in himself and doubted not by the weight of his own reason to counterpoyse any Faction it being so easie for him and so frequent to call his obstinacy Reason and other mens reason Faction Wee in the mean while must beleive that wisdom and all reason came to him by Title with his Crown Passion Prejudice and Faction came to others by being Subjects He was sorry to hear with what popular heat Elections were carry'd in many places Sorry rather that Court Letters and intimations prevail'd no more to divert or to deterr the people from thir free Election of those men whom they thought best affected to Religion and thir Countries Libertie both at that time in danger to be lost And such men they were as by the Kingdom were sent to advise him not sent to be cavill'd at because Elected or to be entertaind by him with an undervalue and misprision of thir temper judgment or affection In vain was a Parlament thought fittest by the known Laws of our Nation to advise and regulate unruly Kings if they in stead of hearkning to advice should be permitted to turn it off and refuse it by vilifying and traducing thir advisers or by accusing of a popular heat those that lawfully elected them His own and his Childrens interest oblig'd him to seek and to preserve the love and welfare of his Subjects Who doubts it But the same interest common to all Kings was never yet available to make them all seek that which was indeed best for themselves and thir Posterity All men by thir own and thir Childrens interest are oblig'd to honestie and justice but how little that consideration works in privat men how much less in Kings thir deeds declare best He intended to oblige both Friends and Enemies and to exceed thir desires did they but pretend to any modest and sober sence mistaking the whole business of a Parlament Which mett not to receive from him obligations but Justice nor he to expect from them thir modesty but thir grave advice utter'd with freedom in the public cause His talk of modesty in thir desires of the common welfare argues him not much to have understood what he had to grant who misconceav'd so much the nature of what they had to desire And for sober sence the expresion was too mean and recoiles with as much dishonour upon himself to be a King where sober sense could possibly be so wanting in a Parlament The odium and offences which some mens rigour or remissness iu Church and State had contracted upon his Goverment hee resolved to have expiated with better Laws and regulations And yet the worst of misdemeanors committed by the worst of all his favourites in the hight of thir dominion whether acts of rigor or remissness he hath from time to time continu'd own'd and taken upon himself by public Declarations as oft'n as the Clergy or any other of his Instruments felt themselves over burd'n'd with the peoples hatred And who knows not the superstitious rigor of his Sundays Chappel and the licentious remissness of his Sundays Theater accompanied with that reverend Statute for Dominical Jiggs and May-poles publish'd in his own Name and deriv'd from the example of his Father James Which testifies all that rigor in superstition all that remissness in Religion to have issu'd out originally from his own House and from his own Autority Much rather then may those general miscarriages in State his proper Sphear be imputed to no other person chiefly then to himself And which of all those oppressive Acts or Impositions did he ever disclaim or disavow till the fatal aw of this Parlament hung ominously over him Yet heerh ee smoothly seeks to wipe off all the envie of his evill Goverment upon his Substitutes and under Officers and promises though much too late what wonders he purpos'd to have don in the reforming of Religion a work wherein all his undertakings heretofore declare him to have had little or no judgement Neither could his Breeding or his cours of life acquaint him with a thing so Spiritual Which may well assure us what kind of Reformation we could expect from him either som politic form of an impos'd Religion or els perpetual vexation and persecution to all those that comply'd not with such a form The like amendment hee promises in State not a stepp furder then his Reason and Conscience told him was fitt to be desir'd wishing hee had kept within those bounds and not suffer'd his own judgement to have binover-borne in some things of which things one was the Earl of Straffords execution And what signifies all this but that stil his resolution was the same to set up an arbitrary Goverment of his own and that all Britain was to be ty'd and chain'd to the conscience judgement and reason of one Man as if those gifts had been only his peculiar and Prerogative intal'd upon him with his fortune to be a King When as doubtless no man so obstinate or so much a Tyrant but professes to be guided by that which he calls his Reason and his Judgement though never so corrupted and pretends also his conscience In the mean while for any Parlament or the whole Nation to have either reason judgement or conscience by this rule was altogether in vaine if it thwarted the Kings will which was easie for him to call by any other more plausible name He himself hath many times acknowledg'd to have no right over us but by Law and by the same Law to govern us but Law in a Free Nation hath bin ever public reason the enacted reason of a Parlament which he denying to enact denies to govern us by that which ought to be our Law interposing his own privat reason which to us is no Law And thus we find these faire and specious promises made upon the experience of many hard sufferings and his most mortifi'd retirements being throughly sifted to containe nothing in them much different from his former practices so cross and so averse to all his Parlaments and both the Nations of this Iland What fruits they could in likelyhood have produc'd in his restorement is obvious to any prudent foresight And this is the substance of his first section till wee come to the devout of it model'd into the form of a privat Psalter Which they who so much admire either for the matter or the manner may as well admire the Arch-Bishops late Breviary and many other as good Manuals and Handmaids of Devotion the lip-work of every Prelatical Liturgist clapt together and quilted out of Scripture phrase with as much ease and as little need of Christian diligence or judgement as belongs to the compiling of any ord'nary and salable peece of English Divinity that the Shops value But he who from such a kind of Psalmistry or any other verbal Devotion without the pledge and earnest of sutable deeds can be perswaded of a zeale and true righteousness in the person hath much yet to learn
gleaning out of Books writt'n purposely to help Devotion And if in likelyhood he have borrowd much more out of Prayer-books then out of Pastorals then are these painted Feathers that set him off so gay among the people to be thought few or none of them his own But if from his Divines he have borrow'd nothing nothing out of all the Magazin and the rheume of thir Mellifluous prayers and meditations let them who now mourn for him as for Tamuz them who howle in thir Pulpits and by thir howling declare themselvs right Wolves remember and consider in the midst of thir hideous faces when they doe onely not cutt thir flesh for him like those ruefull Preists whom Eliah mock'd that he who was once thir Ahab now thir Josiah though faining outwardly to reverence Churchmen yet heer hath so extremely set at nought both them and thir praying faculty that being at a loss himself what to pray in Captivity he consulted neither with the Liturgie nor with the Directory but neglecting the huge fardell of all thir honycomb devotions went directly where he doubted not to find better praying to his mind with Pammela in the Countesses Arcadia What greater argument of disgrace ignominy could have bin thrown with cunning upon the whole Clergy then that the King among all his Preistery and all those numberles volumes of thir theological distillations not meeting with one man or book of that coate that could befreind him with a prayer in Captivity was forc'd to robb Sr. Philip and his Captive Shepherdess of thir Heathen orisons to supply in any fashion his miserable indigence not of bread but of a single prayer to God I say therfore not of bread for that want may befall a good man and yet not make him totally miserable but he who wants a prayer to beseech God in his necessity t is unexpressible how poor he is farr poorer within himself then all his enemies can make him And the unfitness the undecency of that pittifull supply which he sought expresses yet furder the deepness of his poverty Thus much be said in generall to his prayers and in special to that Arcadian prayer us'd in his Captivity anough to undeceave us what esteeme wee are to set upon the rest For he certainly whose mind could serve him to seek a Christian prayer out of a Pagan Legend and assume it for his own might gather up the rest God knows from whence one perhaps out of the French Astraea another out of the Spanish Diana Amadis and Palmerin could hardly scape him Such a person we may be sure had it not in him to make a prayer of his own or at least would excuse himself the paines and cost of his invention so long as such sweet rapsodies of Heathenism and Knighterrantry could yeild him prayers How dishonourable then and how unworthy of a Christian King were these ignoble shifts to seem holy and to get a Saintship among the ignorant and wretched people to draw them by this deception worse then all his former injuries to go a whooring after him And how unhappy how forsook of grace and unbelovd of God that people who resolv to know no more of piety or of goodnes then to account him thir cheif Saint and Martyr whose bankrupt devotion came not honestly by his very prayers but having sharkd them from the mouth of a Heathen worshipper detestable to teach him prayers sould them to those that stood and honourd him next to the Messiah as his own heav'nly compositions in adversity for hopes no less vain and presumptuous and death at that time so imminent upon him then by these goodly reliques to be held a Saint and Martyr in opinion with the People And thus farr in the whole Chapter we have seen and consider'd and it cannot but be cleer to all men how and for what ends what concernments and necessities the late King was no way induc'd but every way constrain'd to call this last Parlament yet heer in his first prayer he trembles not to avouch as in the eares of God That he did it with an upright intention to his glory and his peoples good Of which dreadfull attestation how sincerely meant God to whom it was avow'd can onely judge and he hath judg'd already and hath writt'n his impartial Sentence in Characters legible to all Christ'ndom and besides hath taught us that there be som whom he hath giv'n over to delusion whose very mind and conscience is defil'd of whom Saint Paul to Titus makes mention II. Upon the Earle of Straffords Death THis next Chapter is a penitent confession of the King and the strangest if it be well weigh'd that ever was Auricular For hee repents heer of giving his consent though most unwillingly to the most seasonable and solemn peece of Justice that had bin don of many yeares in the Land But his sole conscience thought the contrary And thus was the welfare the safety and within a little the unanimous demand of three populous Nations to have attended stil on the singularity of one mans opi nionated conscience if men had bin always so tame and spiritless and had not unexpectedly found the grace to understand that if his conscience were so narrow and peculiar to it selfe it was not fitt his Authority should be so ample and Universall over others For certainly a privat conscience sorts not with a public Calling but declares that Person rather meant by nature for a private fortune And this also we may take for truth that hee whose conscience thinks it sin to put to death a capital Offendor will as oft think it meritorious to kill a righteous Person But let us heare what the sin was that lay so sore upon him and as one of his Prayers giv'n to Dr. Juxton testifies to the very day of his death it was his signing the Bill of Straffords execution a man whom all men look'd upon as one of the boldest and most impetuous instruments that the King had to advance any violent or illegal designe He had rul'd Ireland and som parts of England in an Arbitrary manner had indeavour'd to subvert Fnndamental Lawes to subvert Parlaments and to incense the King against them he had also endeavor'd to make Hostility between England and Scotland He had counceld the King to call over that Irish Army of Papists which he had cunningly rais'd to reduce England as appear'd by good Testimony then present at the Consultation For which and many other crimes alledg'd and prov'd against him in 28 Articles he was condemnd of high Treason by the Parlament The Commons by farr the greater number cast him the Lords after they had bin satisfi'd in a full discours by the Kings Sollicitor and the opinions of many Judges deliver'd in thir House agreed likewise to the Sentence of Treason The People universally cri'd out for Justice None were his Friends but Coutiers and Clergimen the worst at that time and most corrupted sort of men and Court Ladies not
the Kings designe both to the Parlament and City of London The Parlament moreover had intelligence and the people could not but discern that there was a bitter malignant party grown up now to such a boldness as to give out insolent and threatning speeches against the Parlament it self Besides this the Rebellion in Ireland was now broke out and a conspiracy in Scotland had bin made while the King was there against some chief Members of that Parlament great numbers heer of unknown and suspicious persons resorted to the City the King being return'd from Scotland presently dismisses that Guard which the Parlament thought necessary in the midst of so many dangers to have about them and puts another Guard in thir place contrary to the Privilege of that high Court and by such a one commanded as made them no less doubtfull of the Guard it self Which they therfore upon som ill effects thereof first found discharge deeming it more safe to sitt free though without a Guard in op'n danger then inclos'd with a suspected safety The people therfore lest thir worthiest and most faithfull Patriots who had expos'd themselves for the public and whom they saw now left naked should want aide or be deserted in the midst of these dangers came in multitudes though unarm'd to witness thir fidelitie and readiness in case of any violence offer'd to the Parlament The King both envying to see the Peoples love thus devolv'd on another object and doubting lest it might utterly disable him to doe with Parlaments as he was wont sent a message into the City forbidding such resorts The Parlament also both by what was discover'd to them and what they saw in a Malignant Party some of which had already drawn blood in a Fray or two at the Court Gate and eev'n at thir own Gate in Westminster Hall conceaving themselves to be still in danger where they sat sent a most reasonable and just Petition to the King that a Guard might be allow'd them out of the City wherof the Kings own Chamberlaine the Earl of Essex might have command it being the right of inferiour Courts to make chois of thir own Guard This the King refus'd to doe and why he refus'd the very next day made manifest For on that day it was that he sallied out from White Hall with those trusty Myrmidons to block up or give assault to the House of Commons He had besides all this begun to fortifie his Court and entertaind armed Men not a few who standing at his Palace Gate revil'd and with drawn Swords wounded many of the People as they went by unarm'd and in a peaceable manner whereof some dy'd The passing by of a multitude though neither to Saint Georges Feast nor to a Tilting certainly of it self was no Tumult the expression of thir Loyalty and stedfastness to the Parlament whose