whole Chapters in my first Book to prove that as the opposite opinion is no less than rank Atheism or Blasphemy so it utterly subverts the Power of all Government and irrecoverably destroys the safety of all societies in the World This Confidence of yours is so provoking that I cannot but wonder your ears have not done Penance for the rudeness of your Tongue Macedo thou art able to outforge and outbrazen ten Macedos And yet so assured are the drivers of the dissenting Herd and so silly the Creatures they stear that there is scarce a Shop-Divine in the whole Nation that does not as heartily believe this unhoopable Jurisdiction to be the only design of all my Books as he does the ten Commandments to be obligatory or the Apostles Creed to be true But when my innocence as to this charge is so infinitely clear and when they have nothing to object against me or to plead in their own behalf but upon its presumption that is a demonstrative Argument of a bassled and defenceless cause that can be defended with no other weapon but impudent and bare-faced Calumny And now when you have once taken this for granted away you run clattering with abundance of noise and nothing till you fall into another story full as lowd and ratling as this That I have complemented his Majesty so far as to inform him that he may if he please reserve the Priesthood and the exercise of it to himself So said J. O. too and was very pleasant in his Remarques upon it but was I suppose sufficiently satisfied or at least silenced with this plain and simple Answer That in the Paragraph against which this Objection is level'd I undertook to give a brief Historical account of the Original of all Civil and Ecclesiastical Government where I shewed how in the first Ages of the World they were vested in the same Person and founded upon the same Right of paternal Authority and in this State of things antecedent to all superinduced Restraints and positive Institutions I asserted the supreme Magistrate might if he pleased reserve the exercise of the Priesthood to himself And so all Writers that I know of assert as well as I. Though afterwards the Priestly office was in the Jewish Common-wealth expresly derogated from the Kingly Power by being setled upon the Tribe of Levi and the Line of Aaron and so likewise in the Christian Church by being appropriated to the Apostles and their Successors that derive their Priestly Office and Power from our Blessed Saviours express and immediate Commission Now what I affirm'd of things in the bare State of Nature without the guidance of Revelation for this man to represent it as if I had applyed it indifferently to all Ages and Periods of the Church by whatsoever positive Laws and different Institutions they may be govern'd is wonderfully suitable to the Genius of his own Wit and Ingenuity But though I think I have passed so high a Complement upon his Majesty this only troubles you how his Majesty would look in all the Sacerdotal Habiliments and the Pontisical Wardrobe Alas good man Your tender heart would not serve you to behold the Ceremonies of the Coronation The Rebels Wounds bled too fresh in your Memory it would have rubb'd up all the late sad spectacles at Cheering-Cross and minded you of all those choice ones that were hang'd to make way for this great Solemnity for whose sakes the 29. of May is annually observed among the secret ones as a day of private humiliation to bemoan the loss and commemorate the Martyrdom of so many anointed and precious Brethren But as for the malicious Consequence that you out of stark staring Love to the Church of which you are so enamour'd that it even joys your Heart to hear any thing well said of her suggest upon this Occasion that then he may and it is all the reason in the World he should assume the Revenue too it only shews your Judgment at nicking a Lucky juncture of Affairs When you have put the King in mind of his Coronation-Oath in which he swears to protect and defend the Bishops and the Churches under their Government to preserve their Canonical Privileges to confirm the Laws Customes and Franchises granted to the Clergy by the glorious King St. Edward and all other Kings of England his Lawful and Religious Predecessours Immediately whilst this Oath is piping hot to advise him to disfranchise them from the common rights of all Subjects and to invade their Proprieties not only contrary to his solemn Oath but to the most ancient and most ratified Laws of the Realm But methinks it more concerns the Parliament than any private man to chastise such bold and lavish talk as plainly subverts the very foundations of all our Proprieties in that the Churches Rights and Revenues are vested in her by as firm and fundamental Laws as any by which you or I can hold or claim our Estates so that the Laws of England have made but a very silly provision for any mans Birthright if they are not a sufficient security for the Churches Patrimony And it becomes such a tender assertor of the English Liberties to insinuate the subversion of those Laws upon which alone they are founded I hope you will be consider'd for your pains at least for your good will it is no wonder to see you upon all occasions so afraid of Pillories and Whipping-Posts for if you are resolved to follow these courses and at last go uncropt to your Grave it will be a scandal to the Justice of the Nation But before I quit this Master-Calumny of the unhoopable Magistrate it will not be improper to take an account of your Hoops and Hola's that relate to it for when you have acted over your six Plays you begin them all afresh for you have at least eleven or twelve distinct Beginnings and run them together with some few coincident passages all down with Hoops and Hola's i. e. with noise and confidence The first next to these I have answer'd is that I have asserted the unhoopable Power wherewith I have invested Princes to be their Natural Right and Antecedent to Christ c. But oh the Consequence then his Majesty may lay by his Dieu and make use only of his Mon-droit Hoop and Hola hold not too lowd for it does not so necessarily follow that because he has his Patent under the Broad-Seal of Nature that therefore he derived it not from God for as much as Nature it self has no power of making grants but all its Commissions are sign'd only by the Author of Nature and all Natural Rights whatsoever are the Immediate Gifts of his Providence that has order'd and disposed the frame of Nature according to his own Sovereign Will and Pleasure and therefore you must resolve all Natural Rights as well as all Natural Laws into his Authority for though Nature may discover yet it is only he that passes and enacts them
Antisacraments to the prejudice of Christs own true Sacraments than which worse need not be said of the most Antichristian Church in the World And thus the Commissioners of the Worcester-house Conference obstructed his Majesties felicity and the Nations settlement because they thought it reasonable and convenient to stick to the present establishments of the Church till some proof of their unlawfulness was produced and because when none could be produc'd they would not condescend to that temper and moderation as to change all her Constitutions without any other reasonable Motive than to salve the reputation of the Presbyterians they must be branded for cunning and revengeful men And good reason too because the Non-conformists demand nothing but what is so far from doing us any harm that it would only make us better And yet all their demands are against our legal Establishments of which your worship is so enamour'd And as for the Act of Uniformity and that superfoetation of Acts that followed after it though they were all establish'd by Law yet were they procured by trinkling nay by Bishops trinkling and for that reason serve only to expose the Wisdome of King and Parliament to after Ages Another special commendation of the Church of England as by Law establish'd that its Legal Establishments are so foolish as to be a perpetual Testimony of the Law-makers Folly Find me out a Fanatique in Hungary Transylvania Bohemia Scotland Geneva Pin-makers Hall J. O's Congregation that may not boast his deep respect and reverence to the Church of England upon as good Terms as your self So that it is plain here you did but Personam induere of an honest Zealot for say what you will you must and shall know that all Zealots are not Rogues and Cut-throats And after all your counterfeit reverence you mean no body else by this particular Bran than the Bishops and the Clergy of the Church of England as 't is by Law establish'd Upon them it is that you dispense forth this sweet Character with so much bounty and in the very spirit of meekness And in the first place Arch-bishop Laud cannot lye quiet in his Grave but after a great many fair and foul words as consistent with themselves as the rest of your Book you are pleased at length to score all the miscarriages of the late Kings Reign and all the miseries of the late War upon his head and Conscience I suppose because he was a man so learned so pious so wise so studious to do both God and his Majesty good service you thought he was better able to bear it than some others whose reputation was not altogether so clear and unquestionable But poor Bishop Laud this is hard measure that when never any man's Innocence clear'd it self so gallantly from all the assaults of Malice and Calumny his venerable ashes should be thus insolently arraign'd by every bold and Fanatique Blockhead For notwithstanding the vigour and activity of his mind his zeal for the settlement and prosperity of the Church his care to reduce Religion to sober and justifiable Principles his Interest in the Kings favour and Counsels yet was he so wise and so pious in the conduct of all his affairs that when he was devested of all Power and Protection when he was exposed to the violence and outrage of the people when Calumny was let loose upon him when he was treated not only without mercy but justice and common civility when Libels and Petitions against him were rewarded when tumults and clamours were invited when he was even overwhelm'd with the number of Slanders Jealousies and Accusations when he was prosecuted by some with the utmost Fraud and Artifice by others with an unheard of malice and violence when his Murther was decreed with an absolute Doom before his Trial when his impeachment was drawn up in the most heinous and aggravating terms when the Evidence was managed with an unusual vehemence and animosity yet after all this his Innocence appear'd so clear and his Integrity so unblemish'd that not only his Judges but his very enemies were convinced and ashamed of their own Accusations For when the particular Articles of his Charge came to be examined they proved after the expence of a great deal of time and wit and eloquence so trifling and silly that they durst not venture to proceed any farther against him in way of legal Tryal and so were forced to condemn him and he was the first and last that was ever so condemned by Ordinance of Parliament without any other Formality than bringing him once to the Commons Bar for fashion sake that he might not be condemn'd unseen as he was unhear'd but condemn'd he was for no other Crime than that of cumulative Treason that is what you please and by this Impudence they might take away the life of any innocent man if either they hated him or he liked not them But the Remarque that his Historian has made upon the review of all their proceedings against him is so just and observable that all Circumstances consider'd it will appear the highest Act of Malice and Impudence that ever was before committed for since it has been outdone by any Age and under any Government in the World Viz. That as the predominant Party in the united Provinces to bring about their ends in the death of Barnevelt subverted all those fundamental Laws of the Belgick Liberty for maintenance whereof they took up Arms against Philip the second So the Contrivers of this mischief had violated all the fundamental Laws of the English Government for maintenance whereof they had pretended to take up Arms against the King It was said they a fundamental Law of the English Government and the first Article in the Magna Charta that the Church of England shall be free and shall have all her whole Rights and Priviledges inviolable Yet to make way unto the condemnation of this innocent man the Bishops must be voted out of their place in Parliament which most of them have held far longer in their Predecessors than any of our noble Families in their Progenitors and if the Lords refuse to give way unto it as at first they did the people must come down to the house in multitudes and cry No Bishops no Bishops at the Parliament doors till by the Terrour of the Tumults they extort it from them It is a fundamental Law of the English Liberty That no Free-man shall be taken or imprisoned without cause shewn or be detained without being brought unto his answer in due form of Law Yet here we see a Free-man imprisoned ten whole weeks together before any charge was brought against him and kept in Prison three whole Years more before his general accusation was by them reduced unto particulars and for a Year almost detain'd close Prisoner without being brought unto his answer as the Law requires It is a fundamental Law of the English Government That no man be disseized of his Free-hold or Liberties but
great promises of Assistance and Supply and these being still diverted by endless Disputes about Liberties and Priviledges and bold demands to abate the Powers of the Crown he saw plainly as himself declares That they only made use of the necessities grown upon him by that War to inforce him to yield to Conditions incompatible with Monarchy So that despairing of any good from the Seditious Spirits of that Parliament he dissolves them And in the interval his necessities growing upon him by a new and sad disaster that had befallen his Unkle the King of Denmark He commands his Council to Advise by what means and wayes he might fitly and speedily be furnish'd with Monies suitable to the importance of the undertaking Hereupon after a Consultation of divers dayes together they came to this Resolution that the urgency of Affairs not admitting the way of Parliament the most speedy equal and convenient means were by a general Loan from the Subject according as every man was Assessed in the Rolls of the last Subsidy Upon this Result the King issues out his Declaration accordingly but assuring the People that this way to which he was forced by the urgency of his Occasions should not be made a Precedent for the time to come to charge Them or their Posterity to the prejudice of their Just and Ancient Liberties enjoyed under his most Noble Progenitors And promising them in the word of a Prince first to repay all such summs of Money as should be lent without fee or charge so soon as he shall be any wayes enabled thereunto And secondly that not one Penny so borrowed should be bestowed or expended but upon those publique and general Services wherein every of Them and the body of the Kingdom their Wives Children and Posterity have their personal and common Interest When the King and his Council had Voted the Loan they commanded Laud then Bishop of Bath and Wells to draw up certain Instructions to be communicated to the Arch-bishops Bishops and the rest of the Clergy of the Realm to stir up and exhort the People to express their Zeal to the true Religion their Duty to the King and their Love to their Countrey by a chearful complyance with his Majesties Commissions And in this was represented the Afflicted Condition of the Princes and States of the Reformed Religion in all parts of Christendom some being over-run some diverted and some disabled to give assistance The distress of his Unkle the King of Denmark the great danger of losing the Sound and thereby the Eastland and the Hamborough Trade the Confederacy of the Pope the House of Austria and the French King to root out the Protestant Religion the great Fleets both of France and Spain at that Instant endeavouring to block up Rochel together with their Land-forces on the Coast of Brittain ready to invade us And what more important Motives could have been press'd to perswade thePeople to a ready and chearful Contribution What more powerful and plausible Arguments could have been put into the mouths of the Clergy to win their Auditories to a dutiful Compliance both with his Majesties Desires and Necessities And this among other things brought forth Sibthorp's Sermon and the man did well and as became his Function to perswade the People that they ought in point of Conscience and Religion chearfully to submit to all such Taxes as were imposed upon them by Royal Authority without murmurs and disputes But if he intermedled as it is said he did with the Kings Absolute Power of imposing Taxes without Consent of Parliament according to the Laws and Constitutions of this Kingdom he went both beyond his own Commission and against the Kings Declaration