Deputed Nobles under the great Seal both which are purposely
appointed to supply the place of such Regal absence for the time is manifested plainly by what I have already said and in my weak judgement so clear a truth that it is not in the power of any Factious Presbyter to contradict me that keeps in the way of verity and therefore I shall not trouble my Reader with any further answer of it Well We have seen now the Presbyters Allegations concerning the two Houses exercise of the Legislative Fiction without the Kings consent and weighing them in the ballance of right Reason and Laws and Customes of the Realm have found them to be too light and weak to bear that stress and burthen which our filthy Dreamers lay upon them I 'le now try what he saith of those long-Long-Parliament Legislative Thieves exercise of their whimsie against the Kings consent and here we finde him foreseeing a palpable Treason in asserting an Affirmative Proposition and yet that we may perceive his willingness to have an Affirmative maintained he thus breaths forth his doubtful fancy As to the exercise of it against the Kings consent I shall conclude nothing but commend Mr. Pryn's Sovereign power of Parliaments to your serious study What a Seditious minde and Treacherous heart this Crofton is possessed of We are beholding to a wise King and a lawful Parliament for his avoiding of his Cackling and concluding of nothing in the case at this time His faint-hearted seeming Negation of the Legality of those Rebels exercise of their Usurpation is just like the Olivarian-Machiavelian-Pro-Traytors denial of the Kingly Title even full sore against his will He would not say AY for fear an Ax or an Halter might presently attend him nor won't say NO neither lest his seared Conscience should look him in the face and contradict him with a Truth That a Negative was by No means agreeable with his Classical rebellious spirit and therefore very cunningly commends another mans unreasonable Jangling as full of Treason and Rebellion as a Toad is of poyson to the Bishops study If he had commended it to the Bishops and every mans study and detestation and abhorrency thereof when they had read it as well as indignation against the Treasonable venome of the Authors heart he had spoke more truth then a Presbyter is wont to do What that book is and how worthy to be Commended to a Bishops reading and study I leave to every one to conclude something seeing Crofton will conclude nothing by that just Sentence and Condemnation which the learned Mr. Duncomb upon ferious study thereof past in these words against both the Author and the Book it felf His book saith he p See his Royal buckler or a Lecture to Traytors p. 240. is such a Rhapsody of non-sense a bundle of Rebellion and Treason a Pamphlet so Seditious Pernicious Sophistical Jesuitical Trayterous and Scurrilous that I want Mr. Pryn's Epethites to give his own book its deserved odium Truely I must needs say That the Author of that heady Trayterous discourse who as the same judicious person saith setteth q P. 243. the body above the head maintaineth that the two Houses or the Major part have the Sovereign power may act without the King levy War against him and kill him too by defending themselves hath very little or no cause to return thanks to his Seditious Brother for the courtesie he hath done him to conclude nothing in the argument himself but commend the others Book to his Reverend Antagonists serious study the true English whereof amounts but to this conclusion I dare not maintain such a Treasonable Position as that my self for fear of having my reward on a block or a Triple tree but I 'le commend a book to you wherein it is asserted and justified and made known to the world by a deluding Trap-door of the Sovereign power of Parliaments It s but a sad commendation of Mr. Prynne especially from a Brother of the Sacred Covenanting Tribe too to do as good as tell the world that his Book is the Store-house of Seditious and Treasonable Principles The Shop to furnish others with what and as much as the Rebel pleases For if the justification of an Affirmative in the controverted point be not to be found in that putrid loathsom hospital of Trayterous diseases in that which the deluding Author was pleased to term The Sovereign power of Parliaments To what end or purpose do we hear of a Citation or Commendation thereof to the serious Study of his Reverend Opponent And if it be therein justified as who doubts but it is the Conclusion that I have made doth naturally flow from the Premisses and therefore I say how much the one is bound to thank the other I leave to both their considerations to decide the controversie between themselves at their next meeting and in the mean time seeing this man of fancy our windy Croftonian disputant doth as it were in the dark confess the truth of a Negative herein I shall proceed to his next Dream where he Magisterially affirms That The Legislative power of their Votes Debates Resolves orders or Ordinances were never gainsaid by His Majesty Here 's a rare spiritual man for you now one that peremptarily determines a notorious falsity for a truth And what an incomparable mistake it is His Majesties own words shall make appear In his noble Answer to the 19 Tyranical Propositions of those Legislative Traytors p. 1. who so often have made it their Godly work to establish iniquity by a Law we finde him declaring and telling of the English Nation of those pious Theives having thought fit to remove a troublesom Rub in their way The Law To this end saith he That they might undermine the very foundations of it A new Power hath bin assumed to interpret and declare Laws without us by extemporary Votes mark without any case judicially before either House which is in effect the same thing as to make Laws without us Orders and Ordinances made onely by both Houses tending to a pure Arbitary power were pressed upon the people as Laws and their obedience Required to them Their next step was to erect an upstart authority without us in whom and onely in whom the Laws of this Realm have placed that power to command the Militia by a r See his Majesties Speech to them July 21. 1642. In Reliquiae sacrae Carolinae pretended Ordinance which His Majesty told the Knights Gentry and Freeholders of the County of Lincoln That as the same was against the known Laws and an invasion of his unquestionable right and of their liberty and property so I do now declare saith the Sacred Speaker That the same is imposed upon you against my express consent and in contempt of my Regal Authority And I doubt not but you will sadly consider That if any Authority without and against my consent may lawfully impose such burthens upon you it may likewise take away all that you have from you and subject you to
Parliament was to raise Credit for three purposes That those ends were ended take away the end and the means thereto are to no purpose and therefore the three ends of the Act being determined it agreeth with Law and Reason the Act should end the Law rejecting things unprofitable and useless That the Writ of Summons was the Basis and Foundation of the Parliament that those men would be called a Parliament having abated quashed and made nothing of the Writ whereby they were Summoned and Assembled that if the Writ be made void the Process is void also That that house must needs fall where the Foundation is overthrown that Sublato Fundamento opus cadit the Foundation being taken away the work falls is both a Maxime in Law and Reason And let him but seriously meditate on the Arguments used by the learned Author of the Royalists defence to prove that The persons at Westminster who call themselves the Parliament of England are not the two Houses nor so much as Members of the Parliament and then tell me whether he is of Drakes minde still That the Long-Oppressive Tyrants are yet in continuance and not legally dissolved by their cursed Regicide Nay Mr. Prynne himself whom he stiles by an Emphasis That Profound Lawyer is clearly against him and Drake too not onely holding with Judge Jenkins their Legal dissolution by the Kings Martyrdom but also tells us That the Kings Personal absence from his Parliament heretofore and of late was reputed very prejudicial to it and his calling away some Lords great Officers and other Members from it in his life time a high way to its present Dissolution which also gives a Bastinado and word of Correction to Croftons frantick denial of the Kings Presence or his absence to add or abstract to the Authority of Parliament Mr. Prynne Lawyer-like tells us also in