lives and safeties by more then slight rumours they doubted to be in danger was no Tumult If it grew to be so the cause was in the King himself and his injurious retinue who both by Hostile preparations in the Court and by actual assailing of the People gave them just cause to defend themselves Surely those unarmed and Petitioning People needed not have bin so formidable to any but to such whose consciences misgave them how ill they had deserv'd of the People and first began to injure them because they justly fear'd it from them and then ascribe that to popular Tumult which was occasion'd by thir own provoking And that the King was so emphatical and elaborat on this Theam against Tumults and express'd with such a vehemence his hatred of them will redound less perhaps then he was aware to the commendation of his Goverment For besides that in good Goverments they happ'n seldomèst and rise not without cause if they prove extreme and pernicious they were never counted so to Monarchy but to Monarchical Tyranny and extremes one with another are at most Antipathy If then the King so extremely stood in fear of Tumults the inference will endanger him to be the other extreme Thus farr the occasion of this discours against Tumults now to the discours it self voluble anough and full of sentence but that for the most part either specious rather then solid or to his cause nothing pertinent He never thought any thing more to presage the mischiefes that ensu'd then those Tumults Then was his foresight but short and much mistak'n Those Tumults were but the milde effects of an evil and injurious raigne not signes of mischeifs to come but seeking releef for mischeifs past those signes were to be read more apparent in his rage and purpos'd revenge of those free expostulations and clamours of the People against his lawless Goverment Not any thing saith he portends more Gods displeasure against a Nation then when he suffers the clamours of the Vulgar to pass all bounds of Law reverence to Authority It portends rather his dispeasure against a Tyrannous King whose proud Throne he intends to overturn by that contemptible Vulgar the sad cries and oppressions of whom his Royaltie regarded not As for that supplicating People they did no hurt either to Law or Autority but stood for it rather in the Parlament against whom they fear'd would violate it That they invaded the Honour and Freedome of the two Houses is his own officious accusation not seconded by the Parlament who had they seen cause were themselves best able to complain And if they shook menac'd any they were such as had more relation to the Court then to the Common wealth enemies not patrons of the People But if thir petitioning unarm'd were an invasion of both Houses what was his entrance into the House of Commons besetting it with armed men in what condition then was the honour and freedom of that House They forbore not rude deportments contemptuous words and actions to himself and his Court. It was more wonder having heard what treacherous hostility he had design'd against the City and his whole Kingdome that they forbore to handle him as people in thir rage have handl'd Tyrants heertofore for less offences They were not a short ague but a fierce quotidian feaver He indeed may best say it who most felt it for the shaking was within him and it shook him by his own description worse then a storme worse then an earthquake Belshazzars Palsie Had not worse feares terrors and envies made within him that commotion how could a multitude of his Subjects arm'd with no other weapon then Petitions have shak'n all his joynts with such a terrible ague Yet that the Parlament should entertaine the least feare of bad intentions from him or his Party he endures not but would perswade us that men scare themselves and others without cause for he thought feare would be to them a kind of armor and his designe was if it were possible to disarme all especially of a wise feare and suspicion for that he knew would find weapons He
difficult to be guess'd And those instances wherein valour is not to be question'd for not scuffling with the Sea or an undisciplind Rabble are but subservient to carry on the solemn jest of his fearing Tumults if they discover not withall the true reason why he departed onely to turne his slashing at the Court Gate to slaughtering in the Field his disorderly bickering to an orderly invading which was nothing els but a more orderly disorder Some suspected and affirm'd that he meditated a Warr when he went first from White Hall And they were not the worst heads that did so nor did any of his former acts weak'n him to that as he alleges for himself or if they had they cleere him onely for the time of passing them not for what ever thoughts might come after into his mind Former actions of improvidence or fear not with him unusual cannot absolve him of all after meditations He goes on protesting his no intention to have left White Hall had these horrid Tumults giv'n him but Faire Quarter as if he himself his Wife and Children had bin in peril But to this anough hath bin answer'd Had this Parlament as it was in its first Election Namely with the Lord and Baron Bishops sate full and free he doubts not but all had gon well What warrant this of his to us Whose not doubting was all good mens greatest doubt He was resolv'd to heare reason and to consent so farr as he could comprehend A hopefull resolution what if his reason were found by oft experience to comprehend nothing beyond his own advantages was this a reason fit to be intrusted with the common good of three Nations But saith he as Swine are to gardens so are Tumults to Parlaments This the Parlament had they found it so could best have told us In the meane while who knows not that one great Hogg may doe as much mischief in a Garden as many little Swine He was sometimes prone to think that had he call'd this last Parlament to any other place in England the sad consequences might have bin prevented But change of ayr changes not the mind Was not his first Parlament at Oxford dissolv'd after two Subsidies giv'n him and no Justice receav'd Was not his last in the same place where they sat with as much freedom as much quiet from Tumults as they could desire a Parlament both in his account and thir own consisting of all his Friends that fled after him and suffer'd for him and yet by him nicknam'd and casheer'd for a Mungrill Parlament that vext his Queen with thir base and mutinous motions as his Cabinet letter tells us Wherby the World may see plainly that no shifting of place no sifting of members to his own mind no number no paucity no freedom from tumults could ever bring his arbitrary wilfulness and tyrannical Designes to brook the lest shape or similitude the lest counterfet of a Parlament Finally instead of praying for his people as a good King should doe hee prayes to be deliver'd from them as from wild Beasts Inundations and raging Seas that had overborn all Loyalty Modesty Laws Justice and Religion God save the people from such Intercessors V. Upon the Bill for Trienniall Parlaments And for setling this c. THe Bill for a Triennial Parlament was but the third part of one good step toward that which in times past was our annual right The other Bill for setling this Parlament was new indeed but at that time very necessary and in the Kings own Words no more then what the World was fully confirm'd hee might in Justice Reason Honour and Conscience grant them for to that end he affirms to have don it But wheras he attributes the passing of them to his own act of grace and willingness as his manner is to make vertues of his necessities and giving to himself all the praise heaps ingratitude upon the Parlament a little memory will sett the cleane contrary before us that for those Beneficial acts we ow what wee ow to the Parlament but to his granting them neither praise nor thanks The first Bill granted much less then two former Statutes yet in force by Edward the third that a Parlament should be call'd every yeare or ofter if need were nay from a farr ancienter Law Book call'd the Mirror it is affirm'd in a late Treatise call'd Rights of the Kingdom that Parlaments by our old Laws ought twice a year to be at London From twice in one year to once in three year it may be soon cast up how great a loss we fell into of our ancient liberty by that act which in the ignorant and Slavish mindes we then were was thought a great purchase Wisest men perhaps were contented for the present at least by this act to have recoverd Parlaments w ch were then upon the brink of danger to be forever lost And this is that which the King preaches heer for a special tok'n of his Princely favour to have abridg'd over reach'd the people five parts in six of what thir due was both by ancient Statute and originally And thus the taking from us all but a Triennial remnant of that English Freedom which our Fathers left us double in a fair annuity enrowl'd is set out and sould to us heer for the gracious and over liberal giving of a new enfranchisment How little may we think did he ever give us who in the Bill of his pretended givings writes down Imprimis that benefit or privilege once in three year giv'n us which by so giving he more then twice every year illegally took from us Such givers as give single to take away sixfold be to our Enemies For certainly this Common-wealth if the Statutes of our Ancestors be worth ought would have found it hard and hazardous to thrive under the dammage of such a guilefull liberatie The other act was so necessary that nothing in the power of Man more seem'd to be the stay support of all things from that steep ruin to which he had nigh brought them then that Act obtain'd He had by his ill Stewardship and to say no worse the needless raising of two Armies intended for a civil War begger'd both himself and the Public and besides had left us upon the score of his needy Enemies for what it cost them in thir own defence against him To disingage him and the Kingdom great sums were to be borrow'd which would never have bin lent nor could ever be repaid had the King chanc'd to dissolve this Parlament as heertofore The errors also of his Goverment had brought the Kingdom to such extremes as were incapable of all recovery without the absolute continuance of a Parlament It had bin els in vaine to goe about the setling of so great distempers if hee who first caus'd the malady might when he pleas'd reject the remedy Notwithstanding all which that he granted both these Acts unwillingly and as a meer passive Instrument was then
visible eev'n to most of those Men who now will see nothing At passing of the former Act he himself conceal'd not his unwillingness and testifying a general dislike of thir actions which they then proceeded in with great approbation of the whole Kingdom he told them with a maisterly Brow that by this Act he had oblig'd them above what they had deserv'd and gave a peece of Justice to the Common wealth six times short of his Predecessors as if he had bin giving som boon or begg'd Office to a sort of his desertless Grooms That he pass'd the latter Act against his will no man in reason can hold it questionable For if the February before he made so dainty and were so loath to bestow a Parlament once in three yeare upon the Nation because this had so oppos'd his courses was it likely that the May following he should bestow willingly on this Parlament an indissoluble sitting when they had offended him much more by cutting short and impeaching of high Treason his chief Favorites It was his feare then not his favor which drew from him that Act lest the Parlament incens'd by his Conspiracies against them about the same time discover'd should with the people have resented too hainously those his doings if to the suspicion of thir danger from him he had also added the denyal of this onely meanes to secure themselves From these Acts therfore in which he glories and wherwith so oft he upbraids the Parlament he cannot justly expect to reape aught but dishonour and dispraise as being both unwillingly granted and the one granting much less then was before allow'd by Statute the other being a testimony of his violent and lawless Custom not onely to break Privileges but whole Parlaments from which enormity they were constrain'd to bind him first of all his Predecessors never any before him having giv'n like causes of distrust and jealousie to his People As for this Parlament how farr he was from being advis'd by them as he ought let his own words express He taxes them with undoing what they found well done and yet knows they undid nothing in the Church but Lord Bishops Liturgies Ceremonies High Commission judg'd worthy by all true Protestants to bee thrown out of the Church They undid nothing in the State but irregular and grinding Courts the maine grievances to be remov'd if these were the things which in his opinion they found well don we may againe from hence be inform'd with what unwillingness he remou'd them and that those gracious Acts wherof so frequently he makes mention may be english'd more properly Acts of feare and dissimulation against his mind and conscience The bill preventing dissolution of this Parlament he calls An unparalell'd Act out of the extreme confidence that his Subjects would not make ill use of it But was it not a greater confidence of the people to put into one mans hand so great a power till he abus'd it as to summon and dissolve Parlaments Hee would be thankt for trusting them and ought to thank them rather for trusting him the trust issuing first from them not from him And that it was a meer trust and not his Prerogative to call and dissolve Parlaments at his pleasure And that Parlaments were not to be dissolv'd till all Petitions were heard all greevances redrest is not onely the assertion of this Parlament but of our ancient Law Books which averr it to be an unwritt'n Law of common Right so ingrav'n in the hearts of our Ancestors and by them so constantly enjoy'd and claim'd as that it needed not enrouling And if the Scots in thir Declaration could charge the King with breach of their Lawes for breaking up that Parlament without their consent while matters of greatest moment were depending it were unreasonable to imagin that the wisdom of England should be so wanting to it self through all Ages as not to provide by som known Law writt'n or unwritt'n against the not calling or the arbitrary dissolving of Parlaments or that they who ordain'd thir summoning twice a yeare or as oft as need requir'd did not tacitly enact also that as necessity of affaires call'd them so the same necessity should keep them undissolv'd till that were fully satisfi'd Were it not for that Parlaments and all the fruit and benefit we receave by having them would turne soon to meer abusion It appeares then that if this Bill of not dissolving were an unparallel'd Act it was a known and common Right which our Ancestors under other Kings enjoyd as firmly as if it had bin grav'n in Marble and that the infringement of this King first brought it into a writt'n Act Who now boasts that as a great favour don us which his own less fidelity then was in former Kings constrain'd us onely of an old undoubted Right to make a new writt'n Act. But what needed writt'n Acts when as anciently it was esteem'd part of his Crown Oath not to dissolve Parlaments till all greevances were consider'd wherupon the old Modi of Parlament calls it flat perjury if he dissolve them before as I find cited in a Booke mention'd at the beginning of this Chapter to which and other Law-tractats I referr the more Lawyerlie mooting of this point which is neither my element nor my proper work heer since the Book which I have to Answer pretends reason not Autoritys and quotations and I hold reason to be the best Arbitrator and the Law of Law it self T is true that good Subjects think it not just that the Kings condition should be worse by bettering theirs But then the King must not be at such a distance from the people in judging what is better and what worse which might have bin agreed had he known for his own words condemn him as well with moderation to use as with earnestness to desire his own advantages A continual Parlament he thought would keep the Common-wealth in tune Judge Common wealth what proofs he gave that this boasted profession was ever in his thought Some saith he gave out that I repented me of that setling Act. His own actions gave it out beyond all supposition For doubtless it repented him to have establish'd that by Law which he went about so soon after to abrogat by the Sword He calls those Acts which he confesses tended to thir good not more Princely then friendly contributions As if to doe his dutie were of curtesie and the discharge of his trust a parcell of his liberality so nigh lost in his esteem was the birthright of our Liberties that to give them back againe upon demand stood at the mercy of his Contribution He doubts not but the affections of his People will compensate his sufferings for those acts of confidence And imputes his sufferings to a contrary cause Not his confidence but his distrust was that which brought him to those sufferings from the time that he forsook his Parlament and trusted them ne're the sooner for what he tells of