For what had he to do in the Pulpit with the Rights of Sovereignty and the Priviledges of Parliament It was none of his business to adjust the disputes of his Superiours and he had no Authority either from God or the King to interpose in Affairs of State his Office was to recommend the Piety and the Necessity of their Contributions and though possibly they were not under any enforcements of Complyance by the Constitutions of this Realm yet to urge it upon their Consciences from the Common Principles and Obligations both of Nature and Christianity that could not but effectually enforce their complyance with so good a King in so pious and necessary a work But if he exceeded his Commission by taking upon him to teach the Laws of the Land and determine the Rights of the Prerogative though he cannot be justified yet he ought as circumstances then stood to be in a great measure excused because he did it at a time when the King could not in the usual Parliamentary method obtain sufficient supplyes to preserve his Honour and Safety but by Concessions shamefully contrary to both and that might provoke a warm man to lavish out beyond the bounds of prudence and discretion And as for Manwarings Case I need say little to it in that it was the very same with Sibthorps only it is observable that his Prosecution was carried on with all eagerness by such Members as Pym and Rous men that took advantage of such imprudences only to give countenance to their own clamours and confirm the jealousies they had blown into the People against the King by the indiscretion of a Countrey Vicar though if there were at that time any designs of absolute Government it was to be imputed to their Impudence for when they assaulted the Royal Power with their bold and unreasonable demands they forced it to stand upon its own guard and then it was none of the Kings fault if he were necessitated to act sometimes by vertue of his meer Prerogative because there was no other way left to preserve himself or his Government in that they had brought things to that pass that nothing must be done unless he would either grant away all his Power to them or keep it all to himself for they would not share the Sovereignty with a single Person and under pretence of priviledges of Parliament assumed the Royal Supremacy and as soon as they had Power and opportunity it is well known how confidently they put in practice the very same courses which they resisted as Acts of Arbitrary Government in the King so that if He were at any time to have recourse to extraparliamently proceedings it was not from his own choice or inclinations but purely from the rudeness and insolence of their demands which were so insufferable that the case was plain that he must sometimes govern without them or not govern at all And what is to be done in that case the Law of self-preservation determines I know this may be pretended where there is no such necessity but that I cannot help if men will abuse a just pretence to authorize unjust actions It is enough to my purpose that it is plain in the case of the last King that he never made use of his Prerogative till the
weary of nothing but Laws and Government as is too manifest from your restlesness and impatience under all restraints Are you weary of your Principles Do but assure us of that and we shall never desire any more security but if you are not as soon as you can get wind we are still just as we were But the King has so obliged the Non-conformists by his late mercy that if there were any such Knave there can be no such fool among them that would ever lift up an ill thought against him Now indeed you have nickt it to purpose next to their being hang'd nothing can secure their Loyalty like gratitude and good-nature They lift up an ill thought against the King after he has so much obliged them It is impossible It is against the nature of the Beast Away with the Guards Save so much money the Presbyterian has pass'd his word and can you desire a better hostage Oblige him but once and he is your own for ever It is not in his power to do an ungrateful action and now he is so much beholden to the King he is no more able to lift up a disloyal thought against him than to remove mountains This I must confess goes a great way and as far as any thing next to the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy but yet after all it will not do so effectually as hanging for what if the King should ever happen to disoblige them again why then unless they are very weary there is an end of all the Presbyterian Loyalty I know though I have not the honour to have that intimate acquaintance that you have with him he is a very civil and well-bred Gentleman and knows how to condescend to their infirmities and to humour them like Children and when they have caught cold desire them to be cover'd but yet I know withall that they are so peevish and so apt to take exception that let him carry himself never so swimmingly he can never avoid it but that sometime or other he must before he is aware fall under their displeasure and then if ever they get him within their power they will be disposing of him as they were all along of his Father according to the Covenant But what strange News is this The Fanatiques obliged I could scarce have believed it though I had read it in the Gazette I am confident it is more than the King himself knows Will you give me leave to carry the information to any of his Secretaries of State and when I have done will you promise to justifie it I must confess his Majesties Indulgence all things consider'd was a very obliging kindness yet I am sure his Royal Father laid upon them ten times greater Obligations than that amounts to he granted them every thing they asked even to one half of his Kingdom and yet how he obliged them we all know And as I understand it the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion was none of the smallest Obligations at least it was much greater than the Declaration of Indulgence as much as it is really more comfortable for men to enjoy their lives and estates than to have their wills Yet I cannot find any remarkable effect it ever had upon their ingenuity but that they still continue as peevish and unpeaceable as ever Not but that they have suffer'd as well as ever men did and are ready to'do so still only that it is so hard a Chapter for men in their condition to suffer extremities patiently that some think it impossible and therefore though they are never so angry at the Government and impatient of the Laws yet for all that they may be and if we may take your word are of as meek and passive tempers as any men in the world beside seeing it is impossible to flesh and blood to bear the extremities that they suffer patiently so that in the result of all it seems they suffer as patiently as any men living only because it is impossible for any men living to suffer patiently Yes but if there were any such Knave there can be no such fool among them But of their wisdom we are secure enough already and only desire a bond of their honesty And since fools as you think are less dangerous than Knaves the kindness had been greater if you would have been surety to his Majesty against their more possible Knavery And yet though you had given us these and ten thousand ensurances more of their Loyalty they would not do without testimonies signal marks publique acknowledgements satisfaction and recantation because men that have been so deeply engaged in so heinous a crime if they are sensible of it can never be supposed to satisfie themselves with a slight repentance and therefore whatever other assurance they can give from their being hang'd wearied and obliged it is of no force nor use to the publique in that if they are in good earnest these would be the beginnings and first pangs of repentance so that when they plainly refuse to acknowledge their fault there needs no other proof of their being hardned in it and whenever they have opportunity returning to it But it seems they have done more than all this For no sooner has the King shewn them his late favour but I and my Partners reproach them for being too much friends to the Prerogative They friends to the Prerogative just as the Devil was to the Scriptures they make the same use of it to the King as he did of them to our Saviour only to perswade him to break his own neck Do we not know their Principles too well to believe that their seeming acceptance of his Majesties Indulgence proceeds not from any acknowledgement of his Supremacy to make or suspend Ecclesiastical Laws Do they not challenge these Immunities as due to them by Divine Right and which were before wrongfully detain'd from them Their end in magnifying the Kings Indulgence is not to confirm his just claim of Supremacy in Church-concerns when they deny nothing more vehemently but because they hope by this seeming compliance so to encrease and strengthen their own Party as that they may be able to distress the Episcopal Government and then the Royal Supremacy So that we are so far from reproaching them with being too friendly to the Prerogative that their seeming complyance with it upon their Principles is the greatest evidence of their treachery against it When they claim by Divine Right an absolute exemption from this part of it and if the King or Parliament exercise any of this Jurisdiction over them they call it Tyranny and a violating of the Divine Majesty So that they fight for the Prerogative just as they did for the King against it self And they cannot but be zealous Assertours of it above the Laws when as they will not obey the Laws so they will not acknowledge that And therefore it is not out of any friendship that they have to the Prerogative that
at any time a mind to exercise their zeal and malice they fall a whetting their claws upon Gowns and Cassocks and to be alwayes inveighing against any comfortable subsistence of the Clergy is the most undoubted symptom and discovery of a Zealous Brother And every Mechanick that for his parts and education is qualified for nothing higher than the Clerks and the Sextons Office to tune Psalms or dig graves thinks much of the Doctors Allowance as wanton and superfluous though it be short of the Returns of his own mean and small-ware Trade And when an ingenious Person has spent his Youth and too often his Estate to fit himself for this Sacred Employment this is a great encouragement and a doughty reward for one of an ingenuous and learned education to be trampled upon by every illiterate and conceited Clown And though these men are not much to be admired for their manners and ingenuity upon any account yet their barbarity shews it self in nothing more shamelesly than this insolence towards men so infinitely their betters by the right both of their parts and their breeding This is a rudeness peculiar to themselves from all other Savages in the world beside And though we rake the East and the West Indies there are no People so prodigiously fall'n from all sense of humanity and civil manners as to think their Priesthood the most plausible Object upon which they can wreck their Spite and Malice much less to think it an Argument of their Saint-ship and acceptance with their Gods to affront and vilifie the Officers of their sacred Rites But as for your suggesting to the King his right of assuming Church-revenues I must confess it is very kindly and obligingly offer'd and first like so great a Patron of the Church of England that it even joys your heart to hear any thing well said of her and secondly like so great a Patriot of the Subjects Liberties that out of pure love to mankind admonishes Kings not only to preserve their Rights but to yield to their Infirmities Now whatever Liberties the Subject may claim they are all founded upon such Grants of Princes or such Laws of Propriety as are at least confirm'd and ratified by Royal Assent And then if you look into the most ancient and as the Lawyers inform us fundamental Constitutions of this Realm I believe you will scarce find any other Liberties of the Subject so firmly establish'd as the Rights and Immunities of the Church so that by the same right and with the same honesty that you fancy the King may seize its revenues he may as well chalenge any mans Inheritance nay and reassume all the Demesnes of the Kingdome to the use of the Crown So that whatsoever Liberties the Subjects of England may or do claim this suggestion subverts them all cancels all Propriety and throws up every mans Estate into the hands of his supreme Landlord Had it not been for the unfortunate adventure at Picquet I am apt to believe you would have as little approved this Doctrine as your Neighbours And it cannot but be so edifying with the Nobility and Gentry that the Parliament will no doubt at the next Session think themselves obliged to see you sufficiently trinkled for your good advice But 't is time to have done with your censure of the Clergy of all former Ages and all foreign Churches and I will say no more in their behalf because my age has not given me leave to be acquainted with the Patriarchs that lived either before or immediately after the Flood nor my Travels with the Bishops of Munster Cullen and Strasburgh But your Malice rises against the Clergy of our own Age and Nation and for their sakes is it that you have bestowed this obliging Character upon the Clergy of all former Ages And here that you may not be mistaken you begin with much circumspection your Oratio expurgatoria to the Body of the English Clergy who have been ever since the Reformation of the most eminent for Divinity and Piety in all Christendome Though by the way I presume you mean not Hugh Peters for his Piety because he was hanged nor J. O. for his Divinity because he deserves it nor the Bishops for either because you esteem them as you would have us no part of the body of the English Clergy But whoever is meant be sure there is mischief at hand and it is near breaking out for a Jacal does not more naturally attend a Lyon nor Murther follow a Long-Parliament Fast than malice does your most solemn and sweet-lip'd Apologies And thus out it comes Those you intend are only a particular Bran of persons who will in spite of Fate be accounted the Church of England men that to encrease their own Splendour care not though they set all on flame about them men that have devested themselves of all Humanity and all good manners men that would never endure any Overture towards the Peace of the Church and Nation wherein they lived lastly men that have always been for the most precipitate brutish and sanguinary Counsels Now though the Character agree well enough and you have ever been a deep Youth yet I cannot think you intend either Hugh Peters his Bran or J. O's Bran or the Tryers Bran or Usinulca's Bran or any other Fanatique or Modern Orthodox Bran but plainly and sincerely Arch-Bishop Land's Bran the Bran that deformed the whole Reign of the best Prince that ever weilded English Scepter the Bran of Ceremonies and the Bran of Arminianism in short the Bran that will not depart from the Church as 't is by Law establish'd only to save the credit of some sturdy Swiss that will not conform for that is your only charge against them that they will not be brought to temper and moderation nor make the least abatement to bring the honest Presbyterians off with some little reputation But your meaning is better to be understood by the Apologies you make to the Church of England it self She has not a more dutiful and devout child than you you cannot name her but you are immediately upon your knees and begging her Blessing And it even joys your heart to hear any thing well said of her and as it is by Law establish'd has such a stock of solid and deserved Reputation that you could even weep for joy And yet are you all this while most lovingly inveighing against her legal Establishments Her three Ceremonies you will not endure for all the World because they are you know as it were Sacraments and that because they want nothing of a Sacramental Nature but a Sacramental Nature and so are as you know too a kind of Antisacraments And so obtruded upon the Church that without condescending to these additional inventions no man is to be admitted to partake of the true Sacraments which were of Christs appointing A dutiful expression of your obedience to the Church as establish'd by Law that she Tyrannically obtrudes