another place That the Act for the continuance of the Long-Perjured Treasonable Plotters and Contrivers of Murther Sacriledge Treason and Rebellion was made by the King as their Sovereign Lord Declaring and Enacting mark that and the Lords and Commons as joyntly assenting thereunto which absolutely confounds Croftons other Whimsie of the two Houses Supream Legislative power See his True and perfect Narrative Page 27 37. Buzze Buzze Mr. Crofton Where are you Do you honour a person so far as to adorne him with the Epethite of Profound and yet not believe him but go on in your simplicity breathing forth deceit the folly of fools when he hath done you the honour of a Profound Confutation Surely you minde so much his Sovereign power of Parliaments which he wrote in the time that his Zeal without knowledge had overpowred him because pleasant and delectable reading for your Seditious minde that you care not for considering his subsequent Treatises which be sent forth into the world when the Puritanical zeal began to leave him And thus Mr. Crofton supposeth the two Houses into a Non-Entitie as to their damnable Treasons and Enormous Practises by the temper they were then in by their being Parliament men and having some certain Priviledges which were not time after time answered by the Royal Grant to learn them Absaloms Trepan of Rebellion against their King with a Sacred Covenant betwixt their teeth nor yet to teach them to be unparellel'd Seditious Corah's under a visard and masque of Sanctity And thus he supposeth the two Houses into an Entitie as to their yet Legal continuance by vertue of their being animated by an express Statute Law which one openly averring to continue them yet in being was immediately sought after and caught and by an Order of the whole Body of the two Houses was Voted Seditious and his openly averring to be burnt by the New-turn'd Presbyter Doctor Dunne But Crofton hath another dart to shoot at the Bishops but it s so pittiful blunt and dull that let him aim never so well at his mark yet there 's no great fear of hurt to be received by it and what should it be but this And thus he i. e. the Bishop profoundly supposeth a Parliament swearing qua Parliament in the fullest formality and profession of their National Capacity was a personal Covenanting Say ye so The Bishop did but as you say plainly suppose the former but you tell us he doth profoundly suppose this latter And why pray now is it such a profound supposition Because the Bishop affirmes the swearing of the Absolonian Tribe the factious part of the Two bloody Houses without and against the consent of Majesty to be but a personal Covenanting for that the true English of the Bishops undeniable assertion T is a profound cavil indeed of yours I must confess Certainly the Bishop might well suppose your black Cabale into a non-entity by that one Law The Petition of Right as to their legal swearing without his Majesties consent as easily and truly as assert this irrefrageable proposition that the Body cannot act without the Head But because the prattles of a Parliament swearing qua Parliament as if he would out face the Sun with his mistakes and juglings I shall bring this subsequent counter-poyson as an Antidote against the venom infused by an ungodly seditious pack of Puritanical knaves into the peoples minds to keep them fast to themselves against their Prince with Treasonable delusive principles and that is first The Two Houses when every one met together and assembled in the House much less your remaining half of them are not a Parliament but onely a part thereof without the Kings presence or concurrence And secondly That this Belials brat the Covenant was sworn and taken by but a part of them too when the rest were like Loyal Subjects gone out of their bloody denns to the service of their Master and so the meaning of his words bears but this diminutive conclusion That the Covenant was taken and sworn but by a sad part of a part of a Legal Parliament which verifies the words of the learned Judge Jenkins That by the abuse and misunderstanding of this word Parliament you and your cross grain party have miserably deceived the people That the Bishop supposeth the swearing of the rotten putrified members the stinking part of a part of a rightful Parliament who were tainted above measure with Treason and Rebellion without the consent and concurrence therein of the Onely Supream Legislator to be but a personal Covenanting and what can we term a Covenant sworn without and against authority but personal and with the due Epethite Rebellious annexed unto it I am ready enough to grant you k See p. 51. of Crofton Book But that the Bishop doth any where affirm a Parliament swearing qua Parlialiament that is the King and all the Lords and Commons to be but a personal Covenanting Is the Sophistical groundless inference of him who knoweth the Bishop doth not so much as mention it but give a Presbyter an inch and he will be sure to take an ell If the King gives
Richard Gourney then Lord Major of London from his Office and put in a fiery persecutor of the Loyal Clergy whose name as one saith should more properly Isaac Pennington have been Julian in his place as well as others who they knew or suspected to be affectionate to the King and his Legal Cause and placed others of the most factious and seditious Covenanting Extirpaters in their rooms How they wrote their Letters to the French Protestants abroad and sent their Agents into all parts of the Nation at home desiring the one and requiring the other to joyn with and assist them How they set up a Disciplinarian Inquisition among us that cast out more Ministers in three or four years then all the Bishops had done in fourscore years before How before and after all this they wrote their Letters and sent their printed demonstrating declaratory Knacks to the King to disguise their actions That they had no ill meaning against His Majesty but had been and still remained his dutiful and loyal Subjects How yet by their leaguing together and prospering in their wickedness they came at last to a peerless act of Regicide of murthering their Sovereign before His own Palace windows Shall quickly and easily perceive that they were sworn Leaguers together in one and the same Cause of Extirpating Reformation and Covenanted Rebellion and yet both hypocritically pretending their Loyalty and Allegiance which manifests the Serpents art in beguiling people into the snares of wickedness and into the ways of impiety and profaneness and then showing his servants the way to delude others to disguise their Villanies with the shew of Godliness and their seditious actions with the vizard of faithful Obedience and Subjection for there is no more difference between our Covenanters here and their Deer Leaguing Brethren of France as to the main end and scope of their Leaguing Designs then there is between Guy Faux with his Myne and dark Lanthorn and Bradshaw and his execrable Confederates in Westminster-Hall both whose intentions we know well enough was clearly the Murther of Kings though upon different grounds The first endeavoring to blow up the Father for being too much an Enemy to the Popish Ribaldry and Massing Trinckets The latter actually cutting off the Son because they thought him in their cauterized consciences to be a Popish Tyrant but murther we see was the aim of both The world saith a See his Survey of the pretended holy discipline p. 7. Archbishop Bancroft now adays is set all upon Liberty Everyman almost is of their humour which thought scorn that any should be lifted up above the Congregation Numb 16 1. Crofton at least hath wedded himself to their murmuring fancy for Ecclesiastical parlty and is very well pleased with his confused thoughts of it or else we should certainly have never found him affronting his Episcopal Antagonist with his Jangling Discourse of Falshood and Sedition more particularly asserting this palpable whimsie against the general current of Venerable Antiquity viz. That b See p. 25. of his book that which was charged upon Aerius by Epiphanius for Heresie was an undeniable universal truth Knowing man Excellent Disputant that can daub over his own errors with the untempered morter of confidence and falshood There 's no meddling with such kind of people who with the men of China conceit two eyes to themselves and that leave all the rest of the world in arrant blindness No hopes of ever prevailing with fanciful creatures who will for no other reason but because they wil be in the right order and way and have voted all their Antagonists to lie and stick fast