thir pietie and religious strictness but rather hated them as Puritans whom he always sought to extirpat He would have it beleev'd that to bind his hands by these Acts argu'd a very short foresight of things and extreme fatuity of mind in him if he had meant a Warr. If we should conclude so that were not the onely Argument Neither did it argue that he meant peace knowing that what he granted for the present out of feare he might as soon repeale by force watching his time and deprive them the fruit of those Acts if his own designes wherin he put his trust took effect Yet he complaines That the tumults threatn'd to abuse all acts of grace and turne them into wantonness I would they had turn'd his wantonness into the grace of not abusing Scripture Was this becomming such a Saint as they would make him to adulterat those Sacred words from the grace of God to the acts of his own grace Herod was eat'n up os Wormes for suffering others to compare his voice to the voice of God but the Borrower of this phrase gives much more cause of jealousie that he lik'n'd his own acts of grace to the acts of Gods grace From profaneness he scars comes off with perfet sense I was not then in a capacity to make Warr therfore I intended not I was not in a capacity therfore I could not have giv'n my Enemies greater advantage then by so unprincely inconstancy to have scatter'd them by Armes whom but lately I had settl'd by Parlament What place could there be for his inconstancy in that thing wherto he was in no capacity Otherwise his inconstancy was not so un wonted or so nice but that it would have easily found pretences to scatter those in revenge whom he settl'd in feare It had bin a course full of sin as well as of hazzard and dishonour True but if those considerations withheld him not from other actions of like nature how can we beleeve they were of strength sufficient to withhold him from this And that they withheld him not the event soon taught us His letting some men goe up to the Pinnacle of the Temple was a temptation to them to cast him down headlong In this Simily we have himself compar'd to Christ the Parlament to the Devill and his giving them that Act of settling to his letting them goe up to the Pinnacle of the Temple A tottring and giddy Act rather then a settling This was goodly use made of Scripture in his Solitudes But it was no Pinnacle of the Temple it was a Pinnacle of Nebuchadnezzars Palace from whence hee and Monarchy fell headlong together He would have others see that All the Kingdomes of the World are not worth gaining by the wayes of sin which hazzard the Soule and hath himself left nothing unhazzarded to keep three He concludes with sentences that rightly scannd make not so much for him as against him and confesses that The Act of settling was no sin of his will and wee easily beleeve him for it hath bin clearly prov'd a sin of his unwillingness With his Orisons I meddle not for he appeals to a high Audit This yet may be noted that at his Prayers he had before him the sad presage of his ill success As of a dark and dangerous Storme which never admitted his returne to the Port from whence he set out Yet his Prayer-Book no sooner shut but other hopes flatter'd him and thir flattering was his destruction VI. Upon his Retirement from Westminster THe Simily wher with he begins I was about to have found fault with as in a garb somwhat more Poetical then for a Statist but meeting with many straines of like dress in other of his Essaies and hearing him reported a more diligent reader of Poets then of Politicians I begun to think that the whole Book might perhaps be intended a peece of Poetrie The words are good the fiction smooth and cleanly there wanted onely Rime and that they say is bestow'd upon it lately But to the Argument I stai'd at White Hall till I was driven away by shame more then feare I retract not what I thought of the fiction yet heer I must confess it lies too op'n In his Messages and Declarations nay in the whole Chapter next but one before this he affirmes that The danger wherin his Wife his Children and his own Person were by those Tumults was the maine cause that drove him from White Hall and appeales to God as witness he affirmes heer that it was shame more then feare And Digby who knew his mind as well as any tells his new-listed Guard That the principal cause of his Majesties going thence was to save them from being trodd in the dirt From whence we may discerne what false and frivolous excuses are avow'd sor truth either in those Declarations or in this Penitential Book Our forefathers were of that courage and severity of zeale to Justice and thir native Liberty against the proud contempt and misrule of thir Kings that when Richard the Second departed but from a Committie of Lords who sat preparing matter for the Parlament not yet assembl'd to the removal of his evil Counselors they first vanquish'd and put to flight Robert de Vere his chief Favorite and then comming up to London with a huge Army requir'd the King then withdrawn for feare but no furder off then the Tower to come to Westminster Which he refusing they told him flatly that unless he came they would choose another So high a crime it was accounted then for Kings to absent themselves not from a Parlament which none ever durst but from any meeting of his Peeres and Counselors which did but tend towards a Parlament Much less would they have suffer'd that a King for such trivial and various pretences one while for feare of tumults another while for shame to see them should leav his Regal Station and the whole Kingdom bleeding to death of those wounds which his own unskilful and pervers Goverment had inflicted Shame then it was that drove him from the Parlament but the shame of what Was it the shame of his manifold errours and misdeeds and to see how weakly he had plaid the King No But to see the barbarous rudeness of those Tumults to demand any thing We have started heer another and I beleeve the truest cause of his deserting the Parlament The worst and strangest of that Any thing which the people then demanded was but the unlording of Bishops and expelling them the House and the reducing of Church Discipline to a conformity with other Protestant Churches this was the Barbarism of those Tumults and that he might avoid the granting of those honest and pious demands as well demanded by the Parlament as the People for this very cause more then for feare by his own confession heer he left the City and in a most tempestuous season forsook the Helme and steerage of the Common-wealth This was that terrible Any thing
from which his Conscience and his Reason chose to run rather then not deny To be importun'd the removing of evil Counselors and other greevances in Church and State was to him an intollerable oppression If the peoples demanding were so burd'nsome to him what was his denial and delay of Justice to them But as the demands of his people were to him a burd'n and oppression so was the advice of his Parlament esteem'd a bondage Whose agreeing Votes as he affirmes Were not by any Law or reason conclusive to his judgement For the Law it ordaines a Parlament to advise him in his great affaires but if it ordaine also that the single judgement of a King shall out-ballance all the wisdom of his Parlament it ordaines that which frustrats the end of its own ordaining For where the Kings judgement may dissent to the destruction as it may happ'n both of himself and the Kingdom there advice and no furder is a most insufficient and frustraneous meanes to be provided by Law in case of so high concernment And where the main principal Law of common preservation against tyranny is left so fruitless and infirm there it must needs follow that all lesser Laws are to thir severall ends and purposes much more weak and uneffectual For that Nation would deserv to be renownd and Chronicl'd for folly stupidity that should by Law provide force against privat and petty wrongs advice only against tyranny and public ruin It being therfore most unlike a Law to ordain a remedy so slender and unlawlike to be the utmost meanes of all our safety or prevention as advice is which may at any time be rejected by the sole judgement of one man the King and so unlike the Law of England which Lawyers say is the quintessence of reason and mature wisdom wee may conclude that the Kings negative voice was never any Law but an absurd and reasonless Custom begott'n and grown up either from the flattery of basest times or the usurpation of immoderat Princes Thus much to the Law of it by a better evidence then Rowles and Records Reason But is it possible he should pretend also to reason that the judgement of one man not as a wise or good man but as a King and oft times a wilfull proud and wicked King should outweigh the prudence and all the vertue of an elected Parlament What an abusive thing were it then to summon Parlaments that by the Major part of voices greatest matters may be there debated and resolv'd when as one single voice after that shalldash all thir Resolutions He attempts to give a reason why it should Because the whole Parlament represents not him in any kind But mark how little he advances for if the Parlament represent the whole Kingdom as is sure anough they doe then doth the King represent onely himself and if a King without his Kingdom be in a civil sense nothing then without or against the Representative of his whole Kingdom he himself represents nothing and by consequence his judgement and his negative is as good as nothing and though we should allow him to be something yet not equivalent or comparable to the whole Kingdom and so neither to them who represent it much less that one syllable of his breath putt into the scales should be more ponderous then the joynt voice and efficacy of a whole Parlament assembl'd by election and indu'd with the plenipotence of a free Nation to make Laws not to be deny'd Laws and with no more but No a sleevless reason in the most pressing times of danger and disturbance to be sent home frustrat and remediless Yet heer he maintains To be no furder bound to agree with the Votes of both Houses then he sees them to agree with the will of God with his just Rights as a King and the generall good of his People As to the freedom of his agreeing or not agreeing limited with due bounds no man reprehends it this is the Question heer or the Miracle rather why his onely not agreeing should lay a negative barr and inhibition upon that which is agreed to by a whole Parlament though never so conducing to the Public good or safety To know the will of God better then his whole Kingdom whence should he have it Certainly Court-breeding and his perpetual conversation with Flatterers was but a bad Schoole To judge of his own Rights could not belong to him who had no right by Law in any Court to judge of so much as Fellony or Treason being held a party in both these Cases much more in this and his Rights however should give place to the general good for which end all his Rights were giv'n him Lastly to suppose a clearer insight and discerning of the general good allotted to his own singular judgement then to the Parlament and all the People and from that self-opinion of discerning to deny them that good which they being all Freemen seek earnestly and call for is an arrogance and iniquity beyond imagination rude and unreasonable they undoubtedly having most autoritie to judge of the public good who for that purpose are chos'n out and sent by the People to advise him And if it may be in him to see oft the major part of them not in the right had it not bin more his modestie to have doubted their seeing him more oft'n in the wrong Hee passes to another reason of his denials Because of some mens hydropic unsatiableness and thirst of asking the more they drank whom no fountaine of regall bountie was able to overcome A comparison more properly bestow'd on those that came to guzzle in his Wine-cellar then on a freeborn People that came to claime in Parlament thir Rights and Liberties which a King ought therfore to grant because of right demanded not to deny them for feare his bounty should be exhaust which in these demands to continue the same Metaphor was not so much as Broach'd it being his duty not his bounty to grant these things He who thus refuses to give us Law in that refusal gives us another Law which is his will another name also and another condition of Freemen to become his vassals Putting off the Courtier he now puts on the Philosopher and sententiously disputes to this effect that reason ought to be vs'd to men force and terror to Beasts that he deserves to be a slave who captivates the rationall soverantie of his soule and liberty of his will to compulsion that he would not forfeit that freedome which cannot be deni'd him as a King because it belongs to him as a Man and a Christian thoughto preserve his Kingdom but rather dye injoying the Empire of his soule then live in such a vassalage as not to use his reason and conscience to like or dislike as a King Which words of themselves as farr as they are sense good and Philosophical yet in the mouth of him who to engross this common libertie to himself would tred