by the known Laws of the Land Yet here we see a man disseized of his Rents and Lands spoiled of his Goods deprived of his Jurisdiction devested of his Right of Patronage and all this done when he was so far from being convicted by the Laws of the Land that no particular charge was so much as thought of It is a fundamental Law of the English Liberty that no man shall be condemned or put to death but by the Lawful Judgment of his Peers or by the Law of the Land that is in the ordinary way of Legal Tryal and sure an Ordinance of both Houses without the Royal Assent is no part of the Law of England nor held an ordinary way of Tryal for the English Subject or ever reckoned to be such in former times And finally it is a Fundamental Law in the English Government That if any other Cause than those recited in the Statute of King Edward III. which is supposed to be Treason do happen before any of his Majesties Justices the Justices shall tarry without giving Judgment till the Cause be shewn and declared before the King and his Parliament whether it ought to be judged Treason or not Yet here we have a new-found Treason never known before nor declared such by any of his Majesties Justices nor ever brought to be consider'd of by the King and his Parliament but only Voted to be such without Precedent or Example by some of those Members which sat at West-minster who were resolved to have it so for their private ends c. Is not this right Presbyterian Ingenuity to rebel against the King only for the defence and maintenance of the fundamental Laws and yet in all their proceedings violate not only all the fundamental Laws they pretended to fight for but all the more fundamental Laws of nature and humanity The Arch-Bishop was to be murther'd to please the Kirk and with his blood was the Covenant to be seal'd but then to prosecute him with so much violence to load him with so much accusation to tire him out with all the affronts and indignities of spite and zeal to rake into his whole Life up to his very Child-hood to gather materials for an Impeachment and yet after all this when they were convinced of the innocence of his actions and the inhumanity of their own proceedings to condemn him as a Traytor and an Execrable Person without nay against a Legal Tryal and then put him to death against all the Laws of the Realm and all the Rules of Natural Justice is such a prodigious piece of impudence as sufficiently discovers what kind of Creatures they were that were the contrivers and authours of his Murther It is true Presbyterian impudence But now are not you a right good natured Wretch to charge a man so learned so wise so pious and so studious of doing God and His Majesty good service of deforming the whole Reign of the best Prince that ever wielded the English Scepter when the very men that murther'd him have left such an irrefragable testimony of his Innocence and Integrity in that though they had the confidence to overwhelm him with Accusations yet they had not the confidence to withstand his Defence And what more ample testimony could they have left to Posterity than when they had taken so much pains to murther him with some shew of Law and Justice they should at last be forced to betake themselves to such illegal and violent proceedings as were never put in practice before or after Is this your additional Civility wherewith you consecrate the ashes of the deceased Are these your Elogies of a man so learned so pious so wise so studious both of the Service of God and the King that he deformed both What accusatory spirit could desire better play against him than you have given in his Vindication But however you recreate your self with believing that your simple judgement cannot beyond your intention it seems when you print Books you intend no body should read or regard them beside your self abate any thing of his just value with others And thus you never oyl your hoan neither but to whet your razor and cut the mans throat whom you would seem to flatter and fawn upon These leering and mannerly abuses that are suggested under pretence of friendship are much more impudent and malicious than down-right railing Neither is there any hypocrisie so ridiculous as to shrink back and protest all the tenderness in the world to a mans reputation and yet at the same time of your own accord and without any asking go about to blast it for ever with the most spiteful and venemous suggestions and then think to wipe your mouth and by a counterfeit smile or two make amends for all this treachery And when you have stab'd a man to the heart excuse all your officious virulence by crying whilst you are giving the mortal stroak Sir I beg your pardon I intend no harm and however I may in publique make bold to traduce your memory yet still I recreate my self with believing that my simple judgement cannot beyond my intention abate any thing of your just value with others So that it seems when you publish any thing to a mans disparagement you do not intend to be believed It is a Dove-like Serpent that never stings but when it kisses too but yet it is time for shame to give over this out-worn cheat it is now too impudent and palpable to impose upon any mans credulity it did you service thirty years since when you dethroned his late Majesty under pretence of making him the most Glorious King that ever weilded the English Scepter but you must not after so long an experience of your hypocrisie and leasings presume so rudely upon the silliness of mankind as to think at this time of day of cheating and abusing them with such ridiculous contradictions And now when you remark it as the great weakness of the late King that he trusted his exquisite understanding to the Clergies keeping it is plain you mean Arch-bishop Laud and I pray with whom could he better trust it than a man so learned so pious so wise and that studied to do both God and his Majesty good service Here are all the Qualifications of an able and an honest Statesman so that though the Clergy were not ordinarily so well fitted by education as others for Political Affairs yet it is evident Arch-bishop Laud was being both wise and learned and pious and this is as great a character as can be given of any Favourite in any age So that whereas you object it as the great over-sight and infirmity of his late Majesty that he committed his exquisite understanding to the Arch-bishops keeping you could not have given a greater proof of his wisdom than to make choice of a man so admirably qualified to do him service neither can you blame him for being ignorant that God would not bless a Church-man in Affairs of
they thus magnifie the Kings pardons and dispensations but only out of hatred and opposition to the Government because by this means they suppose some part of the supreme power to be lopt off and then they are hearty friends to any thing that abates of that They are right Gibellines for any thing or any interest to make disturbance for King or Parliament or either or neither for their own ends and to oppose the Guelphs In the late War when the King declared against them and the Parliament for them they then fought for the Parliament against the Prerogative But after all the fatal Consequences of that Rebellion the King and Parliament both observing their Sea-marks joyn together to root up their principles of Schism and Sedition and then they declare against both for the Prerogative of God and every man's Conscience And now the King lately for reasons of State and perhaps to make an experiment of their good nature being inclined to suspend for a while the Penalties of the Laws in force against them then hey for the Prerogative above all Laws and Parliaments and they preach up nothing but Sibthorpianism and Absolute Government because it was the Rock on which the last King ruined They care not what becomes of King and Parliament and Kingdom too so they may gratifie their own Pride and peevishness Not that I believe they have all formed designs against the State they are most of them too simple to entertain thoughts so great but yet they are easily acted by those that have they are conceited and froward and apt to pick quarrels and take offence at the present management of affairs be it what it will And if they are not courted as well as humour'd by their Governours their proud hearts are liable to a certain Infirmity that is very troublesom and they are presently reflecting upon the Histories of former times the Roman Emperour the King of Poland Alexander the Great the King of Spain the Queen of Sweden the Flea Tyrant and the sturdy Swiss and a thousand more not such idle stories but that they can tell how to make use of them as well as Kings And if Kings will not be instructed by these Examples to behave themselves dutifully towards their Subjects they know how to take an Antipathy to Regal Government and then he is bound to be so civil as to refrain the use of it however not to press it upon them but if he have so little sense of common humanity as not to yield to their Weaknesses he makes himself an hard hearted and inflexible Tyrant and if he have so little discretion as to trust his Understanding to the Clergies keeping and to know nothing beyond Ceremonies and Sibthorpianism i. e. to take any care for the Execution of Ecclesiastical Laws if he ruine his Government upon that Rock by forcing them to rebel shrewdly against their Wills poor Innocents he may thank himself and his implacable Divines This is all your friendship to the Prerogative in matters of Religion to make all exercise of Ecclesiastical Power Acts of Tyranny And you are so far his Majesties friend as to advise him to be so satisfied with the abundance of his Power as to abate of its exercise by his discretion But though you are always excusing your self from medling with State affairs by reason of your private breeding your modesty and your not having been bound Prentice to the Trade of Kings and on the contrary accusing me for presuming to instruct and advise Princes yet are you always too prescribing to them Rules of Wisdome and Discretion teaching them when it is requisite to screw up and when to let down their Prerogative how to humour their Subjects to condescend to their Infirmities and bid them to be cover'd in their presence and sometimes as here to be content with having their Power without exercising it Whereas I have no where read them any Lectures how to govern their Islands but have only as became a dutiful Subject asserted their power against your principles of Anarchy and Rebellion And if they will forgo any part of it to condescend to your Infirmities they are more competent Judges of their own actions than I am and therefore I shall never censure them for it though I must confess they would be better natur'd than I think I should be in their Cases Though alas it is pity but you should be humour'd after all this experience they have had of your meekness and simplicity and after all that assurance you have given them of your peaceable resolutions and principles viz. that whereas you have heretofore embroil'd the Nation in a civil War for nothing and though you are now convinced of it your selves yet you will not so much as acknowledge it because forsooth it would be a blemish upon your Reputation and therefore you will admit of no terms of Peace unless we will condescend to your unreasonable humours only to save your paltry credit And if we will not we may look to our selves you will make good your own party And then if upon this the Government shall think it a little necessary to restrain you in these bold and factious courses it is Tyranny and a violation of the Divine Majesty You and your Consciences are exempt from all their Laws and are in the hand of God alone and that is all your real owning of the Prerogative Though if at any time it lets you alone in all your extravagances and suffers you to break the Laws you are then such friends to it as no men more You are for or against any thing so you may but have the comfort of affronting Authority All that I have hitherto discoursed concerns only those Non-conformists that at least pretend to Sobriety but as for all the inferiour Sects though they never agreed in any thing but in their implacable Zeal against their Prince yet I never troubled my self so much as to exhort them to Repentance because they have the privilege of all other mad men to do mischief without being responsible for it and therefore are not to be discoursed or advised into their wits because being insensible of the mischief they do they can only be bound and restrained from doing it and to give them their Liberty is not only to suffer them to act any extravagance they have a mind to but to spread and propagate the Infection of their Madness For there is no Frenzy in Religion that the lower sort of the People are not too apt to be tainted with so that instead of allowing them Conventicles it were more proper to build them Bedlams nothing can govern them but Chains and Keepers But as for your own part we are willing to excuse you from signal Marks c. because you have given such mighty proofs and demonstrations of your Loyalty and Good-will to the King by that wonderful Zeal that you have upon all occasions shewn for the Act of Oblivion and Indemnity which as
Misdemeanours notwithstanding the Act of Indemnity and therefore if Ceremonies and Sibthorpianism were the Cause of the War the guilt of all that blood that was spilt in it must lie upon their heads and the King may bring them to Trial for all the Miseries they brought upon his Kingdoms for the Murther of his Father and the loss of an hundred thousand Subjects and all for Sibthorpianism and Laud. Is this your Gentleman's memory to remind his Majesty of things too old for an Act of Oblivion so old that if you would let them alone they would be forgotten of themselves without it And though you would oblige him as he is a Gentleman to forget that ever the Presbyterians rebelled against his Father and took away his Crown and Sovereignty to forget that ever the Independents beside that took away his Life to forget that they and all the other Sectaries join'd forces to expel himself out of his own Kingdoms and keep him in banishment for ever and that he was restored in spite of all their zeal and malice and lastly to forget that since the time of his Restauration none of them ever had the Grace to ask Forgiveness for their former Leasings or to give him any Assurance of their future Allegiance A man had need learn the Art of Gentlemans Memory to forget all these things that are so fresh in the minds of men but yet notwithstanding all this you your self do and would have him remember some old Gentlemen of those times that are still alive that were the cause of all our miseries that deserve to be brought to condign punishment and that his Majesty may at any time do it any thing in the Act of Oblivion and Indempnity notwithstanding And now upon review of all these stories that I have told you of former times you would as I take it have done much more wisely if you had altogether let them alone and minded your own business And thus far have I vindicated the wisdom and the honesty of the Clergy of all Ages from Noah's flood through all the four Empires quite down to the late Rebellion the fatal consequences whereof a wise man would have thought might have served as sea-marks to direct them to avoid the Rocks but the former Civil War it seems cannot make them wise nor his Majesties happy Return good-natured but they are still for running things up unto the same extremes So that by their behaviour ever since his Restauration they have given him no encouragement to steer by their Compass with a great many more sad stories that represent them as such fierce and cruel Beasts of prey such inhumane and hungry Canibals that one would expect to hear how they every where eat up their Parishoners Children as fast as the Presbyterians do the Race of Capons But these are no more than general words that any man may throw out against any man I against you or you against me or a third against us both and a fourth against him and so on eternally eternally in infinitum and therefore they signifie no more than all the rest and as little need as they deserve any Answer But beside these you have given us in some of their particular misdemeanours and them I shall a little consider and because it is time to have done run them off with all possible speed and brevity First then it has been observed that whensoever his Majesty hath had the most urgent occasions for Supply they have made it their business to trinkle with the Members of Parliament for obstructing it unless the King would buy it with a new Law against the Fanatiques And hence it is that the wisdom of his Majesty and the Parliament must be exposed to after Ages for such a superfetation of Acts c. But this concerns not me let the King and Parliament answer it as they will clear themselves from the imputation of folly and if they have no more wit than to be over-reached by being trinkled yet certainly they have more than to suffer you to call them fools for it for they tell me that none but fools expose their wisdom But pray how do they trinkle the King and the Members Do the Bishops play with him at Picquet in the Parliament House and give the sign to each other If they do they do it among themselves and then neither you nor I are privy to their under-hand dealings and their false play and so can give no competent account of the course of the Game At least I think it better becomes us both to leave these things to the Gamesters themselves and I am sure it is not done like a Gentleman that has had his breeding in the Ordinaries when he is no more than a By-stander and has not so much as a Bett at stake to raise quarrels among the Gamesters by throwing in his own impertinent jealousies and suspicions of foul play Had you gon but half a Crown with King and Parliament and then have given the sign when you spied the Bishops trinkling you might have done very honestly but yet very ungentily But when you were quite blown up long since by the Dignitary and have now nothing left to be cheated of and cannot have the least concern how the Game goes unless it be now and then to pick up a Barato or so for such an one as you I say to meddle is an insufferable piece of impudence and ill-breeding and had you done the same ill office between Gentlemen at an Ordinary as you have between the King Parliament and Bishops you would have been kick'd out of doors But as for my part I dare not touch any thing that is done within those walls though as for their behaviour out of the house I could never perceive but that they are very honest and wel-bred Gentlemen and you have nothing to object to the contrary but that they are a little uncivil to the Non-conformists in that they will not allow them the liberty of having their own Wills though they know how much their nature and constitution requires it Especially when they demand nothing that you know of but what is so far from doing us any harm that it would only make us better You know what they demand If you do you know more than themselves or at least more than they would ever yet declare This is but an idle thing still to give us your peremptory opinion of things in general without abetting it with some particular proof or instance If you had undertaken to tell us what alterations they do demand and then shewn that they would be so far from doing us any harm that they would only make us better you had done something to some purpose but otherwise you have only declared your own opinion as any confident man might have done as well as you and if he had he might as well have held his tongue too But now by the leave of your Insolence though