in a muddy ditch of error It s very strange to me I must needs say that an Ecclesiastical Historian should not know what he wrote at the same time he wrote it better then one of his Juniors at many hundred years distance that should at that time point blanck affirm That what he said was false but when men are resolved once to have their wills no Truth nor History must dare to controul them for fear of being taxed of speaking untruths But seeing its an Affirmation without proof 't is but answering No to his Ay and then where is he He hath a wish behinde still a request to the Bishop to ease him of his unprofitable unlucky pains which is this that follows I would Dr. Gauden would own Dr. Saunderson as his Dictator in the nature of an Oath he should not then so much need the Dictates of little Master Crofton It s Page 45. no marvel indeed Mr. Croftons Dictates are of such profound depth that the Dr. should want them to enlighten his understanding It s the unhappiest man one of them that ever I met with to bring Dictators to overthrow his own dictates I wonder what he can get by his Citation of such a Reverend Prelates Works What profit or advantage is there in those learned Writings for the upholding of his Covenanting Spell The Reasons of the University of Oxford declares him to be a person of admirable parts and himself to be a grand Antagonist against their sacred Covenant The Reverend Prelate cited by that faithful Royalist Mr. Roger L'estrange in his Holy Cheat tell us That no man can binde himself Page 35. in things wherein he is subject without leave of his Superior And again The Oath of one who is under the power of another without the others consent is neither firm nor valid Now unless our Presbyter can prove that a son or servant can do any thing without the Father or Masters consent That a part of the Two Houses who themselves were but part of a Parliament can lawfully i. e. by the Laws of God or this Land order and change the Affairs of the Church and thrust out and put in what and whom they please without the Kings consent the learned Dictates of that excellent Bishop clearly proves the nullity of the Covenant and the rottenness and weakness of Mr. Crofton's Dictates how imperiously soever they are ushered in with his I deny and I averr and such like examples of his brother the Scotch Confuter of the Learned Cardinal Bellarmin Dr. Gauden having affirmed He took no Oathes but those appointed by Law Crofton tells him c Page 63. He might reckon the Covenant to be of this nature And why so Pray Reader do but observe his pitiful reason for the Authority of Parliament is by the Petition of Right the legal appointment of an Oath And what then I cannot but laugh methinks at his folly and wonder how he keeps his proselytes in his nose how he leads them by the nose to believe his fooleries to be unanswerable The Petition of Right desired no Oath might be imposed upon the people of this Land but by Act of Parliament Ergo The Covenant imposed by an illegal Ordinance made by a part of a part of a Parliament is appointed by Law What a Non sequitur is here
imposers thereof are guilty of the highest crime Now can that oath be said by any man in his right wits to be warranted by the Laws of the Land which is directly opposite and contrariant to them and for which the imposers may be hanged at Tyburn for the gallows have commonly been the immediate fate and consequence of that highest crime of Treason This Covenant was thrust down the Throats of many people not by an Act of Parliament which must have been made as the Petition of Right and all other Laws and Acts have been by the King and all the Lords and Commons but by an Ordinance as it was called of a packt black faction of the then never to be forgotten two Houses which serves for nothing but to * p. 84. record to posterity a lawless distemper'd time A thing so far from being warranted by the Laws of the Land that such a thing was never heard of till these latter times of Treason and Sacriledge Rebellion and Confusion when mens brains began to be possessed of the effects and virtues of a Midsommer-moon Again can that be warranted by the Laws of the land which is so far a breach of those laws as it s esteemed high Treason u p. 22. 40. Arising to alter religion established or any Law is Treason saith the reverend Judge And did not the thing which Crofton will needs have to be a Parliament arise to alter the religion and was not this league devised to keep men under an oath for the doing and assisting of them in it Let Jack Presbyter deny it if he can In the second Article of this Covenant the takers swore to endeavour to extirpate Arch-bishops Bishops c. which is absolute contrary to Magna Charta which in the 25th of Edw. 3. chap. 1. 2. is declared to be the common Law of the Land chap. 1. and the last Salvae fint Episcopis omnes libertates suae That the Bishops shall have all their whole Rights and Liberties inviolable and this great Charter the Judge tells us p. 62. is confirmed by no less then 32 Acts of Parliament and in the 42th of Edw. 3. The first chapter enacts That if any Statute be made to the contrary it shal be holden for none and therefore their impious lawless League in this respect is far enough from being warranted by the Laws of this Land being so notoriously against the very Charter of our Liberties Again the Leaguers declared as Crofton himself told us lately for I am scarce old enough to remember the doing of it That they Abolished the Common-prayer Book in pursuance of their Covenant Very good This very book which they pretended to abolish with the power of an illegal ordinance was not onely compiled by true Martyrs and Reformers and practised in the times of four Princes but was and is still p. 62. notwithstanding their Rebellious Ordinance setled by no less then five Acts of Parliament And therefore their Covenant being in that act also contrary to the Lawes All Ministers and others that have taken this Oath must teach themselves and others according to the exhorters own assertion for I love to take men at their words that such oaths call for repentance and not pertinacy in them it being proved to be so far from being warranted by the Laws of the Land that it is an absolute breach of above 26 of them § 15. I remember The Leaguers in their Disputes and Arguments ☞ against the wearing of the Surplice and performance of other commendable Ceremonies of our best Reformed Church of England do out of their wise Noddles send forth such doughty windy Affirmations as will excellently wel serve to prove the unlawfulness of their Covenant Let a man go and ask them why they will not wear the Surplice and live in conformity to the Rites and Customs of the Church they 'l tell him because they are unlawful and why are they unlawful because God hath no where commanded them to be done in the Scripture though in any wise mans judgement there can be no unlawfulness in a thing without it be a breach of some Law which hath forbid it and where they will finde that Law against the Surplice and Ceremonies its possible they 'l tell us when they are able and their ability for that end will be I believe Ad Grecas Calendas but not well before Now according to their own ways of arguing I shall make this retortion That God hath no where in the Scripture commanded subjects in case of a default made by the Prince or that he will not consent to any Reformation to rise up in Arms and rebel against him and swear an Oath to do it themselves without any Royal Consent at all and let any of the Pack make it appear if they can For for them to set down the examples of the Oaths and Covenants Kings and Subjects joyntly made for a Reformation when they are demanded to show a pattern for their Covenant is no more to the purpose then to say Queen Elizabeth and her Nobles made a Reformation in this kingdom to pull us out of the mist of Popish darkness no more satisfaction to a Quaerist then as the Reverend Dr. Pierce told one of his Antagonists for a man when he is asked what 's a Clock To answer a windmil or a pump for the question is not whether Kings and Subjects may joyntly swear a Reformation of Abuses either in Church or State for there is no body I think wil stand to dispute that but whether in case a King will not make that extirpating Reformation his Subjects would have him whether they may do this without his consent by Oaths and rising up in Armes which is palpable rebellion u See the League illegal p. 17. Where doth God command the English to swear to preserve the Scotch Discipline and Liturgy which they themselves have often varied Or to abjure Episcopacy which was the onely Government of the Church for more then 1500 years and under whose shade Christian Religion most flourished and the Church stretched forth her branches to the Rivers and her boughs to the ends of the earth Where doth the Scripture warrant much less command the association of two kingdoms and joyntly taking up Arms in the Quarrel of the Gospel and defending and propagating Religion by the sword And let them answer that or let their silence conclude their being convinced I say again God never commanded Subjects any where in the Scripture to make a Reformation without their Princes consent by arms And therefore to deal with them with their own weapons according to their own ways of disputations against the Ceremonies I affirm that their Covenant is wicked and unlawful and being an unlawful sinful Oath by the resolution and judgement of all Casuists it ought not to be pleaded for nor taken or if once taken to be kept by any that ever took it because x See The Fair