down all other men into the condition of Slaves and beasts they quite loose thir commendation He confesses a rational sovrantie of soule and freedom of will in every man and yet with an implicit repugnancy would have his reason the sovran ofthat sovranty and would captivate and make useless that natural freedom of will in all other men but himself But them that yeeld him this obedience he so well rewards as to pronounce them worthy to be Slaves They who have lost all to be his Subjects may stoop and take up the reward What that freedom is which cannot be deni'd him as a King because it belongs to him as a Man and a Christian I understand not If it be his negative voice it concludes all men who have not such a negative as his against a whole Parlament to be neither Men nor Christians and what was he himself then all this while that we deni'd it him as a King Will hee say that hee enjoy'd within himself the less freedom for that Might not he both as a Man and as a Christian have raignd within himself in full sovranty of soule no man repining but that his outward and imperious will must invade the civil Liberties of a Nation Did wee therfore not permit him to use his reason or his conscience not permitting him to bereave us the use of ours And might not he have enjoy'd both as a King governing us as Free men by what Laws we our selves would be govern'd It was not the inward use of his reason and of his conscience that would content him but to use them both as a Law over all his Subjects in whatever he declar'd as a King to like or dislike Which use of reason most reasonless and unconseionable is the utmost that any Tyrant ever pretended over his Vassals In all wise Nations the Legislative power and the judicial execution of that power have bin most commonly distinct and in several hands but yet the former supreme the other subordinat If then the King be only set up to execute the Law which is indeed the highest of his office he ought no more to make or forbidd the making of any law agreed upon in Parlament then other inferior Judges who are his Deputies Neither can he more reject a Law offerd him by the Commons then he can new make a Law which they reject And yet the more to credit and uphold his cause he would seeme to have Philosophie on his side straining her wise dictates to unphilosophical purposes But when Kings come so low as to fawn upon Philosophie which before they neither valu'd nor understood t is a signe that failes not they are then put to thir last Trump And Philosophie as well requites them by not suffering her gold'n sayings either to become their lipps or to be us'd as masks and colours of injurious and violent deeds So that what they presume to borrow from her sage and vertuous rules like the Riddle of Sphinx not understood breaks the neck of thir own cause But now againe to Politics He cannot think the Majestie of the Crowne of England to be bound by any Coronation Oath in a blind and brutish formalitie to consent to whatever its Subjects in Parlament shall require What Tyrant could presume to say more when he meant to kick down all Law Goverment and bond of Oath But why he so desires to absolve himself the Oath of his Coronation would be worth the knowing It cannot but be yeelded that the Oath which bindes him to performance of his trust ought in reason to contain the summ of what his chief trust and Office is But if it neither doe enjoyn nor mention to him as a part of his duty the making or the marring of any Law or scrap of Law but requires only his assent to to those Laws which the people have already chos'n or shall choose for so both the Latin of that Oath and the old English and all Reason admits that the People should not lose under a new King what freedom they had before then that negative voice so contended for to deny the passing of any Law which the Commons choose is both against the Oath of his Coronation and his Kingly Office And if the King may deny to pass what the Parlament hath chos'n to be a Law then doth the King make himself Superiour to his whole Kingdom which not onely the general Maxims of Policy gainsay but eev'n our own standing Laws as hath bin cited to him in Remonstrances heertosore that The King hath two Superiours the Law and his Court of Parlament But this he counts to be a blind and brutish formality whether it be Law or Oath or his duty and thinks to turn itoff with wholsom words and phrases which he then first learnt of the honest People when they were so oft'n compell'd to use them against those more truely blind and brutish formalities thrust upon us by his own command not in civil matters onely but in Spiritual And if his Oath to perform what the People require when they Crown him be in his esteem a brutish formality then doubtless those other Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy tak'n absolute on our part may most justly appear to us in all respects as brutish and as formal and so by his own sentence no more binding to us then his Oath to him As for his instance in case He and the House of Peers attempted to enjoyne the House of Commons it beares no equalitie for hee and the Peers represent but themselves the Commons are the whole Kingdom Thus he concludes his Oath to be fully discharg'd in Governing by Laws already made as being not bound to pass any new if his Reason bids him deny And so may infinite mischeifs grow and he with a pernicious negative may deny us all things good or just or safe wherof our ancestors in times much differing from ours had either no fore sight or no occasion to foresee while our general good and safety shall depend upo the privat and overweening Reason of one obstinat Man who against all the Kingdom if he list will interpret both the Law and his Oath of Coronation by the tenor of his own will Which he himself confesses to be an arbitrary power yet doubts not in his Argument to imply as if he thought it more fit the Parlament should be subject to his will then he to their advice a man neither by nature nor by nurture wise How is it possible that he in whom such Principles as these were so deep rooted could ever though restor'd again have raign'd otherwise then Tyrannically He objects That force was but a slavish method to dispell his error But how oft'n shall it be answer'd him that no force was us'd to dispell the error out of his head but to drive it from off our necks for his error was imperious and would command all other men to ronounce thir own reason and understanding till they perish'd under
the injunction of his all-ruling error He alleges the uprightness of his intentions to excuse his possible failings a position fals both in Law and Divinity Yea contrary to his own better principles who affirmes in the twelfth Chapter that The goodness of a mans intention will not excuse the scandall and contagion of his example His not knowing through the corruption of flattery and Court Principles what he ought to have known will not excuse his not doing what he ought to have don no more then the small skill of him who undertakes to be a Pilot will excuse him to be misledd by any wandring Starr mistak'n for the Pole But let his intentions be never so upright what is that to us What answer for the reason and the National Rights which God hath giv'n us if having Parlaments and Laws and the power of making more to avoid mischeif wee suffer one mans blind intentions to lead us all with our eyes op'n to manifest destruction And if Arguments prevaile not with such a one force is well us'd not to carry on the weakness of our Counsels or to convince his error as he surmises but to acquitt and rescue our own reason our own consciences from the force and prohibition laid by his usurping error upon our Liberties understandings Never thing pleas'd him more then when his judgement concurr'd with theirs That was to the applause of his own judgement and would as well have pleas'd any selfconceited man Yea in many things he chose rather to deny himself then them That is to say in trifles For of his own Interests and Personal Rights he conceavs himself Maister To part with if he please not to contest for against the Kingdom which is greater then he whose Rights are all subordinat to the Kingdoms good And in what concernes truth Justice the right of Church or his Crown no man shall gaine his consent against his mind What can be left then for a Parlament but to sit like Images while he still thus either with incomparable arrogance assumes to himself the best abilitie of judging for other men what is Truth Justice Goodness what his own or the Churches Right or with unsufferable Tyranny restraines all men from the enjoyment of any good which his judgement though erroneous thinks not fit to grant them notwithstanding that the Law and his Coronal Oath requires his undeniable assent to what Laws the Parlament agree upon He had rather wear a Crown of Thorns with our Saviour Many would be all one with our Saviour whom our Saviour will not know They who govern ill those Kingdoms which they had a right to have to our Saviours Crown of Thornes no right at all Thornes they may find anow of thir own gathering and thir own twisting for Thornes and Snares saith Solomon are in the way of the froward but to weare them as our Saviour wore them is not giv'n to them that suffer by thir own demerits Nor is a Crown of Gold his due who cannot first wear a Crown of Lead not onely for the weight of that great Office but for the compliance which it ought to have with them who are to counsel him which heer he termes in scorne An imbased flexibleness to the various and oft contrary dictates of any Factions meaning his Parlament for the question hath bin all this while between them two And to his Parlament though a numerous and chois Assembly of whom the Land thought wisest he imputes rather then to himself want of reason neglect of the Public interest of parties and particularitie of private will and passion but with what modesty or likelihood of truth it will be wearisom to repeat so oft'n He concludes with a sentence faire in seeming but fallacious For if the conscience be ill edifi'd the resolution may more befitt a foolish then a Christian King to preferr a self-will'd conscience before a Kingdoms good especially in the deniall of that which Law and his Regal Office by Oath bids him grant to his Parlament and whole Kingdom rightfully demanding For we may observe him throughout the discours to assert his Negative power against the whole Kingdom now under the specious Plea of his conscience and his reason but heertofore in a lowder note Without us or against our consent the Votes of either or of both Houses together must not cannot shall not Declar. May 4. 1642. With these and the like deceavable Doctrines he levens also his Prayer VII Vpon the Queens departure TO this Argument we shall soon have said for what concerns it us to hear a Husband divulâ—… his Houshold privacies extolling to others the verâ—…tues of his Wife an infirmity not seldom incident to those who have least cause But how good shee was a Wife was to himself and be it left to his own fancy how bad a Subject is not much disputed And being such it need be made no wonder though shee left a Protestant Kingdom with as little honour as her Mother left a Popish That this Is the first example of any Protestant Subjects that haue tak'n up Armes against thir King a Protestant can be to Protestants no dishonour when it shal be heard that he first levied Warr on them and to the interest of Papists more then of Protestants He might have giv'n yet the precedence of making warr upon him to the subjects of his own Nation who had twice oppos'd him in the op'n Feild long ere the English found it necessary to doe the like And how groundless how dissembl'd is that feare least shee who for so many yeares had bin averse from the Religion of her Husband and every yeare more and more before these disturbances broke out should for them be now the more alienated from that to which we never heard shee was inclin'd But if the feare of her Delinquency and that Justice which the Protestants demanded on her was any cause of heralienating the more to have gain'd her by indirect means had bin no advantage to Religion much less then was the detriment to loose her furder off It had bin happy if his own actions had not giv'n cause of more scandal to the Protestants then what they did against her could justly scandalize any Papist Them who accus'd her well anough known to be the Parlament he censures for Men yet to seeke thir Religion whether Doctrine Discipline or good manners the rest he soothes with the name of true English Protestants a meer scismatical name yet he so great an enemy of Scism He ascribes Rudeness and barbarity worse then Indian to the English Parlament and all vertue to his Wife in straines that come almost to Sonnetting How fitt to govern men undervaluing and aspersing the great Counsel of his Kingdom in comparison of one Woman Examples are not farr to seek how great mischeif and dishonour hath befall'n to Nations under the Government of effeminate and Uxorious Magistrates Who being themselves govern'd and overswaid at home under a Feminine usurpation
the same scrupulous demurrs to stop the sentence of death in full and free Senat decreed on Lentulus and Cethegus two of Catilines accomplices which were renew'd and urg'd for Strafford He voutsafes to the Reformation by both Kingdoms intended no better name then Innovation and ruine both in Church and State And what we would have learnt so gladly of him in other passages before to know wherin he tells us now of his own accord The expelling of Bishops cut of the House of Peers this was ruin to the State the removing them root and branch this was ruin to the Church How happy could this Nation be in such a Governour who counted that thir ruin which they thought thir deliverance the ruin both of Church and State which was the recovery and the saving of them both To the passing of those Bills against Bishops how is it likely that the House of Peers gave so hardly thir consent which they gave so easily before to the attaching them of High Treason 12. at once onely for protesting that the Parlament could not act without them Surely if thir rights and privileges were thought so undoubted in that House as is heer maintain'd then was that Protestation being meant and intended in the name of thir whole spiritual Order no Treason and so that House it self will becom liable to a just construction either of Injustice to appeach them for so consenting or of usurpation representing none but themselves to expect that their voting or not voting should obstruct the Commons Who not for five repulses of the Lords no not for fifty were to desist from what in name of the whole Kingdom they demanded so long as those Lords were none of our Lords And for the Bil against root and branch though it pass'd not in both Houses till many of the Lords and some few of the Commons either intic'd away by the King or overaw'd by the sense of thir own Malignācy not prevailing deserted the Parlament and made a fair riddance of themselves that was no warrant for them who remain'd faithfull beeing farr the greater number to lay aside that Bill of root and branch till the returne of thir fugitives a Bill so necessary and so much desir'd by them selves as well as by the People This was the partiality this degrading of the Bishops a thing so wholsom in the State and so Orthodoxal in the Church both ancient and reformed which the King rather then assent to will either hazard both his own and the Kingdomes ruin by our just defence against his force of armes or prostrat our consciences in a blind obedience to himself and those men whose superstition Zealous or unzealous would inforce upon us an Antichristian tyranny in the Church neither Primitive Apostolicall nor more anciently universal then som other manifest corruptions But he was bound besides his judgement by a most strict and undispensable Oath to preserve that Order and the rights of the Church If he mean the Oath of his Coronation and that the letter of that Oath admitt not to be interpreted either by equity reformation or better knowledge then was the King bound by that Oath to grant the clergie all those customs franchises and Canonical privileges granted to them by Edward the Confessor and so might one day under pretence of that Oath and his conscience have brought us all again to popery But had he so well rememberd as he ought the words to which he swore he might have found himself no otherwise oblig'd there then according to the Lawes of God and true profession of the Gospel For if those following words Establish'd in this Kingdome be set there to limit and lay prescription on the Laws of God and truth of the Gospel by mans establishment nothing can be more absurrd or more injurious to Religion So that however the German Emperors or other Kings have levied all those Warrs on thir Protestant Subjects under the colour of a blind and literal observance to an Oath yet this King had least pretence of all both sworn to the Laws of God and Evangelic truth and disclaiming as we heard him before to be bound by any Coronation Oath in a blind and brutish formality Nor is it to be imagin'd if what shall be establish'd come in question but that the Parlament should oversway the King and not he the Parlament And by all Law and Reason that which the Parlament will not is no more establish'd in this Kingdom neither is the King bound by Oath to uphold it as a thing establish'd And that the King who of his Princely grace as he professes hath so oft abolisht things that stood firm by Law as the Star-chamber High Commission ever thought himself bound by Oath to keep them up because establisht he who will beleiv must at the same time condemn him of as many perjuries as he is well known to have abolisht both Laws and Jurisdictions that wanted no establishment Had he gratifi'd he thinks their Antiepiscopal Faction with his consent and sacrific'd the Church government and Revennues to the fury of their covetousness c. an Army had not bin rais'd Whereas it was the fury of his own hatred to the professors of true Religion which first incited him to persecute them with the Sword of Warr when Whipps Pillories Exiles and impris'nments were not thought sufficient To colour which he cannot finde wherwithall but that stale pretence of Charles the fifth and other Popish Kings that the Protestants had onely an intent to lay hands upon Church-revennues a thing never in the thoughts of this Parlament 'till exhausted by his endless Warrupon them thir necessity seis'd on that for the Common wealth which the luxury of Prelats had abus'd before to a common mischeif His consent to the unlording of Bishops for to that he himself consented and at Canterbury the cheif seat of thir pride so God would have it was from his firm perswasion of thir contentedness to suffer a present diminution of thir rights Can any man reading this not discern the pure mockery of a Royalconsent to delude us onely for the present meaning it seems when time should serve to revoke all By this reckning his consents and his denials come all to one pass and we may hence perceav the small wisdom and integrity of those Votes which Voted his Concessions at the I le of Wight for grounds of a lasting Peace This he alleges this controversie about Bishops to be the true state of that difference between him and the Parlament For he held Episcopacy both very Sacred and Divine With this judgement and for this cause he withdrew from the Parlament and confesses that some men knew he was like to bring againe the same judgement which he carried with him A fair and unexpected justification from his own mouth afforded to the Parlament who notwithstanding what they knew of his obstinat mind omitted not to use all those means and that patience to have gain'd him
