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A35074
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A sermon preached at Holy-Rood House, January 30. 1681/2. before Her Highness the Lady Anne. Tho. Cartwright ...
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Cartwright, Thomas, 1634-1689.
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1682
(1682)
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Wing C704; Wing C704A; ESTC R170908
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23,302
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36
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as their designs which they could not drive on without grating upon all the Extremes imaginable It must be by an Error of Humanity if we take such ingrateful beasts as these for men it being directly against the radical principles of nature and no less than a demonstration of bestiality for any to destroy those to whom they owe their self preservation and to sin with so high an hand against their principal benefactor But yet if He had not been sufficiently secur'd from their violence by the Law of nature yet certainly he was by the Laws of our Nation which have abundantly declared that neither the Lords nor Commons nor both together in Parliament much less a Still-born house of Commons not the people collectively or representatively nor any other persons whatsoever have or ought to have any coercive power over the person of any King of our Realm who is so far Pater Patriae the Father of his Country that a Woman may as well get a Child upon her self as both Houses of Parliament produce any Law till the Kings consent first pass upon them Omnes sub eo ipse sub nullo nisi tantum sub Deo saith Bracton who was Lord Chief Justice in King Henry the thirds time so that their crime was both unnatural and illegal even by that very Law by which they intended to hold and defend their own lives and liberties Nay so it likewise was by that Eternal Law of God to which most of them have already and the rest must ere long submit their souls and of this I the rather speak because the Devil of Rebellion transformed himself into an Angel of Reformation and is beginning to play the same Game over again and many were so desperately seduced by that grand impostor as to shake hands with their allegiance under pretence of laying faster hold on Religion and Reformation as if Christian liberty did lose the reines of civil Government and Saintship give them a Priviledge against the interest of obedience which they who undertake to maintain must sharpen their Weapons at the Philistines forge go to Rome for arguments whose School-men indeavouring to thrust the King below the Pope thought it their surest way to advance the People in some cases above him these seeds of Rebellion must be fetch'd from their School Divinity from whence Christianity received its bane Rebellion under pretence of Religion is the vertical point of Jesuitism the top branch of Popery and Jack Presbyter was over familiar with the Whore of Babylon when he stole that Doctrine out of her bosome 't is indeed more like a peice of the Alcoran than of the Gospel an Article of the Turkish not of the Christian Creed Let us not therefore for fear of losing our Religion without fear or wit presently jump into Rebellion for Christ never taught the sword of the Spirit to make way to the conscience by cutting through the flesh nor did he ever authorize subjects to plant or water his Christian Doctrine much less their own phanatical devises in the blood of their Soveraign and fellow Subjects He mentions some who took the Kingdom of Heaven by violence not any who by violence imposed it upon others Nay the Prophet tells the Jewes that in the day when they found themselves oppressed by their King they should cry out for redress unto the Lord Deut. 17. 18. as the only Arbiter and Judge of the Deeds of Princes against whom there is no rising up Prov. 30. 31. and when the Jews asked Christ whether they should pay Tribute to Caesar or not de did not ask them whether there were any Statute against it nor advise them to defer their payment till the People should agree upon it he only looked upon the Superscription of the money and told them to whom it was due and his practice was answerable to it when he chose rather to fish for money and to be at the expence of a Miracle to pay his Taxes than to offend the Higher Powers And that he might teach submission to the worst of Kings John 16. â—… 11. he acknowledges even Pilate's Power to be of God this I am sure was the Judgment of Christ and the former of one who lived long before Antichrist Our blessed Saviour obeyed unto death under the Reign of Tiberius and his Disciples under Nero Claudius and Caligula And when Julian from Christianity fell to flat Paganism you shall find the Christians whom he loaded with Persecutions not entring into any Rebellious Associations but fitting their Necks to his Yoak and teaching one another postures how they might stand fairest for the stroke of death and that not because they could not help themselves for the greatest part of his Army were then Christians but because they were convinced that no man could become a Traytor who had any relick of Grace in him and that he who shakes off this Sacred Bond of Obedience hath first resigned Heaven and made shipwrack of Faith and a good Conscience He who faltreth in his Allegiance to the King the Deputy does manifestly revolt from God the Deputer If the King oppress his Subjects 't is the abusing of that Power which is in him which is to be reserved for a Divine Judgment but if the People take up Arms 't is an usurping of that Power which belongs not to them an Act of Injustice against God an invading the Right and Prerogative of Heaven and a leavying War against God's Ordinance which ceases not to be Sacred when 't is wickedly imployed and for this God hath appointed the King to punish them and not to bear the Sword in vain And he took the Kingdom from Saul not for being too tyrannical to his Subjects but for being too merciful to his Enemies in sparing Agag Let all Crowned heads take that for a warning And yet this was no rub at all in our home-bred Rebels way who had neither Faith enough to make them true Christians nor yet so much Hypocrisie as to make them plausibly seem so and yet they had more of that than did themselves or others good too and so have their Off-spring for after they had sworn Subjection to him and his Heirs in the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance and in another which deserves to be named no more amongst us being first unlawfully taken and after more unlawfully kept by too many after all the complicated Protestations of the sincerity of their intentions to him they persidiously destroyed him Judas was just such another Saint as they and much of their complexion and perswasion There was not a Petition not a Message not a Declaration they ever sent him in which they did not oblige themselves by the Faith of Christians they meant of Devils who never keep their words but in malice to have a tender regard for his Sacred Person and to make him a great and glorious King and yet they were never so good as their words till they first platted him a