Warning p. 30. To observe a wicked engagement doubles the sin according to the found determinations of the Reverend Primate And so my Argument herein I am sure ad hominem is unanswerable § 16. The next thing that will come under examination will be the unlawfulness of the Covenant in respect of its contrariety to the two former legally established Sacred Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance and the Protestation and to that end I commend to the consideration of my Readers the excellent Determination of the Irish Primate in relation to this point in his incomparable Fair Warning to take heed of the Scottish Discipline p. 31. Where after he had affirmed That a Supervenient Oath or Covenant either with God or man cannot take away the obligation of a just Oath precedent he immediately addes But such is the Covenant a subsequent Oath inconsistent with and destructive to a precedent Oath that is the Oath of Supremacy which all the Church-men throughout the kingdom and all Parliament men at their Admission to the House and all persons of quality thoughout England have taken The former oath acknowledgeth the King to be the only Supream Head that is Civil Head to see that every man do his duty in his calling and Governor of the Church of England The second Oath or Covenant to set up the Presbyterian Government as it is in Scotland denieth all this virtually makes it a Political Papacy acknowledgeth no Governors but onely the Presbytery The former Oath gives the King the Supream Power over all persons in all causes The second gives him a power over all as they are Subjects but none at all in Ecclesiastical causes This saith he they make to be Sacriledge And therefore I Quaere 1. Whether he that hath taken the legally established Oath of Supremacy to His Sacred Majesty which as a Paraphrast very well noteth y See The Oathes of Supremacy Allegiance which have layen dead many years c. p. 10. Admits of no Rival in the Throne but doth exclude all others from the Supremacy from being enabled to act above His Majesty or contrary unto Him or without Him or his allowance in any acts of Government can take this illegal Covenant whereby he swears according to his utmost power not onely to carry on the Rebellion then already begun for that it was so needs no further demonstration but also to assist all other persons that shall take it in what they shall do in pursuance thereof thereby implicitly owning the power of the then two Houses and disowning the Onely Supremacy of the King so clearly asserted in that Oath I say whether he that hath taken the former can ever swear the latter without a notorious guilt of apparent Perjury If not as no man I think upon serious consideration will affirm he may then it necessarily follows that the one is an opposition to the other Again The Oath of Supremacy bindes the takers to their power to assist and defend all Jurisdictions Priviledges Preheminences and Authoritys granted or belonging to the Kings Highness and united and annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Realm And the famous University of Oxford have told us That y See their Reasons p. 38. the whole power of ordering all matters Ecclesiastical was by the Laws of the Land in express words For ever annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Realm citing the Statute for it in their Margin whence I Quaere Secondly Whether he that hath once taken the Oath of Supremacy and afterwards swallowed down this Regicidian League was not desperatly forsworn in taking upon them the ordering of Ecclesiastical matters which is one of those Jurisdictions and Priviledges granted to the Kings Highness so far as to swear the Extirpation of the Legally established Ecclesiastical Government without and against his Majesties Royal assent one while swearing to defend the Jurisdiction and Preeminence granted or belonging to the King and another while vowing the performance of that which is absolutely contrariant unto it And Perjury attained by taking of two Oaths in my shallow judgement doth unavoidably imply the vast proportion of difference and contrariety that is between them Since the writing of these last words I heard of the burning of the Solemn League and Covenant by the hands of the Common Hangman according to the Noble Order of the truely Honourable two Houses May 22. 1661. now at this present assembled in Parliament by vertue of his Majesties Gracious Writ which as it is no more then its deserts in having bewitched people into an odious Rebellion against their Prince which as one saith well z See the Right Rebel p. 72. Must needs be acknowledged a sin of Sodom especially since the Sodomites are the first that the Holy Ghost in Scripture hath taxed for the practise thereof So I shall desist from saying here any more of this Loyal Vote concerning that monstrous League but shall now go on to the finishing of what I have here intended to show the sinfulness thereof in its contrariety to former Legal Oaths and to that end and purpose shall again Quaere Thirdly Can that Oath Which * was devised onely to ** See his Majesties Proclamation prohibiting the taking of it prevent peace and to engage the Kings good subjects in the maintenance of an horrid and odious Rebellion against him as this wicked League did any way accord with an Oath of Allegiance which solemnly bound all its takers to bear true faith and Allegiance to his Majesty and to defend him to the uttermost of their power against all attempts and conspiracies whatsoever therefore against that damnable one of the then two Houses which shall be made against his Person Crown and Dignity Fourthly Can this subsequent seditious and trayterous Vow and Covenant which endeavours to withdraw the subjects from their natural Allegiance which they owe unto their Prince they are his * Majesties own words and engages them in acts of High Treason by the express letter of the Statute of the 25. of King Edward the 3. be any way consonant or agreeable with two preceding Oaths which expresly obliges them to bear to the King truth and faith of life members and earthly honour and to a See the oathes of Allegiance and Supremacy c. p. 15. appear for the defence of him of his Person and Government against all attempts against them by any whatsoever upon any pretences soever Can any be so wilde and frantick as to make such an affirmation Fifthly How can that Oath which bindes men absolutely to bear true faith and Allegiance to the King without any relation to his good or bad Government sute with an Apostate that is sworn with a cursed destructive limitation to defend him so long as he shall continue in the preservation of that which the swallower thereof shall fancifully call the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdom and no longer See more of this in the excellent Scotch-Covenant condemned That