upon his Subjects though no way by them provok'd he sends an Agent with Letters to the King of Denmark requiring aid against the parlament and that aid was comming when Divine providence to divert them sent a sudden torrent of Swedes into the bowels of Denmark He then endeavours to bring up both Armies first the English with whom 8000 Irish Papists rais'd by Strafford and a French Army were to joyne then the Scots at Newcastle whom he thought to have encourag'd by telling them what Mony and Horse he was to have from Denmark I mention not the Irish conspiracie till due place These and many other were his Counsels toward a civil Warr. His preparations after those two Armies were dismiss'd could not suddenly be too op'n Nevertheless there were 8000 Irish Papists which he refus'd to disband though intreated by both Houses first for reasons best known to himself next under pretence of lending them to the Spaniard and so kept them undisbanded till very neere the Mounth wherin that Rebellion broke forth He was also raising Forces in London pretendedly to serve the Portugall but with intent to seise the Tower Into which divers Canoneers were by him sent with many fire works and Granado's and many great battering peeces were mounted against the City The Court was fortifi'd with Ammunition and Souldiers-new listed who follow'd the King from London and appear'd at Kingston som hunderds of Horse in a warlike manner with Waggons of Ammunition after them the Queen in Holland was buying more of which the Parlament had certain knowledge and had not yet so much as once demanded the Militia to be settl'd till they knew both of her going over sea and to what intent For she had pack'd up the Crown Jewels to have bin going long before had not the Parlament suspecting by the discoveries at Burrow Bridge what was intended with the Jewells us'd meanes to stay her journey till the winter Hull and the Magazin there had bin secretly attempted under the Kings hand from whom though in his declarations renouncing all thought of Warr notes were sent over sea for supply of Armes which were no sooner come but the inhabitants of Yorkshire and other Counties were call'd to Arms and actual forces rais'd while the Parlament were yet Petitioning in peace and had not one man listed As to the Act of Hostilitie though not much material in whom first it began or by whose Commissions dated first after such Counsels and preparations discover'd and so farr advanc'd by the King yet in that act also he will be found to have had precedency if not at London by the assault of his armed Court upon the naked People and his attempt upon the House of Commons yet certainly at Hull first by his close practices on that Town next by his seige Thus whether Counsels preparations or Acts of hostilitie be considerd it appeares with evidence anough though much more might be said that the King is truly charg'd to bee the first beginner of these civil Warrs To which may be added as a close that in the I le of Wight he charg'd it upon himself at the public Treaty and acquitted the Parlament But as for the securing of Hull and the public stores therin and in other places it was no Surprisall of his strength the custody wherof by Autority of Parlament was committed into hands most fitt and most responsible for such a trust It were a folly beyond ridiculous to count our selves a free Nation if the King not in Parlament but in his own Person and against them might appropriate to himself the strength of a whole Nation as his proper goods What the Lawes of the Land are a Parlament should know best having both the life and death of Lawes in thir Lawgiving power And the Law of England is at best but the reason of Parlament The Parlament therfore taking into thir hands that wherof most properly they ought to have the keeping committed no surprisal If they prevented him that argu'd not at all either his innocency or unpreparedness but their timely foresight to use prevention But what needed that They knew his chiefest Armes left him were those onely which the ancient Christians were wont to use against thir Persecuters Prayers and Teares O sacred Reverence of God Respect and Shame of Men whither were yee fled when these hypocrisies were utterd Was the Kingdom then at all that cost of blood to remove from him none but Praiers and Teares What were those thousands of blaspheming Cavaliers about him whose mouthes let fly Oaths and Curses by the voley were those the Praiers and those Carouses drunk to the confusion of all things good or holy did those minister the Teares Were they Praiers and Teares that were listed at York muster'd on Heworth Moore and laid Seige to Hull for the guard of his Person Were Praiers and Teares at so high a rate in Holland that nothing could purchase them but the Crown Jewels Yet they in Holland such word was sent us sold them for Gunns Carabins Morters-peeces Canons and other deadly Instruments of Warr which when they came to York were all no doubt but by the merit of some great Saint suddenly transform'd into Praiers and Teares and being divided into Regiments and Brigads were the onely Armes that mischiev'd us in all those Battels and Incounters These were his chief Armes whatever we must call them and yet such Armes as they who fought for the Common-wealth have by the help of better Praiers vanquish'd and brought to nothing He bewailes his want of the Militia Not so much in reference to his own protection as the Peoples whose many and sore oppressions greeve him Never considering how ill for seventeen yeares together hee had protected them and that these miseries of the people are still his own handy work having smitt'n them like a forked Arrow so sore into the Kingdoms sides as not to be drawn out and cur'd without the incision of more flesh He tells us that what he wants in the hand of power he has in the wings of Faith and Prayer But they who made no reckning of those Wings while they had that power in thir hands may easily mistake the Wings of Faith for the Wings of presumption and so fall headlong We meet next with a comparison how apt let them judge who have travell'd to Mecca That the Parlament have hung the majestie of Kingship in any airy imagination of regality between the Privileges of both Houses like the Tombe of Mahomet Hee knew not that he was prophecying the death and burial of a Turkish Tyranny that spurn'd down those Laws which gave it life and being so long as it endur'd to be a regulated Monarchy He counts it an injury Not to have the sole power in himself to help or hurt any and that the Militia which he holds to be his undoubted Right should be dispos'd as the Parlament thinks fitt And yet confesses that if he had it in his actual
Propositions were obtruded on him with the point of the Sword till he first with the point of the Sword thrust from him both the Propositions and the Propounders He never reck'ns those violent and merciless obtrusions which for almost twenty years he had bin forcing upon tender consciences by all sorts of Persecution till through the multitude of them that were to suffer it could no more be call'd a Persecution but a plain VVarr From which when first the Scots then the English were constrain'd to defend themselves this thir just defence is that which he cals heer Thir making Warr upon his soul. He grudges that So many things are requir'd of him and nothing offerd him in requital of those favours which he had granted What could satiate the desires of this man who being king of England and Maister of almost two millions yearly what by hook or crook was still in want and those acts of Justice which he was to doe in duty counts don as favours and such favors as were not don without the avaritious hope of other rewards besides supreme honour and the constant Revennue of his place This honour he saith they did him to put him on the giving part And spake truer then he intended it beeing meerly for honours sake that they did so not that it belong'd to him of right For what can he give to a Parlament who receaves all he hath from the People and for the Peoples good Yet now he brings his own conditional rights to contest and be preferr'd before the Peoples good and yet unless it be in order to their good he hath no rights at all raigning by the Laws of the Land not by his own which Laws are in the hands of Parlament to change or abrogate as they shall see best for the Common-wealth eev'n to the taking away of King-ship it self when it grows too Maisterfull and Burd'nsome For every Common-wealth is in general defin'd a societie sufficient of it self in all things conducible to well being and commodious life Any of which requisit things if it cannot have without the gift and favour of a single person or without leave of his privat reason or his conscience it cannot be thought sufficient of it self and by consequence no Common-wealth nor free but a multitude of Vassalls in the Possession and domaine of one absolute Lord and wholly obnoxious to his will If the King have power to give or deny any thing to his Parlament he must doe it either as a Person several from them or as one greater neither of which will be allow'd him not to be consider'd severally from them for as the King of England can doe no wrong so neither can he doe right but in his Courts and by his Courts and what is legally don in them shall be deem'd the Kings assent though he as a several Person shall judge or endeavour the contrary So that indeed without his Courts or against them he is no King If therefore he obtrude upon us any public mischeif or withhold from us any general good which is wrong in the highest degree he must doe it as a Tyrant not as a King of England by the known Maxims of our Law Neither can he as one greater give aught to the Parlament which is not in thir own power but he must be greater also then the Kingdom which they represent So that to honour him with the giving part was a meer civility and may be well term'd the courtesie of England not the Kings due But the incommunicable Jewell of his conscience he will not give but reserve to himself It seemes that his conscience was none of the Crown Jewels for those we know were in Holland not incommunicable to buy Armes against his Subjects Being therfore but a privat Jewel he could not have don a greater pleasure to the Kingdom then by reserving it to himself But he contrary to what is heer profess'd would have his conscience not an incommunicable but a universal conscience the whole Kingdoms conscience Thus what he seemes to feare least we should ravish from him is our chief complaint that he obtruded upon us we never forc'd him to part with his conscience but it was he that would have forc'd us to part with ours Som things he taxes them to have offer'd him which while he had the maistery of his Reason he would never consent to Very likely but had his reason maisterd him as it ought and not bin maisterd long agoe by his sense and humour as the breeding of most Kings hath bin ever sensual and most humour'd perhaps he would have made no difficulty Mean while at what a fine pass is the Kingdom that must depend in greatest exigencies vpon the fantasie of a Kings reason be he wise or foole who arrogantly shall answer all the wisdom of the Land that what they offer seemes to him unreasonable He preferrs his love of Truth before his love of the People His love of Truth would have ledd him to the search of Truth and have taught him not to lean so much upon his own understanding He met at first with Doctrines of unaccountable Prerogative in them he rested because they pleas'd him they therfore pleas'd him because they gave him all and this he calls his love of Truth and preferrs it before the love of his peoples peace Som things they propos'd which would have wounded the inward peace of his conscience The more our evil happ that three Kingdoms should be thus pesterd with one Conscience who chiefly scrupl'd to grant us that which the parlament advis'd him to as the chief meanes of our public welfare and Reformation These scruples to many perhaps will seem pretended to others upon as good grounds may seem real and that it was the just judgement of God that he who was so cruel and so remorseless to other mens consciences should have a conscience within him as cruel to himself constraining him as he constrain'd others and insnaring him in such waies and counsels as were certain to be his destruction Other things though he could approve yet in honour and policy he thought fit to deny lest he should seem to dare aeny nothing By this meanes he will be sure what with reason conscience honour policy or puntilios to be found never unfurnisht of a denyal Whether it were his envy not to be over bounteous or that the submissness of our asking stirr'd up in him a certain pleasure of denying Good Princes have thought it thir chief happiness to be alwayes granting if good things for the things sake if things indifferent for the peoples sake while this man sits calculating varietie of excuses how he may grant least as if his whole strength and royaltie were plac'd in a meer negative Of one Proposition especially he laments him much that they would bind him to a generall and implicit consent for what ever they desir'd Which though I find not among the nineteene yet undoubtedly the Oath of his coronation