to sacrifice his Honour break his Oath and to give up the Government and with it his fastest friends as a victime to the fury of his fiercest Enemies and to violate his conscience in the breach of those Laws which he had sworn to maintain which were to have made himself second in a fault which the impartial world condemn'd in them as the first and principal offenders Cast but an eye upon his concessions and you shall quickly perceive that never any villains were brib'd into murder at so cheap a rate and with so little colour of provocation as they I must always except their impenitent offspring Was their quarrel commenc'd for the true Protestant Religion So was his to the death when he prov'd himself to have Defender of the Faith among his Titles more by desert than inheritance Was it for the Priviledges of Parliament he thought nothing too honourable for them but Majesty and 't is to be hop'd they will be taught to be content without that still Did they aim at the liberty of the Subject So did He Unless they meant the licentiousness of the rabble which open'd the flood-gates to that impetuous torrent which carryed down the Government of Church and State of Soveraignty Prelacy and Peerage Did they stand up for the Laws of the Land So did he and fell for them too so will neither they nor their offspring do Was it for the right administration of Justice Where and when did they ever know it in greater perfection than in his Reign If peace and plenty could have stop'd their mouths Heaven had prevented their clamours against him for in no Kings Reign were the Commons in greater wealth the Nobility more honoured or the Clergy less wrong'd And if liberty of Conscience was the thing they struggled for the common Vouchee of all National quarrels when he himself wanted it he was most ready to give it and so might have said in these points to them as St. Paul to the rest of the Apostles that in all these things he had labour'd more abundantly than they all for which he will always have his Chair of State in every Loyal breast He was indeed a Prince Heb. 11. 38. whose supereminent Graces were such as became God's Deputy of whom the World was not worthy I am sure not these ingrateful Islands whether he were a better King or Christian more innocent in his doing or patient in his sufferings is not easie to determine Natus erat in Exemplar he was born for a President of goodness his Great example was both a Law and a demonstration and his chaste life a dayly Sermon against his lustful Enemies His Parts and Piety his Reason and Religion were beyond any but his own expression Nor did ever any Age since our Saviour's Passion furnish the World with so great an example of Patience and Constancy as that which he this day set us But why should I praise him to you who are so much the more miserable in the loss of him by how much the more you knew him What Gifts and Graces were in him as he used them so let us ascribe them to the King of all Glory We have seen how seldom Excellency is in any Kind long-lived and how rarely the men of this World can indure any supereminent goodness It had not else been possible for the Sons of Belial for any but the Devil and his black Angels to have been incensed against such a meek and harmless Prince as this much less for his own Subjects to have murder'd him for them who were hatch'd under the covert of his wings to pick out his eyes for such Cuckows to devour him from whom next under God they received their well being is a Prodigy Cannot Caesar be butcher'd but Brutus must profer the Stab Cannot Christ be betray'd but one of his own Disciples must be the chief Contriver Cannot St. Steven be stoned but by his Country-men And must so Gracious a King become the white object for the squint-ey'd malice of his own trayterous Subjects to dart those spleenish Arrows at which they had drawn out of the Artillery of Hell Could there be a greater Piacle in nature Could there be a more execrable and horrid thing Transanimated Devils was a stranger Metempshychosis than ever Poets fancyed and yet Maximilian you see was little less than a Prophet in styling the King of great Britain a Prince of Devils because of his Subjects frequent insurrections against and depositions of their Princes We have had the best Kings and been the worst subjects in Christendome to our shame be it spoken Who can stretch out his hand against the Lords Anoynted and be innocent Can his own Subjects do it how came the feet by any authority to judge the head or subjects to sit upon their Soveraign Does the King hold this Crown by indentures from his people As much as the Father does his Government by a Covenant with his Children Prov. 8. 15. 'T is by me sayeth God that Kings Reign Shall those that are of his making be of the peoples marring shall Children condition with their Parents upon such and such usage to be acquitted of their duty and obedience and must they expect to exchange Authority with them and shall they govern by the wills of their sons and Servants or by their own Of what inchanted Cup had they drunk so deep as to forget themselves to be subjects and that it was for them to do their duty and the King his pleasure If they were above him how was he Supreme and how they his subjects or was his supremacy to be torn off by the hands of â—…ormation a rag of popery or if they were his subjects how came they to be his Judges and if no judges how could they be his Avengers and if no Avengers why were they not quiet how durst they lift up their hands or indeed open their mouths against him Tacitus said right even in Machiavels Judgment that men should wish for good Princes but whatsoever they are indure them and verily he who does otherwise let your Whigs and our Dissenters say what they please ruines both himself and his Country God made him King and us Subjects we were wedded together at his Coronation and so we should have continued like Man and Wife for better for worse our obedience being not to depend upon his good behaviour but upon Gods Ordinance and yet notwithstanding this close tye of Heaven and their manifold Obligations to him his own Subjects and the scum of them destroyed him Those who were immanitate scelerum tuti Secur'd by the greatness of their crimes were the men who made use of the insolency of the rabble and the Midwifery of tumults to bring forth confusion on Church and State They are now taking the same methods a second time pray God send us better Success These were those Sainted Salamanders who courted a combustion and a scramble because their fortunes were as desperate