and shameless Semaiah a h Pag. 49. Runegado an Apostate Presbyter a i Pag. 51. man of Fancy k Pag. 61. An envious Runegado and Apostate l Pag. 63. A shifting Runegado and a m Pag. 67. subtile Sophister and yet behold and wonder this is the man that cries The Lord deliver him from rendring Railing for Railing The Bishop having said in his Anti-Baal-Berith Page 191. That the late Primate of Armaghs Reduction of Episcopacy was propounded not in order to binde the hands of or limit Bishops in England and Scotland but as a condescension and expedient to disarm and binde the hands of Presbyters and People Crofton in answer thereunto thus profoundly Quaeres * Pag. 13. Sir Who told you that this was the politick stratagem of that pious Bishop Did not Bishop Wren It would make a man mad and t' would make a man laugh to see such pitiful arguings used in a rejoynder to an Antagonist and yet to be believed as excellent and invincible by some people to hugge themselves up in their delusions Just as if a man should make such a like Quaere to him Who told people that it was little Mr. Croftons Politick stratagem not onely to whipp his maid behinde but before too Did not the Church-Wardens and several other of the Parishioners of that Parish where that noble Ministerial act was done to administer somewhat to the maids necessities So again The Bishop having said That the League which Joshua and the Rulers of the people made with the Trappanning Gibeonites was to the damage of no honest men but themselves Crofton cries out †Pag. 48. Was the Oath of the Gibeonites no way to the injury of honest men Was it no injury to Israel to loose four Cities out of their inheritance given them by the Lord Whereas the Bishop had said It was to the injury of no honest men but themselves which two last words Crofton very cunningly leaves out to make his Readers believe the convincing force of his Arguments But alas he knew to set down the whole Proposition was not for his turn of disputing but would have broke the neck of his cause and design and made it evident to every one that he was a meer shifting caviller one that was minded more to quarrel with an Antagonist then to answer him by good Reasons and Arguments which practise of his brings to my remembrance the like cavilling tricks and shiftings of the most learned Bishop Mountagues Puritanical Informers in the very self-same case who thereupon told them that the setting down of his whole passage and Proposition f See his Appeal to Cesar p. 145. Stood not with their prime purpose of calumniating directly it gave check to their detraction in chief and so they passed it slightly over § 20. So again The Bishop having said That g See his Anti-Baal-Berith p. 146. a King though never so Supream and Free yet may not Vow and Covenant to the diminution of his own just Sovereignty and Authority and Power which is his by Law Crofton thinks fit to give no other answer but this †Pag. 32. Which all people of the world must and will contradict and leaving out like a wrangling Sophister the principal Clause and Hinge of the Bishops Sentence on which hangs the force of the preceding words which is this And necessary for his high calling to protect the Church and State himself and his good Subjects And doth he or any one in his wits think that any Prince may Vow to diminish that whereby his Subjects are defended to extenuate and give away that Power he hath given him by God to Preserve and Protect those people over whom by the same God he is set as Ruler and Supream To cast his Subjects in a maner out of his Protection and give leave to others to Domineer and Tyrannize over them and do them what rapine and mischief they will and he himself sit still as a Cipher Certainly those people that are in such a case may well cry out of an Egyptian slavery and sadly proclaim to their great grief and sorrow both of heart and minde That every man doth that which seems right in his own eyes as though there were no King at all in Israel That a Prince may vow the diminution of his own just Sovereginty and power which is too hard for his Subjects to bear and when such diminution tends to their ease and benefit no body indeed in the world I think will deny but that is nothing at all to what the Bishop saith But that a Prince may not Covenant the diminution of his own just Soveraignty and Power necessary for his high calling to protect his Subjects which and which alone is what the Bishop says is a truth as cleer as the Sun and in that case our Presbyters all people in the world that must and will contradict it must beyond dispute be such people as belong to the world in the Moon § 21. Again the Bishop having set down p. 149. That the two Houses alone no nor the King alone or with them have any Legislative power to decree or execute what is unrighteous against God or man The Shifter answers with a * p. 32. So that the Legislation is founded in the piety and justice of the decree and rebellion against authority is acquitted by the iniquity of the command not at all caring to consider that what the Bishop saith in those words must needs have reference to the Law of God and his meaning thus that by that Law neither King nor two Houses joyntly or severally have any lawful power to decree or execute what is unrighteous for its impossible that that Reverend Prelate should ever forget what he hath read in the Scriptures of wickedness established by a Law and the possibility of Governors Legislative power to execute †Isa 10. 1 unrighteous decrees by the Woe that by God himself is pronounced unto them that decree such Nay the very language of the Bishop in that assertion of his doth convince me cleerly that he was wholly guided by this very Scripture in what he said which Crofton so much carps at and so as I just now said must needs have reference to the lawfulness of such power for such ends and purposes by the Law of God which expresly hath prohibited it and pronounced a woe against the Actors of it But hark what the man makes a matter of complaint of why that Rebellion by the Bishops saying oh how loyal he is all of a sudden and fearful of maintaining any Rebellious principles not above eight lines before he hath point blanck affirmed nay and as though it were a convincing truth too what I shall prove before I have done with him not onely to be sedition and rebellion but an open denial of the Supremacy Power and Authority of His Most Sacred Majesty but le ts hear what he can say for himself
irreverence How now Mr. Zechary Whereabouts are you What will you never leave fighting with the Sun never leave striving and presenting the people of this Nation with * See p. 18 of his book the foggy fancies of your own giddy brain and run away with them by your fluid and gliding tongue or discourse as if the state of your question were granted by understanding persons for the truth you crake hugely methinks but I doubt I shall marr your sport with what follows and to that end let me intreat this favour of your Kirkifi'd Holiness as to speak the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth to these few questions I have subjoyned here for an answer either from your self or godly partakers Doth the Bishop go about to debase and dethrone his Sovereign as to follow your religious pattern so far as to say any where in his learned Writings which you so much snarl at that * See his Preface to the Considerator consider'd The Common-Prayer Book was expelled by a lawful Authority which if it be not Treason as the Noble L'estrange saith in his Holy Cheat Scot and Peters were no Traytors Doth the Bishop talk any where of a See p. 51. of his book The Two Houses Supream Legislative power without His Majesty and so give the lie to the Oath of Supremacy and Laws of the Land which ascertains it to be the peculiar Prerogative of the King Or doth he in any of his Writings like you b Page 31. averr That neither the place of His Majesties retirement nor reason of his absence doth adde or abstract to the authority of Parliament Or fourthly Doth the Bishop any where bid His Majesty keep that damnable traiterous and seditious Oath called The Solemn League and Covenant and tell him He shall be delivered from that distress which Page 42. may too late engage His Majesty to send to you for sooth his faithful Monitor to pray for him Oh Mr. Crofton you are a notable fellow at feminine scourges feminine do I say I am a little too short there for male and female are both alike to you nay and not every ordinary one neither for the King himself must not be exempted from the distress you threaten him with for not performing of a bloody treacherous Oath but the best on 't is Curst Cows have short horns and its very fit you should be so short kept lest being left to your self you should be apt to stray out of the pathes of loyalty and obedience and get into the by-pathes of religious Rebellion and playing the devil for Gods sake pushing and goring at every one nay at your own Sovereign himself if he will not fulfil your whimsical humours It s like you would be good enough if you were but once throughly cleansed from the Kirkish leaven of Hypocrisie and Treason Sedition and Rebellion but till then they that trust to you and your party for exact loyalty and obedience will soon finde upon any opportunity for Tumults and Sedition