binds him to no less neither is he at all by his Office to interpose against a Parlament in the making or not making of any Law but to take that for just and good legally which is there decreed and to see it executed accordingly Nor was he set over us to vie wisdom with his Parlament but to be guided by them any of whome possibly may as farr excell him in the gift of wisdom as he them in place and dignitie But much neerer is it to impossibilitie that any King alone should be wiser then all his councel sure anough it was not he though no King ever before him so much contended to have it thought so And if the Parlament so thought not but desir'd him to follow their advice and deliberation in things of public concernment he accounts it the same proposition as if Sampson had bin mov'd to the putting out his eyes that the Philistims might abuse him And thus out of an unwise or pretended feare least others should make a scorn of him for yeilding to his Parlament he regards not to give cause of worse suspicion that he made a scorn of his regal Oath But to exclude him from all power of deniall seemes an arrogance in the Parlament he means what in him then to deny against the Parlament None at all by what he argues For by Petitioning they confess thir inferioritie and that obliges them to rest if not satisfi'd yet quieted with such an Answer as the will and reason of their Superior thinks sit to give First Petitioning in better English is no more then requesting or requiring and men require not favours onely but thir due and that not onely from Superiors but from Equals and Inferiors also The noblest Romans when they stood for that which was a kind of Regal honour the Consulship were wont in a submissive manner to goe about and begg that highest Dignity of the meanest Plebeians naming them man by man which in their tongue was call'd Petitio consulatus And the Parlament of England Petition'd the King not because all of them were inferior to him but because he was superior to any one of them which they did of civil custom and for fashions sake more then of duty for by plaine Law cited before the Parlament is his Superiour But what law in any trial or dispute enjoynes a free man to rest quieted though not satisfi'd with the will and reason of his Superior It were a mad law that would subject reason to superioritie of place And if our highest consultations and purpos'd lawes must be terminated by the Kings will then is the will of one man our Law and no suttletie of dispute can redeem the Parlament and Nation from being Slaves neither can any Tyrant require more then that his will or reason though not satisfying should yet be rested in and determin all things We may conclude therfore that when the Parlament petition'd the King it was but meerly forme let it be as foolish and absurd as he pleases It cannot certainly be so absurd as what he requires that the Parlament should confine thir own and all the Kingdoms reason to the will of one man because it was his hap to succeed his Father For neither God nor the Lawes have subjected us to his will nor sett his reason to be our sovran above Law which must needs be if he can strangle it in the birth but sett his person over us in the sovran execution of such Laws as the Parlament establish The Parlament therfore without any usurpation hath had it alwaies in thir power to limit and confine the exorbitancie of Kings whether they call it thir will thir reason or thir conscience But this above all was never expected nor is to be endur'd that a King who is bound by law and Oath to follow the advice of his Parlament should be permitted to except against them as young Statesmen and proudly to suspend his following thir advice untill his seven yeares experience had shewn him how well they could govern themselves Doubtless the Law never suppos'd so great an arrogance could be in one man that he whose seventeen yeares unexperience had almost ruin'd all should sit another seven yeares Schoolmaster to tutor those who were sent by the whole Realme to be his Counselers and teachers And with what modesty can he pretend to be a Statesman himself who with his Fathers Kingcraft and his own did never that of his own accord which was not directly opposit to his professed Interest both at home and abroad discontenting and alienating his Subjects at home weakning and deserting his Confederats abroad and with them the Common cause of Religion So that the whole course of his raign by an example of his own furnishing hath resembl'd Phaeton more then Phoebus and forc'd the Parlament to drive like Jehu which Omen tak'n from his own mouth God hath not diverted And he on the other side might have rememberd that the Parlament sit in that body not as his Subjects but as his Superiors call'd not by him but by the Law not onely twice every yeare but as oft as great affaires require to be his Counselers and Dictators though he stomac it nor to be dissolv'd at his pleasure but when all greevances be first remov'd all Petitions heard and answer'd This is not onely Reason but the known Law of the Land When he heard that Propositions would be sent him he satt conjecturing what they would propound and because they propounded what he expected not he takes that to be a warrant for his denying them But what did he expect he expected that the Parlament would reinforce some old Laws But if those Laws were not a sufficient remedy to all greevances nay were found to be greevances themselves when did we loose that other part of our freedom to establish new He thought some injuries done by himself and others to the Common wealth were to be repair'd But how could that be while he the chief offender took upon him to be sole Judge both of the injury and the reparation He staid till the advantages of his Crown consider'd might induce him to condiscend to the Peoples good Whenas the Crown it self with all those advantages were therfore giv'n him that the peoples good should be first consider'd not bargain'd for and bought by inches with the bribe of more offertures and advantages to his Crown He look'd for moderate desires of due Reformation as if any such desires could be immoderate He lookd for such a Reformation both in Church and State as might preserve the roots of every greevance and abuse in both still growing which he calls The foundation and essentials and would have onely the excrescencies of evil prun'd away for the present as was plotted before that they might grow fast anough between Triennial Parlaments to hinder them by worke anough besides from ever striking at the root He alleges They should have had regard to the Laws in force
to the wisdom and pietie of former Parlaments to the ancient and universall practise of Christian Churches As if they who come with full autority to redress public greevances which ofttimes are Laws themselves were to have thir hands bound by Laws in force or the supposition of more pietie and wisdom in thir Ancestors or the practise of Churches heertofore whose Fathers notwithstanding all these pretences made as vast alterations to free themselves from ancient Popery For all antiquity that adds or varies from the Scripture is no more warranted to our safe imitation then what was don the Age before at Trent Nor was there need to have despair'd of what could be establish'd in lieu of what was to be annull'd having before his eyes the Goverment of so many Churches beyond the Seas whose pregnant and solid reasons wrought so with the Parlament as to desire a uniformity rather with all other Protestants then to be a scism divided from them under a conclave of thirty Bishops and a crew of irreligious Priests that gap'd for the same preferment And wheras he blames those propositions for not containing what they ought what did they mention but to vindicate and restore the Rights of Parlament invaded by Cabin councels the Courts of Justice obstructed and the Government of Church innovated and corrupted All these things he might easily have observ'd in them which he affirmes he could not find But found those demanding in Parlament who were look't upon before as factious in the State and scismaticall in the Church and demanding not onely Tolerations for themselves in thir vanity noveltie and confusion but also an extirpation of that Goverment whose Rights they had a mind to invade Was this man ever likely to be advis'd who with such a prejudice and disesteem sets himself against his chos'n and appointed Counselers likely ever to admitt of Reformation who censures all the Goverment of other Protestant Churches as bad as any Papist could have censur'd them And what King had ever his whole Kingdom in such contempt so to wrong and dishonour the free elections of his people as to judge them whom the Nation thought worthiest to sitt with him in Parlament few els but such as were punishable by Lawes yet knowing that time was when to be a Protestant to be a Christian was by Law as punishable as to be a Traitor and that our Saviour himself comming to reform his Church was accus'd of an intent to invade Caesars right as good a right as the prelat Bishops ever had the one being got by force the other by spiritual usurpation and both by force upheld He admires and falls into an extasie that the Parlament should send him such a horrid Proposition as the removal of Episcopacy But expect from him in an extasie no other reasons of his admiration then the dream and tautology of what he hath so oft repeated Law Antiquitie Ancestors prosperity and the like which will be therfore not worth a second answer but may pass with his own comparison Into the common sewer of other Popish arguments Had the two Houses su'd out thir Liverie from the wardship of Tumults he could sooner have beleiv'd them It concernd them first to sue out thir Livery from the unjust wardship of his encroaching Prerogative And had he also redeem'd his overdated minority from a Pupillage under Bishops he would much less have mistrusted his Parlament and never would have set so base a Character upon them as to count them no better then the Vassals of certain nameless men whom he charges to be such as hunt after Faction with their Hounds the Tumults And yet the Bishops could have told him that Nimrod the first that hunted after Faction is reputed by ancient Tradition the first that founded Monarchy whence it appeares that to hunt after Faction is more properly the Kings Game and those Hounds which he calls the Vulgar have bin oft'n hollow'd to from Court of whom the mungrel sort have bin entic'd the rest have not lost thir sent but understood aright that the Parlament had that part to act which he had fail'd in that trust to discharge which he had brok'n that estate and honour to preserve which was farr beyond his the estate and honour of the Common-wealth which he had imbezl'd Yet so farr doth self opinion or fals principles delude and transport him as to think the concurrence of his reason to the Votes of Parlament not onely Political but Natural and as necessary to the begetting or bringing forth of any one compleat act of public wisdom as the Suns influence is necessary to all natures productions So that the Parlament it seems is but a Female and without his procreative reason the Laws which they can produce are but wind-eggs Wisdom it seems to a King is natural to a Parlament not natural but by conjunction with the King Yet he professes to hold his Kingly right by Law and if no Law could be made but by the great Counsel of a Nation which we now term a Parlament then certainly it was a Parlament that first created Kings and not onely made Laws before a King was in being but those Laws especially wherby he holds his Crown He ought then to have so thought of a Parlament if he count it not Male as of his Mother which to civil being created both him and the Royalty he wore And if it hath bin anciently interpreted the presaging signe of a future Tyrant but to dream of copulation with his Mother what can it be less then actual Tyranny to affirme waking that the Parlament which is his Mother can neither conceive or bring forth any autoritative Act without his Masculine coition Nay that his reason is as Celestial and life-giving to the Parlament as the Suns influence is to the Earth What other notions but these or such like could swell up to Caligula to think himself a God But to be ridd of these mortifying Propositions he leaves no Tyrannical evasion unassaid first that they are not the joynt and free desires of both Houses or the major part next that the choise of many Members was carried on by Faction The former of these is already discover'd to be an old device put first in practice by Charles the fifth since Reformation Who when the Protestants of Germany for thir own defense join'd themselves in League in his Declarations Remonstrances laid the fault only upon some few for it was dangerous to take notice of too many Enemies and accus'd them that under colour of Religion they had a purpose to invade his and the Churches right by which policy he deceav'd many of the German Cities and kept them divided from that League untill they saw themselves brought into a snare That other cavil against the peoples chois puts us in mind rather what the Court was wont to doe and how to tamper with Elections neither was there at that time any Faction more potent or more likely to
so but privatly in the Counsel Books inroull'd no Parlament that if accommodation had succeeded upon what termes soever such a devilish fraud was prepar'd that the King in his own esteem had bin absolv'd from all performance as having treated with Rebels and no Parlament and they on the other side in stead of an expected happines had bin brought under the Hatchet Then no doubt Warr had ended that Massacher and Tyranny might begin These jealousies however rais'd let all men see whether they be diminish'd or allay'd by the Letters of his own Cabinet open'd And yet the breach of this Treaty is lay'd all upon the Parlament and thir Commissioners with odious Names of Pertinacy hatred of Peace Faction and Covetousness nay his own Bratt Superstition is layd to their charge not withstanding his heer profess'd resolution to continue both the Order Maintenance and Authority of Prelats as a truth of God And who were most to blame in the unsuccessfullness of that Treaty his appeale is to Gods decision beleeving to be very excusable at that Tribunal But if ever man gloried in an unflexible stifness he came not behind any and that grand Maxim always to put somthing into his Treaties which might give colour to refuse all that was in other things granted and to make them signifie nothing was his own Principal Maxim and particular instructions to his Commissioners Yet all by his own verdit must be consterd Reason in the King and depraved temper in the Parlament That the highest Tide of success with these principles and designes set him not above a Treaty no great wonder And yet if that be spok'n to his praise the Parlament therin surpass'd him who when he was thir vanquish'd and thir captive his forces utterly brok'n and disbanded yet offerd him three several times no wors proposals or demands then when he stood fair to be thir Conqueror But that imprudent surmise that his lowest Ebb could not set him below a Fight was a presumption that ruin'd him He presag'd the future unsuccessfulness of Treaties by the unwillingness of som men to treat and could not see what was present that thir unwillingness had good cause to proceed from the continual experience of his own obstinacy and breach of word His prayer therfore of forgiveness to the guilty of that treaties breaking he had good reason to say heartily over as including no man in that guilt sooner then himself As for that Protestation following in his Prayer How oft have I entreated for peace but when I speak therof they make them ready to Warr unless he thought himself still in that perfidious mist between Colebrook and Houndslow and thought that mist could hide him from the eye of Heav'n as well as of Man after such a bloody recompence giv'n to our first offers of Peace how could this in the sight of Heav'n without horrours of conscience be utter'd XIX Vpon the various events of the Warr. IT is no new or unwonted thing for bad men to claim as much part in God as his best servants to usurp and imitate thir words and appropriate to themselves those properties which belong onely to the good and righteous This not onely in Scripis familiarly to be found but heer also in this Chapter of Apocrypha He tells us much why it pleas'd God to send him Victory or Loss although what in so doing was the intent of God he might be much mistak'n as to his own particular but we are yet to learn what real good use he made therof in his practice Those numbers which he grew to from small beginnings were not