Ages let the Tire-men and Tire-women look to it and see you answered I am not concerned But he that runs may all along read your design of Modern Orthodoxy and instructing wise Princes to look to it have a care what they do and force not their Subjects to conform to any habit civil or sacred in that Alexander the Great had almost lost all he had conquer'd by forcing his Subjects to conform But this is one of your leasings for Alexander the Great never lost a foot of what he had conquer'd and therefore not almost all but died unconquer'd and to his dying day lost not one foot either by seeming Friend or Foe Grecian or Persian by forcing his Subjects to conform or not conform Will you never be ashamed of your Leasings But as for the great danger that Alexander was in as I remember it followed a fair time after and arose from another Cause viz. that he disowned Philip for his Father and would by all means be complemented as the Son of Jupiter it was this which gave occasion to the sedition for which Philotas died But if this goodly story were true and you would prove any thing out of it it signifies nothing but against King and Parliament for making a Law to force all Subjects to conform to their habit and fashion and is only a sly insinuation against the foolish Act of Uniformity by which they have not only exposed their Wisdom to after Ages but endanger'd all at Present for Alexander the Great c. The next Story is of the King of Spain who when upon a Progress he enters Biscay is pleased to ride with one Leg naked and above all to take care that there be not any Bishop in his Retinue From hence be advised O Kings whenever you take a Pilgrimage for Scotland to travel bare-footed and to take no Bishop in your Retinue as you would avoid a solemn League and a Kirk-rebellion Though if you will yield to stand upon the Stool of Repentance and there suffer Mass John to rate both your self and your royal Ancestors for a Succession of Lowns and Tyrants and acknowledge the sins of your house and your own former ways and give satisfaction to the People of God in both Kingdoms and take all this with Kingly wisdom and meekness they may perhaps present him as the Biscains do the King of Spain with a leather-bag full of Maravides 60. whereof make a Crown but yet withal forbid him to touch it with the end of his Lance. Or if his English Subjects should grow so capricious that nothing will please them but the King must appear ridiculously before them to make them sport and humour them like Children he must be wise and gratifie their Childishness as the King of Spain does the Biscainers lest they grow touchy angry and rebel And as for what you suggest of their Scotch Antipathy to Bishops from thence it is come to pass that they are become the most Barbarous People of all Europe always excepting the afore-excepted the Canibals of the Race of Capons so as that they will not have any Traffick with any other Countreys nor mix with any other People for fear of corrupting their Language and Gentility though that is little better than wild Irish and they little better than Jack-gentlemen And though they have some dark and general Notions of Christianity still remaining among them yet are they since their Picque against Bishops fallen into such rudeness and ignorance that they have scarce any knowledge at all of the particular Articles of their Faith and Precepts of their Religion and so it must be wherever there is no superiour Clergy the poor Parish-priests will in process of time become as ignorant and barbarous as the Common People The next Story is of a Certain Tyrant that demanded subsidies of so many Bushels of Fleas But because you will not or cannot tell us when or where this same Tyrant does or did live nor what his Name is or was I have good reason to suspect either that it is but an idle Story or he some Jack Gentleman Though what you would make of it I cannot devise unless it be that if the King should impose some trivial things and ceremonies as are in your Judgment not worth a Flea and fine or punish the People for Non-payment of such Niceties he had as good be quiet and would get but little by distraining and should be called Tyrant for his pains So that if the King exact Obedience and Uniformity to the establish'd Laws he is worse than the Flea-tyrant seeing the Non-conformists cannot pay it in Conscience and seeing withal they desire no Alteration but what is so far from doing us any harm that it would only make us better The next is a Story of a certain Queen that being desired to give a Town-scal sat down naked on the Snow and left them that Impression and other Town-seal could they get none for their hearts if they would be content with that well and good she would part with no other and though it caused no disturbance yet Kings do not approve the Example But if it caused no disturbance the Story might have been spared But how come you to know that Kings do not approve of the Example that you dare thus confidently publish their Opinion when I dare say you cannot name two Kings that ever heard the story Will you never learn Modesty But why do you not tell us the Name of this Queen and City and Countrey It could not be the Queen of the Amazons because her whole Territorie as Travellers that have been there tell me lies within the Tropicks and just under the Equinoctial and there they tell me too it never snows So that I doubt it must be the Queen that reigns in Terra incognita Dowager to the Tyrant that has his subsidys paid him in Fleas by the Bushel measured to him in good Tale by Jack Gentleman But whoever she was or where-ever she lived the Politick Emprovement of her story runs thus There was a certain German Princess bold Bettrice by name that being either mad or maudlin played a sluttish Trick somewhere before the worshipful Mr. Mayor and his Brethren and though their Worships were not so implacably offended at her Majesties rudeness as presently to pass a Vote of common Council for taking up Arms to revenge the Affront so that there followed no disturbance in the State from the extravagance of the frolick yet Kings that never heard of it do not as they have told you their minds approve of the Example But rather take it for a warning to behave themselves mannerly and modestly before their Subjects Though I cannot see why they should be so much deterr'd from it by this Example when no harm that we read of ensued upon this freakish use of her Prerogative But had the Consequences proved never so fatal I am apt to think that Kings though you had not
a truth that it is plainly ratified by the unanimous consent of all mankind Nay when a man has demonstrated its certainty from that unavoidable influence that Religion alwayes has upon the peace of Kingdomes and the interests of Government and from those intolerable mischiefs that must follow upon its exemption from the Civil Power from the natural tendency of Enthusiasm and Superstition to publick disturbance from the boldness and insolence of Fanatique Zeal from the nature and original of Government from the practice and prescription of all Ages and from all the topicks of Reason and Experience and when he has stated and confined its exercise within easie and discernable bounds and has prevented all cavils and pretences of dislike unless only such as dash as fiercely upon the very foundations of all Civil as well as Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction After all this pains is it not a sad thing to see all blown up with meer confidence and presumption and if a bold man will but say Tush 't is false without any proof or reason for his dislike away it all flys in fumo I have insisted the longer upon this because as it is the Grand Thesis of my Books so it is the first Essay of your courage that by this first Specimen of your Wit the World may take a true scantling of your parts and abilities But having thus nimbly dispatch'd this general Thesis you proceed to your particular Exceptions where you summ up your Charge in Six Heads which you sometimes entitle Playes sometimes Hypotheses sometimes Aphorisms and why not Plots and Scenes and Walks and under-walks c The first is the Unlimited Magistrate or as you eloquently express it pag. 246. his unhoopable Jurisdiction A Metaphor taken from a Tub I suppose because you find Power in your Book of Apothegms compared to liquor for a certain Reason known to every body though no body has exprest it so happily as your self viz. because if it be infinitely diffused or extended it becomes impotency even as a streight line continued grows a circle I will leave it to the Mathematicians to consider how it is possible for a streight line to become a circle by being infinitely streight But however for this reason it is necessary to hoop up the Authority of Princes lest they too soon weaken themselves by too great a leakage of their Power so that methinks according to your notion there is nothing so patly emblematical of Soveraign Princes as Dufoy in his Tub or a Pig under a washbole and if you would define them suitably to the conceit they are nothing else but so many vessels of Authority some Kinderkins some Hogsheads and some Tuns according to the circuit or hoop of their Government Though as you and your Puritan Coopers or as Mar-prelate words it Tub-trimmers have been pleased to contract their Power all the Empire in the world might easily be contained in a pipkin or a quart pot and he would pay dear for it that should purchase the Kings Supremacy at the price of a jug of Ale For when you have once exempted Conscience out of the circle of humane Laws the greatest and most absolute Monarchs upon earth will be reduced to as scant a measure of Authority as your Mock-kings of Brentford in that there is nothing in humane nature directly liable to their Obligation but only Conscience and therefore if that must be let loose from the commands of Superiours nothing else can bind them So wretchedly are such bunglers as you wont to talk that only suck in and then pour out your phrases by rote and at random and because some of the Ancients have sometimes discoursed of Conscience in Metaphorical and loose expressions as they do of all things else calling it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Domestick God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Guardian Angel c. you must by all means take them in the literal sense and discourse of Conscience as if it were some little Spirit or Puppet Intelligence within you distinct from your selves so that though you are His Majesties most humble and loyal Subjects yet as for your dear and tender Consciences you must have them excused by the Laws of Hospitality that is to say you owe him Obedience in all things excepting only those in which he does or can require it for wherever the man is bound to obey his Conscience and only that is bound to obey it being the only principle in him that is capable of Obligation and therefore if that be absolved from all engagements of Allegiance and all tyes of Duty the case is plain the whole man is at perfect Liberty And all Subjects may huff and rant it to their Princes teeth as well as your proud Almanzor Obey'd as Soveraign by thy Subjects be But know that I alone am King of me You see then there is no remedy but Conscience you must submit to the Jurisdiction of your Prince if you will submit your selves Yes but you would not have it unlimited and unhoopable as I have stated it But Sir give me leave to tell you that though it should be unlimited it does not at all follow that it would be unhoopable because it would be as you inform us like a streight line continued into a circle Now I will maintain it against all the Mathematicians in Europe Asia and Africa and the Terra Incognita of Geneva too you must bear with me for in some cases I cannot avoid this confidence that all circles as well as all other figures how big soever are hoopable things But for all my jesting my own words are upon Record where I have vested every Supreme Magistrate with an universal and unlimited Power and uncontroulable in the Government of Religion that is to say say you over mens Consciences and that is to say say I that some mens Consciences are concern'd in nothing but matters of Religion Well seeing you are content to give Macedo for a finisht and burnisht piece of modesty now then welfare J. O. for a modest thing for he had the Grace to load me with this Calumny before you but then he had the Grace to take his Answer too And it is possible though it is scarce credible that he might stumble into such an horrid mistake through haste and inadvertency for you know he alwayes writes post But what a Coloss of Brass are you that after I have given him such humbling and convictive rebuke for it persist so obstinately in the very same tract of forgery and falsification The Answer I gave him was easie enough for your understanding as meek as it is viz. That in that Paragraph where I asserted the Supreme Government of every Common-wealth to be Universal Absolute and Uncontroulable in all affairs whatsoever that concern the Interests of mankind and the ends of Government it was only in opposition to the pretences of a distinct Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction here on earth For having first asserted the