that they have trusted to a broken reed to their own fancies and chimaeraes The Bishop might well fear I must needs confess and that most justly too to be made less by the head as guilty both of Treason and Sedition should he so confront his Prince and his Supremacy as to set down such treasonable seditious Affirmations as you have done but you Presbyters have been so always constant as Mr. L'estrange saith in his Holy Cheat to the rule and method of doing your own business in the Kings Name that you can plead your being His Majesties true Subjects at that very time when you your selves are debasing and disallowing of His legal Supremacy and so setting a fair step for the dethroning of him when your desired opportunities of doing mischief shall unhappily fall out for the performance of your Antimonarchical Consultations And now to conclude this particular I shall put his own question to him and all the godly Generation of Scribes and Pharisees Hath a gracious and I wish he be not in the mean while too merciful a King out of His own Princely Goodness passed an Act of Indempnity by which He pardons the long continued Rebellion begun by a Club of Running Lecturers as Mr. L'estrange calls them and their Adherents in 1642. against His Royal Father for the doing whereof He might by the Statute have cut off the heads as well as seized on the estates of hundreds of those primary Rebels who yet by the mercy of a Princely Patron of Episcopacy enjoy both the one and t'other I say hath a Gracious King out of His own sweet Christian Nature done this for you and your party to debase nay and dethrone him by your denial of His Supremacy and setting on foot the doctrine of the devil who was a Rebel and a Murtherer from the beginning § 30. Ay but saith Crofton * Page 29 30. Dr. Gauden being well considered will be found to be no less erronious in his Politicks then in his Ecclesiasticks So then who ever concludes for the truth of the Doctors Assertions in his Book he is by your heady suppositions adjudged to be one that hath not well considered them But we 'l see your reason for 't first before we believe you good Mr. Zechary and that is I perceive the Bishops true saying that The Hierarchy or Episcopacy is established by the Laws of England which you you say have in your Analepsis Analephthe denied At this rate its in vain to meddle with you That a mans expressions shall be true or false according to what they seem to be in your giddy brains That your Ipse dixit onely shall be proof enough to overthrow the arguments of your Reverend Antagonist But such things as these Mr. Zechary must not be allowed of and therefore the examination of your Denial will in this case be somewhat needful You say You deny that Episcopacy is established by the Law The more shameless man you to deny that which is so apparent For what think you of the very first Article of the Great Charter which is not onely declared to be the Common Law of the Land as I have already said but is confirmed by 32 Acts of Parliament which runs thus Salvae sint Episcopis omnes Libertates suae Let the Bishops have all their whole Rights inviolable What think you now Mr. Presbyter Is the Great Charter no Law or are Bishops and their Liberties expresly named in the very first Article and yet Episcopacy not established by the Laws of England What a grand Cheater is this high-flown Presbyter that shall have the face to condemn his Superiors and give them the Lie for speaking such a notorious truth as this That Episcopacy is established by the Laws of England § 31. But he 'l Print Errors and give a Reason for it when he hath done I do averr saith he like an arch Presbyter That the English laws finding Episcopacy conversant
contrary to above 30 Acts of Parliameat The King himself protesting against it as far as Oxford by his publick Proclamation as engaging the takers in Acts of high Treason Doth our Leaguer think that when 290 Voices are taken away out of 600 that the remaining part hath as great a power as when they were all together Or doth he think that the Kings silence or his Protestation doth not adde or diminish the authority of the thing sworn But I must needs say indeed l See Croftons Berith-Anti-Baal p. 51 Suppositions are sufficient supports to a man of fancy who all along this Discourse plays at Bo-peep begging what must never be granted while his Nose is between his eyes which I leave him to see at large his ignorance and folly his seditious and treasonable Principles against His Gracious Sovereign § 37. Crofton citing out of his Analepsis p. 12. That the two Houses of Parliament are Co-ordinate and Sharers in the Legislation of England and the Bishop asking p. 148. What and can they legally exercise this power without yea against the Kings consent being out of his nonage and not out of his wits This furious offspring of Smec cries out p. â—9 That they may do it without the Kings consent none do or can deny it common practice with the peoples constant obedience doth plainly manifest it as also the Protestation of May 1641. never doubted as to the validity of Authority which you say was precarious but Resolves of the House declare to have been Authoritative The Votes Resolves Orders and Ordinances of one or both Houses do proclaim it And the Priviledges of Parliament That the King can take no notice of what is debated or voted ordered or acted by them until it be by themselves formally presented unto His Majesty And the very nature of Co-ordinate power if the Doctor understands it with their Actings in case of his absence by minority or otherwise doth determine it As to the exercise of it against the Kings consent I shall conclude nothing but commend Mr. Prynn's Sovereign Power of Parliaments to your serious study And the Legislative power of their Votes Debates Resolves Orders or Ordinances were never gainsaid by His Majesty O Lump of wickedness and sedition What do or can none deny that the Two Houses may exercise that Vtopian Fiction their fancied imaginary Legislative power without the Kings consent Why is your lawless Assertion so true think you that it is past all contradiction Alas poor Presbyter why do you hug up your self so in your own delusions It s pity you should go on uncontroul'd in your wild positions and therefore I le try for once what I can say against it Are the Two Houses any better then the Kings Subjects If you say otherwise the Law affixes the deserved name of Traytor upon your forehead Can they convene and assemble together in the House without the Regal Summons Are they any more then the Kings own creature Can they stay one minute there when met together to debate or consult of any thing without His Majesties free leave Can the creature do any thing what he please without the Creators consent Suppose they should as your Long-Parliamentidol did reproach their Sovereign maintain five trayterous Antimonarchists in their treason and villany hatch a Conspiracy and bring forth Rebellion cannot the Creator have so much power over his forlorn creatures as with the breath of his mouth immediately to command their speedy departure by a dissolution Oh Crofton Crofton beware of the perjurious consequence and stop your mouth left the Ax for your treason make no difference between your own and those heads of your fellow-rebels on London-bridge But this is a Scotized Assertion an opinion of m See Bish Garden 's Anti-Baal-Berith p. 151. Seminary Presbyters who have been the Protoplasticks of a rebellious generation both in Church and State agreeable to their all along rebellious practises by vertue of their legislative power which our profound Lawyer saith they have and which they may he averrs exercise without the Kings consent and so by consequence they may rebel against their Head kill and murther His loyal Subjects imprison and impoverish others take away His Imperial Dignities and Pre-eminences from Him seize upon His Forts Ports Magazines and Towns and plague and oppress their fellow-English-men by seizing on their goods and estates how and in what proportion and maner they please send armed men through perjury to fight against their lawful Sovereign leave out the defence of his person out of their Commissions impose what cursed Leagues and Covenants they please all actions of high treason by the known Laws of this Land without His Majesties consent sell and imprison Him until He agree to their imperious humors and demands and Christen their Actions too like a pack of dissembling false hypocrites with the title of Reformation Loyalty Advancing the Glory and promoting the kingdom of Jesus Christ yea