such as out of love came to protect him for none approv'd his actions as a King except Courtiers and Prelats but were such as fled to be protected by him from the fear of that Reformation which the pravity of thir lives would not bear Such a Snowball he might easily gather by rowling through those cold and dark provinces of ignorance and leudness where on a sudden he became so numerous He imputes that to Gods protection which to them who persist in a bad cause is either his long-suffering or his hard'ning and that to wholesom chastisement which were the gradual beginnings of a severe punishment For if neither God nor nature put civil power in the hands of any whomsoever but to a lawfull end and commands our obedience to the autority of Law onely not to the Tyrannical force of any person and if the Laws of our Land have plac'd the Sword in no mans single hand so much as to unsheath against a forren enemie much less upon the native people but have plac'd it in that elective body of the Parlament to whom the making repealing judging and interpreting of Law it self was also committed as was fittest so long as wee intended to bee a free Nation and not the Slaves of one mans will then was the King himself disobedient and rebellious to that Law by which he raign'd and by autority of Parlament to raise armes against him in defence of Law and Libertie we doe not onely think but beleeve and know was justifiable both by the Word of God the Laws of the Land and all lawfull Oaths and they who sided with him fought against all these The same Allegations which he uses for himself and his Party may as well fitt any Tyrant in the world for let the Parlament bee call'd a Faction when the King pleases and that no Law must bee made or chang'd either civil or religious because no Law will content all sides then must be made or chang'd no Law at all but what a Tyrant be he Protestant or Papist thinks fitt Which tyrannous assertion forc'd upon us by the Sword he who fights against and dyes fighting if his other sins overweigh not dyes a Martyr undoubtedly both of the Faith and of the Common-wealth and I hold it not as the opinion but as the full beleef and persuasion of farr holier and wiser men then Parasitie Preachers Who without their dinner-Doctrin know that neither King Law civil Oaths or Religion was ever establish'd without the Parlament and thir power is the same to abrogate as to establish neither is any thing to bee thought establish'd which that House declares to be abolisht Where the Parlament sitts there inseparably sitts the King there the Laws there our Oaths and whatsoever can be civil in Religion They who fought for the Parlament in the truest sense fought for all these who fought for the King divided from his Parlament fought for the shadow of a King against all these and for things that were not as if they were establisht It were a thing monstrously absurd and contradictory to give the Parlament a Legislative power and then to upbraid them for transgressing old Establishments But the King and his Party having lost in this Quarrel thir Heav'n upon Earth beginn to make great reckning of Eternal Life and at an easie rate in forma Pauperis Canonize one another
into Heav'n he them in his Book they him in the Portrature before his Book but as was said before Stage-work will not doe it much less the justness of thir Cause wherin most frequently they dy'd in a brutish fierceness with Oaths and other damning words in thir mouths as if such had bin all the Oaths they fought for which undoubtedly sent them full Sail on another Voyage then to Heav'n In the mean while they to whom God gave Victory never brought to the King at Oxford the state of thir consciences that he should presume without confession more then a Pope presumes to tell abroad what conflicts and accusations men whom he never spoke with have in thir own thoughts We never read of any English King but one that was a Confessor and his name was Edward yet sure it pass'd his skill to know thoughts as this King takes upon him But they who will not stick to slander mens inward consciences which they can neither see nor know much less will care to slander outward actions which they pretend to see though with senses never so vitiated To judge of his conditions conquerd and the manner of dying on that side by the sober men that chose it would be his small advantage it being most notorious that they who were hottest in his Cause the most of them were men oftner drunk then by thir good will sober and very many of them so fought and so dy'd And that the conscience of any man should grow suspicious or be now convicted by any pretentions in the Parlament which are now prov'd fals and unintended there can be no just cause For neither did they ever pretend to establish his Throne without our Liberty and Religion nor Religion without the Word of God nor to judge of Laws by thir being establisht but to establish them by thir being good and necessary He tells the World He oft'n prayd that all on his side might be as faithfull to God and thir own souls as to him But Kings above all other men have in thir hands not to pray onely but to doe To make that prayer effectual he should have govern'd as well as pray'd To pray and not to govern is For a Monk and not a King Till then he might be well assur'd they were more faithfull to thir lust and rapine then to him In the wonted predication of his own vertues he goes on to tell us that to Conquer he never desir'd but onely to restore the Laws and Liberties of his people It had bin happy then he had known at last that by force to restore Laws abrogated by the Legislative Parlament is to conquer absolutely both them and Law it self And for our Liberties none ever oppress'd them more both in Peace and Warr first like a maister by his arbitrary power next as an enemy by hostile invasion And if his best freinds fear'd him and he himself in the temptation of an absolute Conquest it was not only pious but freindly in the Parlament both to fear him and resist him since their not yeelding was the onely meanes to keep him out of that temptation wherin he doubted his own strength He takes himself to be guilty in this Warr of nothing els but of confirming the power of some Men Thus all along he signifies the Parlament whom to have settl'd by an Act he counts to be his onely guiltiness So well he knew that to continue a Parlament was to raise a War against himself what were his actions then and his Government the while For never was it heard in all our Story that Parlaments made Warr on thir Kings but on thir Tyrants whose modesty and gratitude was more wanting to the Parlament then theirs to any of such Kings What he yeelded was his feare what he deny'd was his obstinacy had he yeelded more fear might perchance have sav'd him had he granted less his obstinacy had perhaps the sooner deliverd us To review the occasions of this Warr will be to them never too late who would be warn'd by his example from the like evils but to wish onely a happy conclusion will never expiate the fault of his unhappy beginnings T is true on our side the sins of our lives not seldom fought against us but on their side besides those the grand sin of thir Cause How can it be otherwise when he desires heer most unreasonably and indeed sacrilegiously that we should be subject to him though not furder yet as farr as all of us may be subject to God to whom this expression leaves no precedency Hee who desires from men as much obedience and subjection as we may all pay to God desires not less then to be a God a sacrilege farr wors then medling with the Bishops Lands as he esteems it His Praier is a good Praier and a glorious but glorying is not good if it know not that a little leven levens the whole lump It should have purg'd out the leven of untruth in telling God that the blood of his Subjects by him shedd was in his just and necessary defence Yet this is remarkable God hath heer so orderd his Prayer that as his own lipps acquitted the Parlament not long before his death of all the blood spilt in this Warr so now his prayer unwittingly drawes it upon himself For God imputes not to any man the blood he spills in a just cause and no man ever begg'd his not imputing of that which he in his justice could not impute So that now whether purposely or unaware he hath confess'd both to God and Man the bloodguiltiness of all this Warr to lie upon his own head XX. Upon the Reformation of the times THis Chapter cannot punctually be answer'd without more repetitions then now can be excusable Which perhaps have already bin more humour'd then was needfull As it presents us with nothing new so with his exceptions against Reformation pittifully old and tatter'd with continual using not onely in his Book but in the words and Writings of every Papist and Popish King On the Scene he thrusts out first an Antimasque of two bugbeares Noveltie and Perturbation that the ill looks and noise of those two may as long as possible drive off all endeavours of a Reformation Thus sought Pope Adrian by representing the like vain terrors to divert and dissipate the zeal of those reforming Princes of the age before in Germany And if we credit Latimers Sermons our Papists heer in England pleaded the same dangers and inconveniencies against that which was reform'd by Edward the sixth Whereas if those fears had bin available Christianity it self had never bin receav'd Which Christ foretold us would not be admitted without the censure of noveltie and many great commotions These therfore are not to deterr us He grants Reformation to be a good work and confesses What the indulgence of times and corruption of manners might have deprav'd So did the foremention'd Pope and our Gransire Papists in this Realm Yet
which made him much the fitter man to raigne But they who suffer as oppressors Tyrants violaters of Law and persecutors of Reformation without appearance of repenting if they once get hold againe of that dignity and power which they had lost are but whetted and inrag'd by what they suffer'd against those whom they look upon as them that caus'd thir sufferings How he hath bin subject to the scepter of Gods word and spirit though acknowledg'd to be the best Goverment and what his dispensation of civil power hath bin with what Justice and what honour to the public peace it is but looking back upon the whole catalogue of his deeds and that will be sufficient to remember us The Cup of Gods physic as he calls it what alteration it wrought in him to a firm healthfulness from any surfet or excess wherof the people generally thought him sick if any man would goe about to prove we have his own testimony following heer that it wrought none at all First he hath the same fix'd opinion and esteem of his old Ephesian Goddess call'd the Church of England as he had ever and charges strictly his Son after him to persevere in that Anti-Papal Scism for it is not much better as that which will be necessary both for his soules and the Kingdoms Peace But if this can be any foundation of the kingdoms peace which was the first cause of our distractions let common sense be Judge It is a rule and principle worthy to be known by Christians that no Scripture no nor so much as any ancient Creed bindes our Faith or our obedience to any Church whatsoever denominated by a particular name farr less if it be distinguisht by a several Goverment from that which is indeed Catholic No man was ever bidd be subject to the Church of Corinth Rome or Asia but to the Church without addition as it held faithfull to the rules of Scripture and the Goverment establisht in all places by the Apostles which at first was universally the same in all Churches and Congregations not differing or distinguisht by the diversity of Countries Territories or civil bounds That Church that from the name of a distinct place takes autority to set up a distinct Faith or Government is a Scism and Faction not a Church It were an injurie to condemn the Papist of absurdity and contradiction for adhering to his Catholic Romish Religion if we for the pleasure of a King and his politic considerations shall adhere to a Catholic English But suppose the Church of England were as it ought to be how is it to us the safer by being so nam'd and establisht when as that very name and establishment by his contriving or approbation serv'd for nothing els but to delude us and amuse us while the Church of England insensibly was almost chang'd and translated into the Church of Rome Which as every Man knows in general to be true so the particular Treaties and Transactions tending to that conclusion are at large discover'd in a Book intitld the English Pope But when the people discerning these abuses began to call for Reformation in order to which the Parlament demanded of the King to unestablish that Prelatical Goverment which without Scripture had usurpt over us strait as Pharaoh accus'd of Idleness the Israelites that sought leave to goe and sacrifice to God he layes faction to thir charge And that we may not hope to have ever any thing reform'd in the Church either by him or his Son he forewarnes him That the Devil of Rebellion doth most commonly turn himself into an Angel of Reformation and sayes anough to make him hate it as he worst of Evils and the bane of his Crown nay he counsels him to let nothing seem little or despicable to him so as not speedily and effcteually to suppress errors and Scisms Wherby we may perceave plainly that our consciences were destin'd to the same servitude and persecution if not wors then before whether under him or if it should so happ'n under his Son who count all Protestant Churches erroneous and scismatical which are not episcopal His next precept is concerning our civil Liberties which by his sole voice and predominant will must be circumscrib'd and not permitted to extend a hands bredth furder then his interpretation of the Laws already settl'd And although all human laws are but the offspring of that frailty that fallibility and imperfection which was in thir Authors wherby many Laws in the change of ignorant and obscure Ages may be found both scandalous and full of greevance to their Posterity that made them and no Law is furder good then mutable upon just occasion yet if the removing of an old Law or the making of a new would save the Kingdom we shall not have it unless his arbitrary voice will so far slack'n the stiff curb of his prerogative as to grant it us who are as free born to make our own law as our fathers were who made these we have Where are then the English Liberties which we boast to have bin left us by our Progenitors To that he answers that Our Liberties consist in the enjoyment of the fruits of our industry and the benefit of those Laws to which we our selves have consented First for the injoyment of those fruits which our industry and labours have made our own upon our own what Privilege is that above what the Turks Jewes and Mores enjoy under the Turkish Monarchy For without that kind of Justice which is also in Argiers among Theevs and Pirates between themselvs no kind of Government no Societie just or unjust could stand no combination or conspiracy could stick together Which he also acknowledges in these words That if the Crown upon his head be so heavy as to oppress the whole body the weakness of inferiour members cannot return any thing of strength honour or safety to the head but that a necessary debilitation must follow So that this Liberty of the Subject concerns himself and the subsistence of his own regal power in the first place and before the consideration of any right belonging to the Subject VVe expect therfore somthing more that must distinguish free Goverment from slavish But in stead of that this King though ever talking and protesting as smooth as now sufferd it in his own hearing to be Preacht and pleaded without controule or check by them whom he most favourd and upheld that the Subject had no property of his own Goods but that all was the Kings right Next for the benefit of those Laws to which we our selves have consented we never had it under him for not to speak of Laws ill executed when the Parlament and in them the people have consented to divers Laws and according to our ancient Rights demanded them he took upon him to have a negative will as the transcendent and ultimat Law above all our Laws and to rule us forcibly by Laws to which we our selves did not consent