and yours to demand it and whether he give it or give it not as he sees it most convenient for the ends of Government concerns neither Me nor my Writings seeing in both he exercises that Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction that I have asserted to be inherent in the Supreme Power At least you see what reason I had to discourse of the Kings Power rather than the Churches because that was the only Principle you endeavour'd to batter down and if once you could but tye up the Secular Arm you valued not the strokes of the Spiritual Rod so that had I opposed the Power of the Church to your attempts of Anarchy it had been as wisely design'd as to send forth a party of Church-men to encounter a Brigade of Horse with their Spiritual Weapons But because I see you are resolved not to spare for laying on load enough and have the confidence to impeach or suspect a man of any thing that is odious if he do not expresly protest against it and because some other men that I have more reason to satisfie than your self have fallen into the same suspicion of Erastianism take this short and plain account of the whole business for the prevention of future mistakes Religion then has a twofold End either as it relates to the affairs of this present life or of that which is to come and so is enforced with a twofold Jurisdiction or Power of Coaction suitable to its respective ends Now its design in reference to this present world is the peace of Societies and the security of Government and therefore it must be enforced by such sanctions as are proper to the attainment of that end and those are secular rewards and punishments so that this being the Office of the Civil Magistrate or as you word it according to that deep respect you profess to Princes the trade of Kings to provide for the safety or welfare of the Common-wealth all his Jurisdiction must be temporal and backt only by external inflictions as suited only to the ends of his Authority His Power then over Religion is of a Political Nature and is intended to the same purpose as his Power over all other affairs of State i. e. the publique peace and prosperity and therefore need only be exercised in the same way of Jurisdiction and this is that Authority that I have all along asserted to be the natural and unalienable Right of all Sovereign Princes But then secondly its design in reference to the world to come is purely spiritual and relates only to the welfare of the Souls of men hereafter and therefore is to be prosecuted by such enforcements as are apt to govern Souls without laying restraints upon their bodies Now the only sanctions proper in this case are the rewards and punishments of another life and this is the power of the Ecclesiastick State Authoritatively to declare the Laws of God to the People and to enforce their obedience to them from the threatnings and promises of the Gospel And to this purpose did our blessed Saviour depute the Apostolical order or succession of Apostles to superintend the Affairs of his Holy Catholique Church it is the right of their Office and Commission to consult advise and determine in all disputes that concern the Government and the welfare of all Christian Assemblies and their Decrees are obligatory upon the Consciences of men by vertue of their own proper Authority and under their own proper penalties For as all their Power is meerly spiritual so are all the Sanctions of their Laws and therefore though they cannot by vertue of their own inherent Jurisdiction punish the disobedient with Civil and Secular inflictions yet may they require and demand obedience to their constitutions under pain of the Divine displeasure and the lash of the Apostolical Rod and their sentence when regularly passed upon refractory offenders is valid and terrible as a decree of heaven and if there be any truth or sense in our Saviours words to the Colledge of Apostles that whatsoever they shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven their Censures shall be approved and ratified by the judgement of the Almighty And that man deserves the wrath of God that is want only rebellious and incorrigible to the soft and gentle discipline of his Church this is such a desperate and malicious peevishness that it does of it self consign a man up to final contumacy and utter impenitence He is too stubborn and too impudent to be reclaim'd that dares rashly bid defiance to the wisdom and authority of his ghostly guides and governours but when the exterminating sentence is passed upon the Offender it smites like the sword of an Angel it throws him out of the Church and the ordinary capacities of Mercy and delivers him up to the wrath and judgment of God And this is no more than what is necessary to the very Being and Preservation of all Society in that Society cannot subsist without Order nor Order without Authority nor Authority without a Power of requiring and enforcing Obedience and therefore if our Saviour have founded a Church in the world and does design its continuance to the end of it it is necessary he should provide for its Preservation by delegating some peculiar persons to govern and guide the Society by Laws and Penalties otherwise his Church were no better than a wild and ungovernable Rabble that only meet together by chance or by humour and are under no enforcements of orderly and peaceable behaviour And this would be a worthy representation of the Church of Christ that it is only a Rout of rude People without Law or Government But as it is necessary that Ecclesiastical Affairs should be govern'd so is it that this should be done by Ecclesiastical persons whose profession and peculiar employment it is to study and understand those matters and 't is but reasonable to relye upon their judgement who ought to be presumed best skill'd in the nature of the thing it is no more than what common prudence directs to in all other affairs of life to consult and trust every man in his own profession we do not apply our selves to Physicians for the settlement of our Estates nor to Lawyers for the preservation and recovery of our healths But men are to be entrusted and employed with regard to their own proper skill and office and therefore though we should set aside the express Authority of our Saviours commission to the Apostles and their Successours for the perpetual Government of his Church the very rules of common prudence will cast the management of Ecclesiastical matters upon Ecclesiastical persons and this is so avowed a principle among mankind that the Jurisdiction proper to the Church was never yet invaded by any Laicks till t'other day the Tradesmen and Burgers of the Corporation of Geneva banish'd their Prince and Bishop and then took the Government both of Church and State into their own hands and seated the Power of the
Keys in Mr. Mayor and the Town-Clerk and issued out Excommunications under the Town Seal and every Fisherman upon the Lake Lemane if he were a Livery man of the City immediately became an Apostle and the Spirit of Infallibility forsook the whole Order of Church-men and setled upon every illiterate Mechanick that had a bold Face and a loose Tongue And with what Apostolical Wisdome and Gravity they made Religion it self ridiculous Mr. Calvin himself has inform'd us particularly in the cases of Bertileir and Perin who were absolved from the Sentence of Excommunication by the Common-Council and under the Town-Seal And 't is observable that those States that have made bold to despise or disregard the Power of the Clergy have always first prostituted the Revenues of the Church to the worst of men and in a little time the Government of it to the Scorn and Contempt of the Common Rabble And therefore all wise and pious Princes have ever chosen to govern Religion by the Counsel and Assistance of their Clergy and to be determined in Enquiries of Faith by their Decrees and Declarations for though all Power of External Coercion be vested in the Civil Magistrate yet that of teaching and declaring the Law of God is the Right and Office of Ecclesiasticks so that though they cannot force Princes to confirm and ratifie their Decrees yet may Princes be obliged by Vertue of an Higher Authority by regard to Piety and Religion by the Order and Decency of things to have reference to their Judgments though if they will not it is not in the Power of the Church to call them to an account for their Proceedings as the men of Rome and Geneva talk That shall be demanded at an higher Judicature they can only declare and discharge their Duty and leave the pursuance of their Cause to the Judgment of God For in all Affairs whatsoever capable of External Cognizance the Supreme Civil Power must and will over-rule this is absolutely necessary to the Order and Preservation of Government and the World must be govern'd as they will or not be govern'd at all And thus have I briefly proved that the Clergy must be vested with some Power peculiar to themselves both from the Institution of Christ and the nature of Society for as much as the Constitution of the Church as such is distinct from that of the Civil State so that all Christians are obliged to the Visible Profession of the Name of Christ not only without the leave but against the Edicts of the Supreme Authority of Kingdomes and Common-wealths The next thing to be consider'd against Erastus is that their Office is not merely declarative or ministerial but carries proper jurisdiction in all the Acts and Exercises of its Power and enforces all its Decrees by Penalties and Inflictions and wherever we find Coercion there is all that can be required to the Nature and Exercise of Jurisdiction that is nothing else but a Power of Imposing Laws and Inflicting Punishments and whoever has a Right to both these Acts of Government has all that Authority that is proper to Empire and Dominion and whatsoever Privileges and Prerogatives of absolute Sovereignty we can imagine they are all reducible to one of these swo Heads either a Power of requiring Obedience to its Commands or of punishing Disobedience by its Penalties and both these are apparently included in the Priestly Office that consists of two parts first the Authoritative Power of Preaching whereby they are enabled to declare Divine Laws under Penalty of the Divine Displeasure and this is proper Legislation and is declared to be so in his Original Commission granted by our Saviour to his Apostles and their Successours to the End of the World in that he sent them as his Father sent him to teach or disciple all Nations whereby he derived upon them the same Power that himself was furnisht with from above to pursue the same ends so that if he himself were entrusted with any proper Jurisdiction he has conveyed and imparted the same to the Apostolical Office and Order and that he was so is an unquestionable and granted Case on all sides and therefore he himself founds the Validity of their Commission upon the Right of his Power All Power in Heaven and Earth says he is given me of my Father therefore go c. I am now enthroned Sovereign Lord of the whole Creation and the Exercise of all my Fathers Power is entrusted to my Management and therefore in the first place I appoint and Authorize you and your Successors in my Name and by Vertue of my Supremacy to take care of the Guidance and Instruction of my Church this is the Office and Power to which you are deputed next and immediately under my self in the Discharge and Execution whereof I engage all my Power to be immediately assistant to you to the end of the World So that it is plain that their Power of Preaching and Declaring the Laws of the Gospel is properly Authoritative and of the same Nature though of a Subordinate force with our Saviours own Dominion over Mankind and all Men by Vertue of his Command and his Commission are bound to give Obedience to their Doctrines in the right and Faithful Discharge of their Trusts as to the Authorized Stewards of his Mysteries And then as for the other part of the Power of the Keys or Church Censures it is as full of Jurisdiction as any Secular Power whatsoever it judges gives Sentence and inflicts Punishment in Criminal Causes and though they do not execute their own Judgment but leave it to the Divine Justice yet where God has promised to abett their Censures by his immediate Power 't is the same thing as to all the purposes of Government as if it were done by the stroke of their own Arm and though they did but only minister to the Divine Judgement as to these immediate Inflictions of Heaven yet the sentence it self is a severe instance and exercise of Coercive Jurisdiction it cuts a man off from all the Advantages of the Communion of Saints and of our Saviours Incarnation and that is a Capital Execution and more affrightful to any man that makes Profession of the Christian Faith than all the Rods and Axes and Pillories and Whipping-posts of the Secular Power And as their Authority carries in it true and proper Jurisdiction so is it in its Kind Supreme Universal and Uncontroulable and extends to all Nations Ages and Conditions Kings and Princes are subject to the Spiritual Authority of their Doctrines they have Souls to be conducted to Heaven as well as their Subjects and therefore stand as much in need of Spiritual Guides and Instructors for if Christ have intrusted the Spiritual Government of his Church in the hands of his Apostles and their Successors then all its Members of what Rank and Quality soever are regularly to make enquiries and receive determinations of Conscience from their Mouths and when the
an Audience I might easily have requited this civility of yours with twenty more symbolizing nick-names but that I both loath and scorn such a Porterly rudeness For you that have observed the management of Arguments in the street cannot but have taken notice that the Disputants never come to throwing of dirt or calling of names till they are basiled and have nothing else to reply And if you had told me all along that I disputed with a dirty Face it had been full as Tuant But if I would revenge my self it is not in my Power for I cannot now stick upon you any name that is more ridiculous than you have made your own that is already among all ingenious persons become the proverbial term for a dull and clownish pretender to Wit And thus having been all this while hovering about the Brink you at last venture to commit your self to the dangerous depths of my Discourse But after your diving come up only with a vinegar face and a dirty mouth you look sowrly on Bishop Bramhal and do by no means like his Character because it is forsooth too much for one man and envy will not down with it and so to vindicate him from my Scurvy Commendation you have very piously composed 23 pages of studious and elaborate periods to prove him no better than an undertaking crack-brain'd Knave This is the very syrrop of Additional Civility Had the Bishop been the Dignitary of Lincoln you could not have treated him more Scurvily But of your Piety to his Ashes we have had proof enough already and so you proceed to do the same office of kindness to Mr. Calvins Memory and by as scurvy a commendation vindicate him from my scurvy Reproaches in that whatever I have said to his disparagement is incredible for two Reasons 1. Because I do not say true and 2. Because I lye For Mr. Calvin was an honest Divine and spoke contemptuously of the Liturgy of the Church of England and those that will may charitably suppose he repented of it on his death-bed though for your part you your self know nothing of it To this you might have added that he scorn'd to call any body old Elsibeth so long after she was dead no though he too were an implacable Divine yet he was more a Gentleman than so and had the courage to call another Queen of England Proserpine in the time of her own Reign But the greatest thing that can be said in Mr. Calvins praise is that he was the first founder of that Modern Orthodox Doctrine That it is the duty of Subjects to moderate the licentiousness of Kings and to punish or depose them when they play the Tyrants or wantonly insult on the Common People And now pray Sir tell me by the way what Bishops they are that you have the honour to be acquainted with that differ in nothing from Calvin but in point of Episcopacy But thus Calvin in his Epistle to Cardinal Sadolet as I remember justifies the Mayor and Bailiffs of Geneva that had wrested the Supreme Authority of the City out of their Bishops hands and vested it in their Common Counsel partly because he had abused his Power into Tyranny and partly because he had no other Title but of ancient Usurpation and though by vertue of that he had long claim'd both the Civil and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction yet it was at first extorted from the Lawful Magistrate i. e. the Syndicks and therefore it could be no theft or felony in them to rob him of their own goods A plea if admitted of that would as easily overthrow all the establisht Governments in the world as the Bishoprick of Geneva seeing there is no Kingdom that cannot within the compass of some few Ages pretend defrauded Titles against the present Prince as well as Geneva and this pretence is so unavoidable that it is not in the Power of any establisht Government to secure it self against it and therefore it has alwayes past for a Maxime in all Laws that long possession or ancient prescription gives a sufficient Title of Right and though possibly it is not in it self sufficient to vest a man in a true and real claim yet it is enough that no man after so many years can set up any opposite Pretence without manifest violence and intrusion For supposing his Ancestours to have been once seated in the Throne yet if they have been displaced whether justly or unjustly time out of mind and almost memory too that wears out their Right especially when it rarely if it ever happens but that if Usurpation may be objected against the present Possessour the same exception might as justly have been put in against the former Title so that if Prescription be not sufficient to create a Right yet it is at least a sufficient Barr against all Intrusion otherwise there can never be any fence against this Principle of Rebellion And this is enough to secure the peace of the world and the settlement of all establish'd Governments and Common-wealths But however upon this Principle that is ready to serve alike in all Causes he was no sooner establish'd in his Divinity Throne but he tampers and prevails with the People to abjure all Allegiance to their Bishop for the time to come and swear obedience and submission to his own Discipline But the Signiory of Geneva was too narrow a Diocess for his aspiring mind and he had no sooner setled his own new model of Government but he bestirs himself to obtrude it upon all Churches of the Reformation Hungary Transylvania Bohemia Poland Savoy France the Netherlands Denmark Sweden Scotland and the Church of England And though he at first lookt upon it as a project of his own devising and acknowledged it had not any Authority from the pattern or prescript of the Primitive Church and begg'd its settlement at Geneva only as an expedient for the present exigence till they might have leisure and opportunity of agreeing upon some more Apostolical Plat-form yet no sooner had he brought the Town and Territory of Geneva under his yoak and establisht his Throne there by swearing all the Citizens to a submission to his Doctrine and Discipline but he began to think as all prosperous and ambitious Princes are wont to do of enlargement of Empire and labours might and main to impose his Discipline upon all Churches of the Reformation and nothing will satisfie Him and his Followers unless all Christendom will embrace the device of his warm brain upon pain of the Divine displeasure and under an obligation of Divine Right And to this purpose he sends his Dispatches and makes his Applications to all the Courts in Europe and if any Prince entertain'd any thoughts of Reformation he forsooth must immediately thrust himself into his Privy Council and if they were not entirely obedient to his Counsels he either rejected them as people that were not in good earnest or despised them as people that understood not the