play the devil for Gods sake and all this they claim a right and lawful authority to do by force and vertue of their Idoliz'd Diana their new Goddess lately come down from Jupiter their phanatick frenzical whimsie of Legislative power And because these things have been done and justified with impudence beyond example by n See Presbytery Popish not Episcopacy p. 6. a Tumultuary Rabble that pretended to be a Parliament and their graceless adherents therefore this Leaguer concludes the Lawfulness of the Act done and the Justifiableness of re-acting the same again But A facto ad jus non valet argumentum is an old and a true Position To argue from the Action done the lawfulness thereof becomes a subtile Sophister a Trappanner and Cheater more then a sound Scholar or a Disputant As for the Two Houses Legislative power so called or their Co-ordinacy therein with their by them sworn ONELY Supream Governour I have said so much already concerning that grand delusive Cheat and Fiction that a question will now be enough against it How can the two Houses be affirmed by any having regard to the Rules and Customes of the Realm to have the whole or a Co-ordinacy or share in that which the very Prologues to the Acts and Statutes denies them to have any right or claim to either in Possession or Reversion As for the Protestation I told you before Silence gives consent and his Majesties suffering such a thing to be done by them under his nose without a Prohibition argues plainly his Tacit fiat to it but yet proves not at all their supposed Legislative power or Coordinacy in the same with their Head nor the legality of their exercise of it without the Kings consent It 's true the Bishop tells you It was precarious and personal upon this just Ground and Foundation o P. 278. That the two Houses had not power to make or take or impose any Oath contrary to the Laws of England which they were trusted to observe
the King is under none but God This saith he is that divine Sentence Quod nec Jovis ira nec ignis nec poterit ferrum nec edax abolere vetustas which neither angry Jove nor fiery Vulcan neither devouring Age nor bloody sword a worse devourer then that shall ever expunge out of our Law-books or explode out of the memory of every pious man Thus he Bracton cited by the Reverend and Learned Judge Jenkins tells us Rex non habet parem in Regno suo That the King hath not an equal in his kingdom if not an Equal then certainly no Superior and so by consequence shows the fiction of the Two Houses Supremacy There hath been so much already cited for the Supremacy of His Sacred Majesty over all persons in his Dominions by Judge Jenkins Mr. Diggs and several others that I need not trouble the Reader with any more repetitions thereof but refer the dissatisfied to their several Writings and conclude this point with a word or two concerning the Oath of Supremacy which every Member of the two Houses must take before he sits in the House or else according to Law he stands a person to all intents and purposes as if he had never bin elected or returned which clearly declares the King to be the onely Supream Governor of this Realm and of all other His Highness Dominions and Countreys as well in all Spiritual and Ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal and so certainly by undeniable consequence over the Two Houses in Parliament causes For why was the exclusive Particle Onely inserted but to cut off all pretences of co-ordinacy or share in the Regal Supremacy And truly if he be Supream there is neither Major nor Superior saith the Learned Lord Bridgeman in his Speech aforesaid Was this Oath think you Mr. Crofton composed by the Lords and Commons in Parliament in the time of Qu. Elizabeth and at their suit by * Eliz. c. 1 Act of Parliament made high Treason 5 Eliz. c. 1 for a subject to deny to take it for to be evaded and treasonably denied the subject matter thereof ascribed to the Subjects themselves who were fain to take it ere they could have the least colour or pretence perjuriously to claim or usurp it from the rightful owner and this too by such a Shadow of a Disputant as your fanciful self who have armed your self with so much confidence to bawl out these seditious Assertions which deserve nothing else but the utmost rigor of the Law for a confutation Nothing but self-condemnation No other way left you to save your credit but by writing sedition and throwing your poison'd darts of malice against your Superiors for the pretended denial of that the truth whereof your own whimsical self is found to be a real disclaimer Cannot you dig a pit for another but you must presently fall into it your self These shabbed courses of yours forces me to deal with you by a retortion and ask you once again some more of your own questions Where is Sir the Kings Prerogative over all persons in all causes What is become of the Oath of Supremacy Hath a Gracious King lately pardoned you and your Delinquent party for your former misdemeanors really to debase nay dethrone Him by your impudent and traiterous entituling his sworn Subjects with His Onely Supremacy Truly Sir I cannot blame you much now for your words in your Preface where you tell us That side 2. having animadverted this Anti-Baal-Berith i. e. the Bishops Book you finde a necessity to apologize for the very act of your Animadversion and fear nothing more then to be bound to your good behavior in misbehaving your self so much as to answer not according to what your confidence helped you to prate A fool according to his folly wherein you may seem like unto him but a learned reverend Prelate with whole mouth-fuls of sedition and rebellion wherein you are the perfect image of all the traiterous Conspirators that have been before you why else do you divide non dividenda make a division in that wherein none without perjury ought or can be make two sharers and partners in the Supremacy which the legal Oath and Statute-Laws of this Realm by which we must steer our course and not by your horrible frightful dreams declare to centre and to be the peculiar right and Sovereignty of one alone and that inseparable from his person too The goodly aim and end of all your Jabbering for the Two Houses co-ordinacy in the Supremacy is but to fulfil the Martyrs words e See Eikon Basilike in 24. P. 47. That the Majesty of the Kings of England might hereafter hang like Mahomets Tomb by a Magnetick charm between the power and priviledges of the Two Houses in an airy imagination of Regality But the Two Houses usurpation of the Supremacy it seems will not serve Mr. Croftons turn if they cannot swallow up the Legislative power too from the Royal Owner In his Analepsis * p. 12. he called them then onely Co-ordinate and Sharers in the Legislation of England now he grasps for the Suprem Legislative power alone for those long Parliament Legislative theives that made it their precious saintly work to make their strength the Law of Justice robb and pillage and murder the Subjects of their Soveraign by their cursed illegal Orders quirkes and devices and then show them the Law of their uncontroulable atheistical wills for it sic volo sic jubeo stat proratione voluntas I am perswaded the man hath a huge fancy to go higher and higher in his Seditious and treasonable language till he comes to make his last ascent at the Sacred Gallowes or else he dreams with the Fifth kingdom Rebels That notwithstanding any thing he saith or doth yet that not a hair of his head shall perish I shall not stand long upon answering him in this fiction and dream of his but shall quickly dispatch him by adding to what I have upon this point already said that which now immediately followes And therefore for that which he termes the Legislative power and because he is just like the Cuckoe repeating over and over one and the same thing to lengthen his Book Let 's hear a little what Justice Hide told the Blackening Regicide Harison at his Tryal in the Old Bayly I am sorry saith he that any man should have the face and boldness to deliver such words as you have You and all must know That the King is above the Two Houses They must propose their Laws to him The Laws are made by him and not by them by their consenting but they are His Laws That either or both Houses or any assembly or people in this or any other Nation Governed by Monarchy hath or ever claimed saith f See the Royallists defence p. 39. another in 1648. to have a Legislative power or so far to represent the Kingdom as to make new Laws and change the old without