with the Most high You know that he never intended Church-men for Ministers of State You know what he intends away you wretch if you have any spark of Modesty unextinguish'd retire into your Closet and lament and pine away for these desperate Blasphemies The Ruac Hakodesh dwell in such a distemper'd and polluted mind as yours it may as soon unite it self to a Swine Fatuos hujus terrae filios quod attinet says a Jewish Zealot non magis nostro judicio prophetare possunt quà m asinus rana Asses and Tod-poles may as soon expect the Impressions of the divine Spirit as such dunces and sots as you And yet you do not think it enough to pretend acquaintance with the present thoughts and intentions of the Almighty but you must be betraying his future designs and blabbing what shall be hereafter Thus you dare divine augurate and presage mutual felicity to his Majesty and the Kingdome from his gracious Declaration of Indulgence and that what ever humane Accident may happen they will they can never have cause to repent this action or its Consequences Amen! I wish you a true Prophet with all my soul nothing recreates me so much as to hear of the prosperity of my King and Countrey But if you should ever live to see this Declaration repented of would it not be a sad rebuke to your confidence I am sure if it were my case I should never be able to lift up my head after it And though we have no Laws against counterfeit Prophets because it is rare for any man in these Northern Climates to arrive to that degree of Impudence and Vanity yet among the Jewish Zealots they were punish'd more severely than notorious Rogues and Cut-throats And if you do not pretend to some particular ensurance from Heaven you add rashness to your impudence to be thus confident in your predictions of future Contingencies For you your own self know how uncertain the success of the best Contrivances may be for after all things may be laid with all the depth of humane Policy there happens lightly some uggly little contrary Accident from some quarter or other of Heaven that frustrates and renders all ridiculous I should have been so modest as to say successess for wise Counsels are not rendred foolish by disappointment Now was it not possible that some of these little ugly Accidents that might or might not be fore-seen might spoil all the success of so wise and so well-laid an Action And therefore I say it again it was not discreetly done to ensure success so boldly to so contingent an Event There are thousands of little and great Accidents that it is not possible for humane Wisdome to prevent that might frustrate all its good consequences and there are some that my slender judgment could easily have foreseen and fore-told It was possible that the Non-conformists might have made ill use of his Majesties goodness and condescention to embolden their Party to more sawcy and insolent demands This I say is possible for all the King has so obliged them by his late mercy that if there were any such Knave there can be no such fool among them that would ever lift up an ill thought against him I know as well as you that there is not in the World a more grateful and good natur'd Generation of men in all other cases but the case of Loyalty and of the Race of Capons So that still I say it is possible they may forget his kindness and their own Duty and that they will not I think your word is no competent security For you have pass'd it but once before and that with your hand upon your heart and that was when you protested upon your Honour and Integrity your own reading of the fifth Epistle to Marcellinus Beside as it is possible for the Non-conformists to be unmindful of their Duty and their Obligation to the King so is it you know possible too for the Members of Parliament to be some time or other so trinkled that nothing shall put them in good humour but cancelling this Declaration or any other Act of Indulgence to the Non-conformists And then that though no other sinister Accident should intervene may for all your Prophecie prove an occasion of some Repentance You know how much I might here insult over your baffled Impudence but this is enough to let you see how unadvised a thing it is to be too positive in Predictions And now to return to the Clergy have you not made an admirable speech to have them thrust out from all Offices in the State because they are unqualified for them by their Education and that because by their Education they have peculiar advantages to make the best Ministers of State were it not that God that has prepared and qualified them above all other men for that employment will not bless them in it because he never intended them for it For a lucky hand at Contradictions you are the man And had you not thus demonstratively baffled your own malice I might have confuted your rash censures of all Ages by the experience and opinion of most Ages and shewn that as none are better qualified for State-Affairs than Church-men so none have acquitted themselves with greater Art or Success and that things have rarely miscarried but when their Counsels have not been effectually followed as I shall shew anon in the Cases of Cardinal Granvile and Arch-Bishop Laud though when all is done you know the wisdome of a design is not to be measured by its success But your insolence is not worth so much Correction Only look upon our next Neighbours o're-sea and tell me to whose conduct that King and Kingdom owe their present flourishing condition Who were they that brought it back from the very point of dissolution to that Settlement and Grandeur it now enjoys Were they not Church-men and did they not do it by such Counsels as you think perhaps as the case stood were precipitate and sanguinary viz. when the Nation was divided into two powerful Factions by resolving to break one to pieces for ever that so they might not be embroil'd in Civil Wars upon every slight occasion whenever the People grew wanton or any Great Man hapned to be out of favour whereas the former Statesmen that were for the trinkling Policy entail'd an hereditary Civil War upon the Kingdom from Generation to Generation even as I remember J. O. sayes the Lord had sworn a great while ago to destroy the Amalekites and the Kerns But having taken upon your self the Office of Vicar General to the Clergy of all Ages and all Nations Hungary Transylvania Bohemia c. you are not content to turn them all out of publique employment in the State but you would wheedle them out of all the comforts and advantages of life and perswade them to strip themselves of all the secular conveniencies wherewith the wisdome and the bounty of former Ages have
length approved and publish'd special care being taken I still relye upon the Kings word that the small alterations of it in which it differs from the English Liturgy should be such as might best comply with the minds and dispositions of the Scots and prevent all grounds of fear or jealousie and chiefly to avoid all misconstruction that some Factious Spirits would have put upon it as a badge of that Churches dependance upon the Church of England if it had been the same with the English Service-Book totidem verbis And this was the Liturgy that no doubt might be an occasion of exasperating the Bramble-Faction that were already ripe for Rebellion and resolved to improve all disgusts whether just or unjust real or pretended to authorize their disloyal resolutions But to let you into the main Mystery the circumstance that gave life and vigour to their designs was the Act of Revocation that it seems hapned to be set on foot not long before by which the King intended the Revocation of those Lands of the Church that in the minority of King James the Great Men had to the prejudice of the Crown seized on and shared among themselves to which the Occupants having no other Title beside impudent Sacriledge and Usurpation the King thought he might justly challenge them for his own Use at least from the present Possessours A course warranted as himself still tells me both by the Laws of that Kingdom and the frequent examples of his Royal Progenitors And this you may believe was provocation enough to put them into an uproar and the People were perswaded as I am informed by a good Authour from the mouth of a Noble Lord that the intendment of the Act was to revoke all former Laws for suppressing of Popery and setling the Reformed Religion in the Kirk of Scotland and this raised such Tumults that the King was forced to desist from the prosecution of the Act under that Title and to carry it on though with much opposition under another Name of a Commission of Surrendries a thing so offensive to the stomachs of the Lords of the Erection as the Lay Impropriators were there call'd that they could never digest it but first according to the usual method vented their choler in Libels and then in Rebellion For though they were satisfied for their Tythes to the utmost farthing according to the Rates of purchasing in that Kingdom yet this fretted them that they saw themselves rob'd of the dependence of the Clergy and Laity upon their Power and of that Sovereign Command and Superiority which they had by the tye of Tythes exercised over them several wayes as the King will inform you And this was the reason of State beside the ease of his Subjects that moved his Majesty to issue out this Commission For before the greatest part of the Laity were Vassals by Tenure and all the Clergy slaves by custom to the Nobility And therefore they immediately set themselves to work the People to a disaffection to his Majesties Government and to perswade them that these were the contrivances of the Bishops and that under them there were dangerous innovations design'd upon their Religion So that 't is plain as the King observes that before either the Service-Book or Book of Canons so tragically now exclaimed against were thought on the seeds of Sedition and discontent were sowen by the Contrivers of the Covenant first upon the occasion of the Revocation next upon occasion of the Commission of Surrenders and lastly upon occasion of his denying honours to some of them at his last being in that Kingdom of which he has there given a large and particular account and this brought forth first private traducing his Government and then publique Libels And now by this time Sedition was grown so ripe and ready to seed that it wanted nothing to thrust it out and make it shoot forth into an open Rebellion but some fair and specious pretence They could not yet compass the Cloak of Religion whereby to siel the eyes and muffle the face of the Multitude for by none of the three former Occasions could they so much as pretend that Religion was endanger'd or impeach'd But so soon as they got but the least hint of any thing which they thought might admit a misconstruction that way they lost no time but took Occasion by the fore-lock knowing that either that or nothing would first facilitate and then perfect their designs Now the occasion they took of fetching Religion within the reach of their Pretences was the new Liturgy And this produced I still relye upon the Kings Authority the late wicked Covenant or pretended Holy League Though following the pattern of all other Seditions they did pretend Religion yet nothing was less intended by them For when they had sayes the Royal Understanding received from us full satisfaction to all their desires expressed in any of their Petitions Remonstrances or Declarations their persisting for all that in their tumultuous and rebellious Courses doth demonstrate to the world their weariness of being govern'd by us and our Laws by our Council and other Officers put in Authority by and under us and an itching humour of having that our Kingdom governed by a Table of their own devising consisting of Persons of their own choosing A Plot of which they are very fond being an abortion of their own brain but which indeed is such a monstrous birth as the like has not yet been born or bred in any Kingdom Jewish Christian or Pagan Of which he afterwards describes a particular Plat-form as it was put in practice at Edinburgh And thus observe it you shall still find a Common-wealth and Sacriledge at the bottom of all Rebellion that appears under the mask and pretence of Religion And it was these men that raised the Tumults and trinkled the Rabble into all those disorderly courses that by degrees brought forth the Covenant and the War And it is pretty observable that the first Remonstrance at Edinburgh was made in the name of the Men Women Children and Servants who being urged with the Book of Service and having consider'd the same the Children as well as the rest humbly shew c. These were followed by the Burghours and the Burghours by the Gentry and Nobility And so at length did the Scotch-war break out in which the Liturgy was no more concern'd than the Children of Edinburgh whose tender Consciences it seems were offended at it though in truth they deserved to be soundly whipt for beginning a War for the Cause when the Cause was too good to be fought for And now consider whether you had not been better advised to let this business of the War alone when you can no other way bring your Clients off with reputation unless the King will be content to suffer Himself his Royal Father and his Loyal Subjects to be impeach'd of their Rebellion For the blame of it must light somewhere and therefore if the
a Prince cannot take money for any place in Court without Tyranny who drains his Peoples purses to no other end than to maintain a vain and wastful Prodigality and who spends his time in nothing more than either the rifling of the Subjects houses the deflouring of their Wives and Daughters the slaughter of the innocent c. And though it be alwayes implanted in the Souls of men not more to love and reverence a just and vertuous Prince than to abominate and detest an ungodly Tyrant Yet even in this case he requires Duty and Obedience from the Subject to such a Magistrate as the Minister of God And to this purpose Mr. Speaker he has admirably explain'd all Texts both of the Old and New Testament in favour of the Prerogative and Supremacy of Kings But then Mr. Speaker we must understand both him and our selves aright that when he restrains us from executing vengeance upon Licentious Princes this must still be understood of private persons For if there be now any popular Officers and such he knows there are every where without an if ordained to moderate the licentiousness of Kings such as the Ephori of old set up against the Kings of Sparta the Tribunes of the People against the Roman Consuls and the Demarchi against the Athenian Senate and with which Power perhaps as the world now goes and yet he knows the Christian world now to go so every where without a perhaps the three Estates are furnished in each several Kingdom when they are solemnly assembled So far am I from hindring them from putting a restraint on the exorbitant Power of Kings as their Office binds them that I conceive them guilty rather of a perfidious dissimulation if they connive at Kings when they play the Tyrants or wantonly insult over the Common People in that they basely betray the Subjects Liberty of which they know they were made Guardians by Gods own Ordinance and appointment This Mr. Speaker is our Case we are entrusted by God and our Countrey with the Peoples Liberties and we must give an account to both for the faithful discharge of our Trust. And wherever the fault lyes I dare not pretend to know but this I do know that we have God be praised as Gracious a Prince as ever wielded Scepter and yet I know not by what means though perhaps I do know his whole Reign is deform'd with Tyranny and Absolute Government Mr. Speaker it concerns us to look about us our Lives and Liberties and what is dearer our Religion lyes at stake let us then take Courage and whatever it cost see this licentiousness curb'd and the force of Law restored No doubt but the King will be advised by his great Council or if he will not it is our duty to snatch him from a Precipice however we must not be so slothful and perfidious as to betray the Subjects Liberty of which we know we were made Guardians by Gods own Ordinance and appointment And thus had they got out of Mr. Calvin a Jus Divinum for the Long-Parliament Rebellion and under this pretence of being Trustees for the Peoples Liberties they plainly usurp'd the Kings Supremacy Nothing must be done in the Government of the State without their Advice and Approbation and any proceedings that they disliked and yet they disliked all that were done without them became immediately illegal and till they are redress'd all Government must be laid aside and if the King hapned at any time to do any thing contrary to some idle precedent of Sparta and Lycurgus it was a manifest subversion of the Fundamental Laws And thus by this fooling and the help of Calvin came they at length to challenge the Sovereignty to themselves and to set the Crown upon their own heads that is as we all know to suffer the King to do nothing without them and to assume a Power to themselves as oft as they judged it expedient of doing every thing without the King and this made these Pedants as troublesome in their demands as were the Rebels by design till they had challenged every branch of the Regal Power Both these and the Zealots were excellent Tools of Sedition but they were no more than Tools the Master-workmen were the cunning and reserved Members of the Republican Faction For it is plain enough that all things were govern'd in both Houses by a Cabal of such as had from the beginning as appeared afterwards a design upon the alteration of the Government And these men were able upon all occasions to form themselves into all shapes and all parties to drive on their designs and it was not so much their business to make Speeches and complain of Grievances as to perplex and obstruct the Kings Affairs and by any artifices make him obnoxious to their Power and when that was grown great enough they understood their own work Their usual trick was to appear alwayes with the first to comply with the Kings designs and desires and when by that means they had brought him into straits they still left him v. g. they were perpetually putting the King upon expensive wars by great promises of assistance and accordingly seem'd alwayes the most chearful and liberal voters of Taxes but yet they were sure to raise so many disputes and difficulties about other matters that the supply was either altogether diverted or came alwayes too late This was the particular unkindness that the King complain'd of in all his Parliaments But by leaving him thus perpetually in the lurch they forced him at length to make use of some extraordinary courses and then they presently made their advantage of that to raise their clamours and complaints of Arbitrary Government and nothing could stop their mouths till his Majesty had not only done severe penance but made ample Restitution by some special Act of Grace whereby he granted away some considerable Branch of his Power And so they would for a while receive him into favour again and then anon play the same game over again and by this means they at length grew so much upon him and gain'd so many advantages of him till perceiving their own strength they command him to resign his Regal Power into their hands or if he refuse to stand upon his own guard and defend himself as he can by force of Arms. And that was the contest of the war who should wear the Crown He or They. It was these men chiefly that invited back the Kirk-Army after they had agreed to Articles of Pacification and return'd home satisfied with the Kings Concessions and the abolition of Episcopacy that was indeed the pretence of the Covenanters Rebellion but very far from being the end of those men that set them on Their business was only to bring the King under a necessity of calling a Parliament for Money and for that he was to pawn his Crown into their hands and buy supplies at the price of his Sovereignty And it succeeded accordingly for the
King having been at a vast expence in his first Expedition was forced to summon a Parliament for fresh Supplies but they no sooner met than they justified their Dear Brethren as they call'd the Kirk-Rebels and so fall to their old complaints of Grievances and Arbitrary Government and the illegal Proceedings of the Kings Ministers of State and these things they must and will have redress'd before they will take any business of money into consideration and so long baffled the Kings expectations that he having no hope of any Supply from them dissolves them and resolves to cast himself upon the assistance of his better affected Subjects and accordingly finds the greatest part of his Gentry and Nobility so sensible of their own Duty and Loyalty and of those affronts that were put upon his Regal Power by these men in the late and former Parliaments that by their own voluntary Contributions they raised an Army more than sufficient to have reduced the Rebels to obedience But being over-ruled by the advice of some that were alwayes too near to all his Councils and that were no friends to his Prerogative though perhaps they were no enemies to Monarchy he condescends to a Treaty and that concludes as these men would wish in referring the whole Controversie to the decision of a Parliament And this produced the fatal Long-Parliament that chiefly consisted of the most Seditious Members of all his former Parliaments For though the greatest part of the Gentry were loyal and dutiful enough yet it so hapned that the Commonalty had been preached into malecontentedness by the Puritan Preachers they thought no man a Patriot of his Countrey or fit to be trusted in Parliament that was not a profess'd enemy to the Prerogative and that did not oppose Taxes and Tyranny And if any one had been so stubborn as to deserve punishment for Sedition and had been imprisoned or gon to Law with the King for the non-payment of a Sess of twenty or forty shillings that gain'd him the hearts of the whole Countrey and so upon the merit of their sufferings it came to pass that the most eminent Persons of the Presbyterian Faction came to be so generally elected Knights and Burgesses in this as well as all other Parliaments of his Reign but now their discontent was heightned partly by their former just imprisonments partly by that affront that as they supposed was put upon them in the dissolution of the late Parliament And therefore having once again got possession of the House and perceiving the Kings necessities to be greater than ever and withall their own Party to be stronger and more numerous than ever they resolved to appear more boldly than ever and to make something of so great an advantage And so they immediately fall upon accusing the King and his Ministers of all the crimes that could render them odious to the people they charge him with designs of reestablishing the Roman Religion of subverting the fundamental Laws of setting up Arbitrary Government of laying aside all Parliaments with a Thousand other Clamours and Calumnies making use of every Accident to raise matter of Accusation And if you will look into the grand Remonstrance of the state of the Kingdom that was the first Declaration of the War you will find that they imputed all misfortunes whatsoever to the King and his evil Council The loss of the Rochel Fleet the diversion of the War from the West-Indies to the successess attempt upon Cales the Peace with Spain the breach with France the dissolving of former Parliaments for their stubbornness the destruction of the Kings Timber in the Forest of Dean the Monopolies of Sope and Salt the Sale of Nuzances the design of Coyning Brass money the depriving seditious men of the comfort and conversation of their Wives by close Imprisonments Misdemeanours in all Courts of Justice Bribery Extorsion and buying of Offices Suspensions of painful learned and pious Ministers the decay of Trade the loss of Merchants Ships by the Pyrates of Dunkirk with all other good or bad Accidents that befel the Government were imputed 1. To the Jesuited Papists who hate the Laws as the Obstacles of that change and subversion of Religion which they so much long for 2. To the Bishops and the corrupt part of the Clergy who cherish Formality and Superstition as the natural Effects and more probable Supports of their own Ecclesiastical Tyranny and Usurpation 3. To such Counsellours and Courtiers who for private ends engaged themselves to further the Interest of some foreign Princes or States to the prejudice of his Majesty and the State at home Though the Root of all this mischief was a Malignant and pernicious design of subverting the fundamental Laws and Principles of Government upon which the Religion and Justice of this Kingdome are firmly establish'd And then the common Principles by which they moulded and govern'd all their particular Counsels and Actions were 1. To keep up a misunderstanding between the King and his people by their Leasings 2. To keep down the Purity and power of Religion 3. To bring in Arminianism 4. To trinkle the King against his Parliaments Where by the way you may see that you are not the first Authour of your own notions your whole Book is but a short Rehearsal of the Remonstrances Speeches and Declarations of the Rebels But now must all things stand stock still till these and a Thousand grievances more are redress'd his Ministers must be impeached of high Treason and if he expected any comfort from them he must buy it with the blood of his best Subjects and his fastest Friends But you cannot here reasonably expect a compleat account of all their Injustice their Folly their Impudence and their Hypocrisie when the whole World can scarce contein the History of their Wickedness I am sure it can never equal it However it is plain that they were now resolved upon the Rebellion and so made demands accordingly For the summe of all their Messages Remonstrances and Declarations was only to chalenge the Soveraign Power it self and all the parts and branches of the Prerogative They petition'd no more than that the King would be pleased to betray and give up his Friends to their Malice as in the Pique of the five Members that he would deliver up all Castles and Forts and the whole Power of the Militia into their hands That they might have the choosing of all the Lords of his Council and of all great Officers of State the Government and Education of his Children the Power to hang Delinquents as they shall think fit and the liberty of excepting whom they pleased out of the Kings general Pardon and that no Peer be permitted to sit in the house of Peers but by consent of both houses Upon these and the like Terms to which they stuck with an impregnable Obstinacy from first to last they would apply themselves to settle his Revenue and supply his necessities and make him the most glorious
King that ever wielded the English Scepter But otherwise if he should offer to relieve himself by any extra-Parliamentary courses it was a breach of his sworn Trust and a dissolution of the Government and if any of his Subjects obeyed or assisted him it was Treason against the fundamental Laws of the Land This was as much as if they had plainly told him and the King understood them so Sir it is in vain to expect Peace or Money from us unless you will be content to forgo your Crown and Royal Dignity and to resign all your Power into our hands This was right Presbyterian Loyalty and is I hope sufficient to cap your idle stories of Sibthorp Arminianism and the Scotch Liturgy At least I am sure it is after all your Hectoring and Achillizing about the late War in defyance of the Act of Indempnity and Oblivion another brave cast of your Modesty to upbraid my Insolence for summoning in all the World and preaching up nothing but Repentance and so frequently calling for Testimonies signal Marks publick acknowledgments satisfaction recantation c. For as I take it here are sufficient materials and motives for Repentance They are obliged to repent of casting away an hundred thousand Lives only to dethrone the King and erect the Scepter of the Lord Christ a cause that they themselves now confess by deserting it as foolish as that was knavish And this is at least suspicion of guilt enough to oblige men to look about them and reflect seriously whether it may not lye upon their Consciences Nothing crys so loud either for Repentance or Vengeance as Blood it requires the deepest Sorrow and Contrition to wash it off so that if they were at all sensible of their Crime or thought it a Crime at all they would never put us to call for tokens of Repentance they would overdo enough of their own accord in Expiation and by the Frankness and Ingenuity of their Confessions quickly satisfie all the World of the sincerity of their change But when they will not be brought to take any notice of their former practices or to make any acknowledgment of their former Crimes when some of the most serious and upright of them protest their Non conviction of any guilt and declare themselves so well satisfied in all their actings in the War that they cannot nay that they dare not ask God forgiveness and yet they did not think the Cause too good to be fought for When none of them have been so ingenuous as to beg their Princes pardon or to make any promise of better behaviour for the time to come in short when they have given us all the symptoms of hardness of heart and impenitence and yet notwithstanding all this boast the merits of their party and chalenge their Princes favour and indulgence from the great security that he ought to have of their peaceable and loyal demeanour this I think is a very impudent affront both to the Clemency of their Prince and the Ingenuity of Mankind Especially when after they had beheld all the dire consequences of their rebellious Acts and Ordinances they were so far from acknowledging their folly that upon the Restauration of the secluded Members by the General one of the first things they voted was to vote themselves innocent and to lay all the mischief and wickedness of the War upon their murther'd Prince Thus far the Presbyterians and Independents were equally concern'd but that the Presbyterians were no farther concern'd they may thank the Ambition and Treachery of Oliver Cromwel more than their own good intentions They had stript the King of his power they had imprison'd his person and what had they to do more after all the affronts and indignities they had offer'd him than what the Independents did after they had wrested the Supremacy out of their hands For it is certain there was no living for them in safety if ever he whom they had reason to suppose their irreconcileable enemy were restored to his Throne and Soveraign Power and then if they had behaved themselves so that they could not safely trust him that was an unremoveable Bar to his restitution And though it is possible that they never intended to attempt his life yet they carried things so high through the whole Progress of their Rebellion as at least to make it expedient nay necessary for their own preservation and if they had intended it they could scarce have used him more scurvily than they did They caused his own great Seal to be broken and a new one to be made in defyance to his Authority His propositions of Peace and his offers of personal Treaty were often denyed an Ordinance was made if he presumed to come within the line of Communication to secure i. e. seize his person It was voted Treason and death without mercy for any of his Subjects to harbour and conceal him and when Sir Thomas Fairfax was made General the Clause for preservation of his Majesties person was left out of his Commission And in the Scotch Declaration of 46. all their concern and care of the Kings person was only conditional viz. as far as it was consistent with their own designs that is as they word it the Preservation and defence of the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdomes That is as you may see by their propositions that they made as the only terms of Peace if he would resign his Crown and which is worse take the Covenant they would suffer him to live otherwise they were absolved from all Obligations towards his person and for the preservation of his life And when he was fall'n into the hands of the Independents and so in danger enough the question was propounded to the Kirk whether it were lawful for them to assist the King in the recovery of his Kingdome and it was resolved in the Negative and in answer to that Clause in the Covenant that was objected to them for defence of the Kings person they determin'd it was to be understood in defence and safety of the Kingdomes These men no doubt are fit to be trusted that can think to satisfie themselves and the World with such an impudent and ridiculous interpretation of Oaths as this But however they intended to dispose of his person the Rebellion as far as they avowed it put him out of his Throne and setled all the Regal Power which they call'd arbitrary Government upon themselves And for Subjects to take away their Princes Authority by force of Arms is little less impudent and wicked that after that to take away his life Thus far the Presbyterians and Independents were equally guilty and went hand in hand like dear Brethren they both combined to depose the King though when that was done the perfidious Independents did not only shake off their dear brethren but turn'd all their ownweapons upon themselves And thus as they enter'd into Covenant in defence of King and Parliament so did these enter into an