him but Liberty of Conscience in the wearing or not wearing of a Surplice in all Churches and places throughout the Nation excepting his own Royal Chappel Cathedrals and both the Vniversities they must have the Customary Rigor suspended and Liberty of Conscience allowed them there too or else all the fat 's in the fire their queazy stomachs cannot bear it and their Consciences poor harmless lambs they think wil be thereby over burdened and oppressed but let truth come somewhat might them for once which hath bin such a stranger to them and tell them to their faces That they have possessed themselves of Cauterized Consciences that are oppressed with ☜ the sight of a garment and eased with the practice of sedition which stumble at strawes and swallow a Camel that cannot away with a piece of Holland and yet make no bones of Rebellion who can by no meanes endure to bow at the name of Jesus and yet fall down and worship their own Inventions And thus Mr. Crofton profoundly supposeth That a bloody faction of the Two Houses swearing an Oath without and against the concurrence of their Princely Head had a Parliamentary Authority to make their Oath legal and themselves that took it to be no Rebellious Covenanters § 40. Errors saith Squire l See his History of K. Charls p. 268. Saunderson grow fastest in hot brains and the most reverend Archb. Bancroft in his excellent Survey of the pretended holy discipline hath also told us of Beza's m Pag. 53. applying himself altogether to strengthen and incourage his factious old acquaintance i. e. The Disciplinarian Canker-wormes then here in England in their froward and perverse obstinacy The first is made evident by the frightful language of this Hot-brain'd Sheba The second is also proved by the open averring of one of the near Allies of those Puritanes and rash Heady Preachers that King James of blessed memory hath well informed us of who think it their honor to contend with Kings and to perturb whole kingdomes And to what end can any man think was the See his preface to his Basilicon Doron wicked errors of his ways made publick by a press but to encourage his factious proselites and Holy-prophane Leaguing brethren to persist in their froward and perverse obstinacy in their old crooked pathes of Schism and Sacriledge of blood and confusion And all this under a colour and pretence to advance the power of Godliness too But what said one once Men saith n See the Subjects sorrow or lamentations upon the death of Britains Josiah K. Charles p. 40. he profess they know God yet in their works they deny him using the name of God and Religion as Conjurers in their incantations to perpetrate those things which are most contrary unto God and destructive unto Religion for as the devil never doth more hurt then when he appears in the likeness of an Angel of Light so are men never so mischievous as when they drive on wicked Designs under the shew of Godliness And thus have we found this Covenanting Corah first praying to be delivered from rendring railing for railing and yet rake in that puddle himself for several times together after he had told us he did not delight to rake in it Mangling and Clipping the words of his Reverend Antagonist so long till he made his own way the more easie to catch others in to make his Puritanical Gang to believe him to be some rare kinde of Phenix at the very time when a faithful Monitor will sooner compare him to a Pratling Cuckoe for his idle repititions and leaving out like a perverse Disputer the Principal Verb the chief words of the Bishops Sentences o See King James his Preface for speeds sake putting in the one half of the purpose and leaving out the other not unlike the man that alleadged that part of the Psalm Non est Deus but left out the preceding words Dixit insipiens in Corde suo Stating of damnable Doctrines of Sedition and Rebellion for the Honour and Happiness of the Kings Majesty and his Posterity That the Common-Prayer-Book was expelled by a lawful Authority That neither the place of his Majesties retirement nor reason of his absence doth add or abstract to the Authority of Parliament That the two Houses are not only Co-ordinate and Sharers in the Legislation of England and may exercise it without the Kings consent but also have the Supream Legislative power directly contrary to the Laws and Statutes of this Nation and to the Oath of Supremacy which by the Particle Onely cuts off and excludes all Rivals and Sharers therein and which by an express Statue Law is made High Treason for a Subject to deny to take and this affirmed by him That the world may bear witness that he hath no thoughts or intentions to diminish his Majesties just Power and Greatness Threatening distress and that so sudden too for not keeping of the Covenant as may too late engage his Majesty to send to his faithful Monitor to pray for him and no less then twice affirming with an If the yet legal continuance of those long Athenian Tyrants at Westminster notwithstanding their undoubted Dissolution by their unparellel'd Murther of their Prince That the world may bear witness also with his Conscience of his Loyalty This this is the person that would bewitch the world with the Bishops premunires and Sedition against their Sovereign Princes But Quis tulerit Gracchos de Seditione Quaerentes Who can with patience endure to hear the devil correcting sin Traytors seditious persons exclaiming against the fictitious Sedition of others Sacrilegious Rebels against the Sacriledge of others I say Quis tulerit Who can without indignation entertain any thoughts of a Covenanters speaking against Sedition Sacriledge Treason King-Deposing and Rebellion For p See the Bishop of Canterburies Speech at the censure of Burton c. p. 5. t is most apparent to any man that will not wink That the intention of these Fiery Turbulent Presbyterians and their Factious abetters was ever and is still to raise a Sedition being as great Incendiaries in the State where they get power as they have ever been in the Church The thoughts of whose Seditious Principles and Anti-Monarchical Practises made one in 1574. cry out q See The defence of the Ecclesiastical Regiment p. 40. God of his mercy abridge their power and continue the shortness of their horns or else grant them greater measure of his grace and moved another to commend to his Readers consideration this one Caution r See the Post-script to the Right Rebel p. 164. That as ever they desire intend and expect to escape they withdraw themselves from the Society of Rebellious persons and take heed they give no entertainment unto any Rebellious Opinions or Principles whatsoever extraction they be of whether Popish Presbyterian or Popular if it be not more proper to refer them all to one Original the Mystery of Iniquity as their Common Mother For I make account saith he That Popery Presbytery and Popularity rightly understood with respect to their rebellious Principles are but as so many several Dialects in the language of that Beast which * Rev. 13. 11. had two horns like a Lamb and spake as a Dragon And this likewise was the reason of that Conclusion of the most Reverend Primate of Armagh to his excellent Fair warning to take heed of the Scottish Discipline which shall also put a period to this discourse I would to God saith he we might be so happy as to see a general Council of Christians at least a General Synod of all Protestants and that the first Act might be to denounce an Anathema Maranatha against all broachers and maintainers of Seditious Principles to take away the scandal that lies upon Christian Religion and to shew that in the search of Piety we have not lost the principles of Humanity In the mean time let all Christian Magistrates who are principally concerned beware how they suffer this Cockatrice Egge to be hatched in their Dominions much more how they plead for Baal or Baal-Berith the Baalims of the Covenant It were worth the enquiring whether the marks of Antichrist do not agree as eminently to the Assembly General of Scotland as either to the Pope or to the Turk This we see plainly That they spring out of the Ruines of the Civil Magistrate They sit upon the Temple of God and they advance themselves above those whom the holy Scripture calleth Gods Vivat in eternum Rex Carolus Secundus quem Deus nunc in secula seculorum defendat oro Lectoribus Doctis Indoctis INdocti non damnent quod ipsi nesciunt Docti non invideant quod ipsi novum putant ab utrisque peto si alicubi Erratum sit illud Castigent non Culpent si quid ab illis merui ut Deo non mihi gratias rependerent Apud Aditus ad Logicam Page 57. l. 40. for Covenant r. Court p. 80. l. 3. for the r. he l. 40. for might r. nigh FINIS