into which you have not precipitated your self with all the Circumstances and Aggravations of an affected Cox-comb And whoever compares your Lectures must conclude Sancho to be much the deeper Politician For the result of all your Instructions to Princes how to govern well is to advise them not to govern at all because the Body is in the power of the mind and the mind in the hand of God so that to punish the body for the mind is to make the Innocent suffer for the Guilty and to punish the mind when it is in the hand of God is to violate the Divine Majesty And now if both the minds and the bodies of his Majesties Subjects are entirely exempt by Divine Right from his Authority what a mighty Emperour was Sancho in comparison to the Kings of England for you know how he served Mr. Doctor Pedro Rezio of Agnero when he would not suffer him to eat his meat at quiet and though his body were in the power of his mind and his mind in the hands of God yet for all that his Highness made bold to lay his Doctorship neck and heels for his Impertinency whereas according to your Measures when the King suffer'd the Law to pass upon Hugh Peters and Colonel Venner he did not only violate his own but the Divine Majesty And though the Cow-keeper declared War point-blank for God himself yet he had his outward Tabernacle fairly suspended by a mere carnal humane Institution for which the judge must expect to give an account at the day of Judgment for violating the Divine Majesty But in truth this solemn and frowning Non-sense is so horribly ridiculous that I am perfectly ashamed to expose it And yet it is the result not only of your own Book but of all the Books of your own Party whilst they make the Conscience subject to God alone and impute all the Actions of the outward man to that inward Principle and then what has the Magistrate to do with any of his Subjects when their bodies are purely in the power of their minds their minds in the power of God There is avast deal more of such wretched stuff that I shall pass by because I perceive every body has wit enough to discern it at first sight by their own natural Sagacity Only one deep Aphorism I cannot omit no more than you can your idle stories because Kings may make use of it for their own advantage viz. that as reasonable men are to be govern'd by reason so are Consciencious men by Conscience What you mean I neither know nor care but this advantage I can make of it for the use of Kings that then his Majesties Conscience if you will allow him any has a Sovereignty over the Consciences of his Subjects and since blashemous Consciences have been conscienciously burnt and rebellious Consciences conscienciously hang'd 't is a powerful Evidence of the Necessity of a Consciencious Government in the Kingdom of Conscience and that his Majesty as he knows best may conscienciously reduce all sturdy Consciences to acquiesce conscienciously in his and the Churches most consciencious Discipline For as he has a royal Understanding and a Gentlemans Memory so has he an imperial and superlative Conscience by virtue whereof he is able to exercise a Consciencious Dominion over ten thousands of his Consciencious little Kings and by virtue of this it was that Hugh Peters being a reasonable man was reasonably hang'd and a consciencious man was conscienciously hang'd and if ever hereafter the Consciences of any Subjects shall drill them into the like consciencious Freaks against the sovereign Conscience that may inflict the same consciencious Punishment upon them by virtue of its consciencious Authority and this I take to be the only Consciencious meaning of these words that Consciencious men are to be dealt with only by Conscience And thus though by your former Maxims you had deposed him from exercising any Authority over his Subjects yet now by this you have reenthroned him in his full Power by making his Conscience King of their Consciences so that it concerns him to look to his Conscience lest he lose his Kingdom in that they will not have their Consciences governed by any thing but Conscience But seeing there is little hopes of perswading his Majesty out of his Government you procede in the next place to prescribe him worshipful Rules and Measures how to manage it discreetly by a preposterous duty and slavish regard to the Will and Insolence of his Subjects Not a word in all your Book of exhortation to them to be obedient all your Advice is thrown away upon Kings to be discreet and to connive and not like the hard-hearted-inflexible-tyrant Clergy exasperate the People to Rebellion by the extravagancy of their just Power but to be so satisfied with having abundance of it as to be content to abate of its exercise by their discretion To condescend for peace sake and the quiet of Mankind to such things as would break a proud heart before it would bend you are all for humbling of Kings not to exact obedience too much to the establish'd Laws lest they require things impossible unnecessary and wanton of their People upon all Occasions to give them good words and humour them like Children to consider the Temper of the Climate the Constitutions of their Bodies and the Antipathies of their Stomachs And if all this will not prevail but his Majesty still prove a stubborn and untractable Pupil he must be taught to reflect upon the histories of former times and consider the Catastrophes of such pragmatical Kings and Governours as would not humour their Subjects like Children nor consider their Infirmities and when they had got a Cold force them to be covered Sir what do you mean by all this Do you not think the King a well-bred Gentleman that you read him these Lectures of Civility as if he were not respectful and mannerly enough to his Subjects If you do not mean mischief why do you speak of it in his time Why stir such an odious seditious impertinent unseasonable discourse Why take this very minute of time but that you have mischief to say no worse in your heart This is plainly written with an evil eye and aim at his Majesty and the measures he has taken of Government For if he be so uncivil as not to condescend to his Inferiours so indiscreet as not to connive at their Infirmities so inhumanâ— as not to yield to their Weaknesses so ill-bred as not to desire them to be covered when they have got a Cold. Nay if he be so hard-hearted as when any of them have an Antipathy to any thing for instance a Flemish Antipathy to Monarohy a Consciencious Antipathy to Obedience and a Fanatick Antipathy to Morality as to cram these things down their throats in spite of their stomachs he is an hard-hearted and inflexible Tyrant and then every body knows the stories of the Roman Emperour
Naples his name was Massanello and the story is true And though Mr. Speaker you may at first think it but an idle story yet all circumstances duly weighed it may some time or other prove of fatal and dangerous consequence to the Common-wealth There is Mr. Speaker beside Punchanello's Audience a great concourse of Boys whipping Giggs and of Lacqueys playing at the wheel of Fortune as I my self have often remarqued or if you will not relye upon my single observation my Lord Chief Justice and Sir Edmond Godfrey are able to inform you Now Mr. Speaker beside what may ordinarily happen at any time in scuffles between the Boys or the Lacqueys or the Porters it may so fall out that some pleasant and humorous Gentleman one of the Cock-wits of the town as he is passing on by Charing-Cross to White-hall either for the intrinsick wit of the frolick it self or to make a noise by boasting the adventure in the privy Gallery should either by himself or the officious Ministry of his Foot-boy over-turn a whole Settle of Apple-baskets that must of necessity make a scramble a scramble a scuffle a scuffle a tumult and then that may lightly come to pelting of Apples and that to tumbling in the kennel and that to bloody noses and then be sure Mr. Speaker hell is broke loose as I have observed in my Book of Aphoisms and Similitudes when the Scots enter'd England upon as slight a Cause viz. to fight for the Jure Divino of throwing Cricket-stools at Divine Service And what follow'd thereupon is yet within the compass of most mens memories Mr. Speaker I would not willingly be such a sool as to make a dangerous similitude that has no foundation for every similitude must have if not all yet some likeness That is to say for it will be sometimes requisite for so deep a States-man as you to explain your self there is no likeness without some likeness But this Mr. Speaker I am sure of that War was begun by the Women and Children and Servants of Edinburgh as you may see in the first Remonstrance presented in their names to the Lord Chancellour of Scotland And so if it should happen upon this occasion at Charing-Cross that any Massanello and believe me Mr. Speaker all Kingdoms are full of Massanello's should head the Tumult what else can lightly be expected but that they should either betake themselves to White-hall and there revile the King to his face for requiring things impossible unnecessary or wanton of his people for not considering the Laws and Customes under which they have been formerly bred as when under the Long-Parliament the Rump and Committee of Safety they had the Priviledge of raising Tumults against their Governours for not giving them good words upon all occasions and humouring them like Children for not being so civil as to condescend to their infirmities and if at any time they have got a cold forcing them to be cover'd in brief for not observing the constitution of their bodies and the antipathy of their stomachs But if they shall pass by White-hall as Mr. Speaker no body knows the motions of Tumults then what can be expected but that they should immediately to Westminster one and all and so beset this House and offer violence to the Members for being so foolishly trinkled and burthening the Subject with such a superfetation of Acts. And therefore Mr. Speaker to be short my humble motion is c. But here you know how to go on by your self it is only to move and desire the House for a quarter of an hour together by repeating the same Premises all over again that neither Apples nor Pears nor Nuts nor any other incentives of scrambling may be sold between Charing-Cross and Westminster-hall for fear of Massanello's and sturdy Swisses Do but speak it confidently and with a good Grace and then I am sure the Speech it self deserves more regard and is of closer importance to the King Parliament and Government than all your idle stories from Alexander the Great down to the Great King Gill. I am content if you will keep your own counsel you should have the honour of the Motion and I doubt not but it will be thought so serviceable to the Common-wealth that if your Effigies be not set up in the next Nich to King James in the Royal Exchange yet you can never fail of having your Statue erected among the foremost of the Dirt-basket-Justices And now I have done and hope by this time you perceive that though one night may make some men gray yet threescore years cannot make others wise And therefore I would advise you to meddle no more with Ecclesiastical Polities for I plainly perceive that Divinity is a Trade that God be thanked you are not of And that truly the reason why God does not bless you in tampering with matters of Religion is both because he never intended you for that employment or if he did you have neglected to fit your self for it by Education So that if you must be scribling betake your self to your own proper trade of Lampoons and Ballads and be not so unadvised as to talk in publique of such matters as are above the reach of your understanding you cannot touch Sacred things without prophaning them To conclude though it was the Opinion of most wise men that there was nothing more needful to answer your Libel than only to desire the world to compare it with my Discourses yet others who overpowr'd me to this Reply against the bent of my own inclinations thought it expedient that I should lay you thus open though it were only to let those weak People that once seem'd to admire and applaud you know that they had so little judgement as to approve the most despicable Trifler that was ever guilty of ink-shed And as for what concerns your self I shall say no more than to assure you that if you will learn modesty by this Correction and so give over Transprosing and the Good Old Cause you shall ever hereafter find me as much your friend as ever heretofore But as for my Reply I fear it not for if you will keep to the Reason of the Argument I know You and all your Party cannot answer and if you will play the fool again that will not serve your turn a second time the very people that once magnified your Wit now laugh at the silliness of your Pamphlet At least I think I have so sufficiently chastised your folly that if you should be so rash as to continue troublesome there will be no need of a second Correction you will be laught at and scorn'd enough without being exposed by any beside your self However I have something else to do than to write a Book against every ignorant and conceited man that has nothing else to do than to throw out his impertinent scrible against me And therefore I shall only desire you to recommend me to all your Friends at Charing-Cross and in Lincolns-inn-fields and so bid you heartily farewell FINIS The Printer to the Reader Reader Thou art desired to pardon those few faults that have escaped the Press by reason the Authour had not the Revising of the sheets Pag. 198. Pag. 96. Pag. 98. Pag. 4. Pag. 107. Pag. 206. Conq. of Granada Pag. 140. Pag. 110. Pag. 111. Pag. 143. Pag. 143. Pag. 276. Pag. 200. Pag. 252. of J. O. pag. 113. Pag. 118. Pag. 117. Ibid. Pag. 322. Def. Pag. 335. Truth and Innoc. vindic Pag. 104. pag. 76. pag. 119. Pag Pag. 119. Pag. 123. Pag. 254. Pag. 295. Pag. 296. Pag. 240. Pag. 124. Pag. 151. Pag. 151. Pag. 128. Pag. 130. Ibid. Pag. 131. Pag. 132. Pag. 218. Ibid. Pag. 30. Pag. 247. Pag. 160. Pag. 184. Pag. 50. Pag. 133. pag. 193. Pag. 251. Pag. 244. Pag. 34. Pag. 232. Pag. 230. Pag. 164. Pag. 219. Pag. 251. Pag. 120. Expos. on 130. Psal. Pag. 275. Pag. 198. Pag. 197. Pag. 18. Pag. 309. Pag. 43. Pag. 29. Pag. 27. Pag. 281. Pag. 166. Pag. 320. Pag. 278. Pag. 264. Pag. 144. Vid. vit Joan. Calvini Vid. Epist. Calv. Pag. 122. Pag 277 8 9 10. Pag. 277. Pag. 218. Pag. 218. Areo pag Pag. 4. Pag. 212 Ibid. Pag. 2â—3 Pag. 210. Pag. 218. Pag. 231. Pag. 301. Pag. 230. Pag. 148. Ibid. Pag. 230. Ibid. Pag. 243. Pag. 248. Pag. 214. Pag. 320. Pag. 321. Pag. 191. Pag. 279. Pag. 263. Pag. 158. Pag. 159. Pag. 103. Pag. 139. Pag. 47. Pag. 156. Pag. 66. Pag. 61. Pag. 163. Pag. 70. Pag. 185. Pag. 28. Pag. 215. Pag. 143. pag. 209. Pag. 146. Pag. 1. Pag. 2. Pag. 11. Pag. 267. Pag. 49. Pag. 59. Pag. 71. Pag. 51 c. Pag. 55. Pag. 〈◊〉 Pag. 42 3. Pag. 44. Ibid. Pag. 266. Pag. 261. Pag. 104. Pag. 264. Pag. 265. Pag. 316. Pag. 307. Pag. 7. Pag. 170 71. Pag. 268. Pag. 282. Pag. 95. Ibid. Pag. 300. Pag. 243 Pag. 301. Pag. 301 Pag. 301. Pag. 76. Pag. 162. Pag. 105. Pag. 252. Pag. 237. Pag. 238 9 40. Pag. 270. Pag. 219. Pag. 275. The Life of A. B. Laud. Pag. 495. Pag. 302. Pag. 301. Declar. March 10. 1623. Ibid. Ibid. Rusworth's Collect. p. 418. Pag. 297. Mr. Rous his speech in the Parliam 1628. â— Rush. Collect. Pag. 646. Pag. 297. Pag. 303. Buch. Hist. Scot. l. 19. Large Declar concern the tumults in Scotland printed 1629. Ibid. Ibid Pag. 54. Pag. 280. Instit. l. 4. c. 20. §. 24. Sect. 31. Pag. 75. Surveigh p. 296. Pag. 251. Pag. 280. Pag. 251. Pag. 251. Pag. 252. Pag. 252. Pag. 252. Pag. 275. Pag. 250. Pag. 246. Pag. 303. Pag. 304. Pag. 253. Pag. 282. Pag. 240. Pag. 305. Pag. 240. Pag. 310 Pag. 275. Pag. 275. Pag. 306. Pag. 275. Sect. 5. Sect. 6. Pag. 306. Pag. 306. Pag. 282 Pag. 11. Pag. 239. Pag. 241. Pag. 249. Pag. 299. Pag. 310 Pag. 277. Pag. 237. Pag. 294. Pag. 13. Pag. 43. Pag. 46. Pag. 81. Pag. 123. Pag. 148. Pag. 219. Pag. 218. Pag. 230. Pag. 252. Pag. 268. Pag. 279. Pag. 297. Pag. 307. Pag. ult Pag. 280. Pag. 139. Pag. 242. Pag. 250. Pag. 250. Pag. 278. Pag. 318. Pag. 264. Pag. 244. Pag. 241. Pag. 244 Pag. 244 Pag. 244. Pag. 244. Pag. 245. Pag. 245. Bucan loc Commun Pag. 88. Pag. 243. Pag. 246. Pag. 87. Pag. 249. Pag. 148.