forbidd the Law or disarm justice from having legal power against any King No other supreme Magistrate in what kind of Government soever laies claim to any such enormous Privilege wherfore then should any King who is but one kind of Magistrat and set over the people for no other end then they Next in order of time to the Laws of Moses are those of Christ who declares professedly his judicature to be spiritual abstract from Civil managements and therfore leaves all Nations to thir own particular Lawes and way of Government Yet because the Church hath a kind of Jurisdiction within her own bounds and that also though in process of time much corrupted and plainly turn'd into a corporal judicature yet much approv'd by this King it will be firm anough and valid against him if subjects by the Laws of Church also be invested with a power of judicature both without and against thir King though pretending and by them acknowledg'd next and immediatly under Christ supreme head and Governour Theodosius one of the best Christian Emperours having made a slaughter of the Thessalonians for sedition but too cruelly was excommunicated to his face by Saint Ambrose who was his subject and excommunion is the utmost of Ecclesiastical Judicature a spiritual putting to death But this yee will say was onely an example Read then the Story and it will appeare both that Ambrose avouch'd it for the Law of God and Theodosius confess'd it of his own accord to be so and that the Law of God was not to be made voyd in him for any reverence to his Imperial power From hence not to be tedious I shall pass into our own Land of Britain and shew that Subjects heer have exercis'd the utmost of spirituall Judicature and more then spirituall against thir Kings his Predecessors Vortiger for committing incest with his daughter was by Saint German at that time his subject cursd and condemnd in a Brittish Counsel about the yeare 448 and thereupon soon after was depos'd Mauricus a King in Wales for breach of Oath and the murder of Cynetus was excomunicated and curst with all his offspring by Oudoceus Bishop of Landaff in full Synod about the yeare 560 and not restor'd till he had repented Morcant another King in Wales having slain Frioc his Uncle was faine to come in Person and receave judgement from the same Bishop and his Clergie who upon his penitence acquitted him for no other cause then lest the Kingdom should be destitute of a Successour in the Royal Line These examples are of the Primitive Brittish and Episcopal Church long ere they had any commerce or communion with the Church of Rome What power afterward of deposing Kings and so consequently of putting them to death was assum'd and practis'd by the Canon Law I omitt as a thing generally known Certainly if whole Councels of the Romish Church have in the midst of their dimness discern'd so much of Truth as to decree at Constance and at Basil and many of them to avouch at Trent also that a Councel is above the Pope and may judge him though by them not deni'd to be the Vicar of Christ we in our clearer light may be asham'd not to discern furder that a Parlament is by all equity and right above a King and may judge him whose reasons and pretensions to hold of God onely as his immediat Vicegerent we know how farr fetch'd they are and insufficient As for the Laws of man it would ask a Volume to repeat all that might be cited in this point against him from all Antiquity In Greece Orestes the Son of Agamemnon and by succession King of Argos was in that Countrey judg'd and condemn'd to death for killing his Mother whence escaping he was judg'd againe though a Stranger before the great Counsel of Areopagus in Athens And this memorable act of Judicature was the first that brought the Justice of that grave Senat into fame and high estimation over all Greece for many ages after And in the same Citty Tyrants were to undergoe Legal sentence by the Laws of Solon The Kings of Sparta though descended lineally from Hercules esteem'd a God among them were oft'n judg'd and somtimes put to death by the most just and renowned Laws of Lycurgus who though a King thought it most unequal to bind his Subjects by any Law to which he bound not himself In Rome the Laws made by Valerius Publicola soon after the expelling of Tarquin and his race expell'd without a writt'n Law the Law beeing afterward writt'n and what the Senat decreed against Nero that he should be judg'd and punish'd according to the Laws of thir Ancestors and what in like manner was decreed against other Emperours is vulgarly known as it was known to those heathen and found just by nature ere any Law mentiond it And that the Christian Civil Law warrants like power of Judicature to Subjects against Tyrants is writt'n clearly by the best and famousest Civilians For if it was decreed by Theodosius and stands yet firme in the Code of Justinian that the Law is above the Emperour then certainly the Emperour being under Law the Law may judge him and if judge him may punish him proving tyrannous how els is the Law above him or to what purpose These are necessary deductions and therafter hath bin don in all Ages and Kingdoms oftner then to be heer recited But what need we any furder search after the Law of other Lands for that which is so fully and so plainly set down lawfull in our own Where ancient Books tell us Bracton Fleta and others that the King is under Law and inferiour to his Court of Parlament that although his place to doe Justice be highest yet that he stands as liable to receave Justice as the meanest of his Kingdom Nay Alfred the most worthy King and by som accounted first abolute Monarch of the Saxons heer so ordain'd as is cited out of an ancient Law Book call'd the Mirror in Rights of the Kingdom p. 31. where it is complain'd on As the sovran abuse of all that the King should be deem'd above the Law whereas he ought be subject to it by his Oath Of which Oath anciently it was the last clause that the King should be as liable and obedient to suffer right as others of his people And indeed it were but fond and sensless that the King should be accountable to every petty suit in lesser Courts as we all know he was and not be subject to the Judicature of Parlament in the main matters of our common safety or destruction that he should be answerable in the ordinary cours of Law for any wrong don to a privat Person and not answerable in Court of Parlament for destroying the whole Kingdom By all this and much more that might be added as in an argument overcopious rather then barren we see it manifest that all Laws both of God and Man are made without exemption of any person
too unreasonable that he because dead should have the liberty in his Book to speak all evil of the Parlament and they because living should be expected to have less freedom or any for them to speak home the plain truth of a full and pertinent reply As he to acquitt himself hath not spar'd his Adversaries to load them with all sorts of blame and accusation so to him as in his Book alive there will be us'd no more Courtship then he uses but what is properly his own guilt not imputed any more to his evil Counsellors a Cerèmony us'd longer by the Parlament then he himself desir'd shall be laid heer without circumlocutions at his own dore That they who from the first beginning or but now of late by what unhappines I know not are so much affatuated not with his person onely but with his palpable faults and dote upon his deformities may have none to blame but thir own folly if they live and dye in such a strook'n blindness as next to that of Sodom hath not happ'nd to any sort of men more gross or more misleading Yet neither let his enemies expect to finde recorded heer all that hath been whisper'd in the Court or alleg'd op'nly of the Kings bad actions it being the proper scope of this work in hand not to ripp up and relate the misdoings of his whole life but to answer only and refute the missayings of his book First then that some men whether this were by him intended or by his Friends have by policy accomplish'd after death that revenge upon thir Enemies which in life they were not able hath been oft related And among other examples we finde that the last will of Caesar being read to the people and what bounteous Legacies hee had bequeath'd them wrought more in that Vulgar audience to the avenging of his death then all the art he could ever use to win thir favor in his life-time And how much their intent who publish'd these overlate Apologies and Meditations of the dead King drives to the same end of stirring up the people to bring him that honour that affection and by consequence that revenge to his dead Corps which hee himself living could never gain to his Person it appears both by the conceited portraiture before his Book drawn out to the full measure of a Masking Scene and sett there to catch fools and silly gazers and by those Latin words after the end Vota dabunt qua Bella negarunt intimating That what hee could not compass by Warr he should atchieve by his Meditations For in words which admitt of various sense the libertie is ours to choose that interpretation which may best minde us of what our restless enemies endeavor and what wee are timely to prevent And heer may be well observ'd the loose and negligent curiosity of those who took upon them to adorn the setting out of this Book for though the Picture sett in Front would Martyr him and Saint him to befool the people yet the Latin Motto in the end which they understand not leaves him as it were a politic contriver to bring about that interest by faire and plausible words which the force of Armes deny'd him But quaint Emblems and devices begg'd from the old Pageantry of some Twelf-nights entertainment at Whitehall will doe but ill to make a Saint or Martyr and if the People resolve to take him Sainted at the rate of such a Canonizing I shall suspect thir Calendar more then the Gregorian In one thing I must commend his op'nness who gave the title to this Book 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say The Kings Image and by the Shrine he dresses out for him certainly would have the people come and worship him For which reason this answer also is intitl'd Iconoclastes the famous Surname of many Greek Emperors who in thir zeal to the command of God after long tradition of Idolatry in the Church took courage and broke all superstitious Images to peeces But the People exorbitant and excessive in all thir motions are prone ofttimes not to a religious onely but to a civil kinde of Idolatry in idolizing thir Kings though never more mistak'n in the object of thir worship heretofore being wont to repute for Saints those faithful and courageous Barons who lost thir lives in the Field making glorious Warr against Tyrants for the common Liberty as Simon de Momfort Earl of Leicester against Henry the third Thomas Plantagenet Earl of Lancaster against Edward the second But now with a besotted and degenerate baseness of spirit except some few who yet retain in them the old English fortitude and love of Freedom and have testifi'd it by thir matchless deeds the rest imbastardiz'd from the ancient nobleness of thir Ancestors are ready to fall flatt and give adoration to the Image and Memory of this Man who hath offer'd at more cunning fetches to undermine our Liberties and putt Tyranny into an Art then any British King before him Which low dejection and debasement of mind in the people I must confess I cannot willingly ascribe to the natural disposition of an English-man but rather to two other causes First to the Prelats and thir fellow-teachers though of another Name and Sect whose Pulpit stuff both first and last hath bin the Doctrin and perpetual infusion of servility and wretchedness to all thir hearers whose lives the type of worldliness and hypocrisie without the least tiue pattern of vertue righteousness or self-denial in thir whole practice I attribute it next to the factious inclination of most men divided from the public by several ends and humors of thir own At first no man less belov'd no man more generally condemn'd then was the King from the time that it became his custom to break Parlaments at home and either wilfully or weakly to betray Protestants abroad to the beginning of these Combustions All men inveigh'd against him all men except Courtvassals oppos'd him and his tyrannical proceedings the cry was universal and this full Parlament was at first unanimous in thir dislike and Protestation against his evil Goverment But when they who sought themselves and not the Public began to doubt that all of them could not by one and the same way attain to thir ambitious purposes then was the King or his Name at least as a fit property first made use of his doings made the best of and by degrees justifi'd Which begott him such a party as after many wiles and struglings with his in ward fears imbold'n'd him at length to sett up his Standard against the Parlament Whenas before that time all his adherents consisting most of dissolute Sword-men and Suburb-roysters hardly amounted to the making up of one ragged regiment strong anough to assault the unarmed house of Commons After which attempt seconded by a tedious and bloody warr on his subjects wherein he hath so farr exceeded those his arbitrary violences in time of Peace they who before hated him
for his high misgoverment nay fought against him with display'd banners in the field now applaud him and extoll him for the wisest and most religious Prince that liv'd By so strange a method amongst the mad multitude is a sudden reputation won of wisdom by wilfulness and suttle shifts of goodness by multiplying evil of piety by endeavouring to root out true religion But it is evident that the chief of his adherents never lov'd him never honour'd either him or his cause but as they took him to set a face upon thir own malignant designes nor bemoan his loss at all but the loss of thir own aspiring hopes Like those captive women whom the Poet notes in his Iliad to have bewaild the death of Patroclus in outward show but indeed thir own condition 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hom. Iliad 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And it needs must be ridiculous to any judgement uninthrall'd that they who in other matters express so little fear either of God or man should in this one particular outstripp all precisianism with thir scruples and cases and fill mens ears continually with the noise of thir conscientious Loyaltie and Allegeance to the King Rebels in the mean while to God in all thir actions beside much less that they whose profess'd Loyalty and Allegeance led them to direct Arms against the Kings Person and thought him nothing violated by the Sword of Hostility drawn by them against him should now in earnest think him violated by the unsparing Sword of Justice which undoubtedly so much the less in vain she bears among Men by how much greater and in highest place the offender Els Justice whether moral or political were not Justice but a fals counterfet of that impartial and Godlike vertue The onely grief is that the head was not strook off to the best advantage and commodity of them that held it by the hair an ingratefull and pervers generation who having first cry'd to God to be deliver'd from thir King now murmur against God that heard thir praiers and cry as loud for thir King against those that deliver'd them But as to the Author of these Soliloquies whether it were undoubtedly the late King as is vulgarly beleev'd or any secret Coadjutor and some stick not to name him it can add nothing nor shall take from the weight if any be of reason which he brings But allegations not reasons are the main contents of this Book and need no more then other contrary allegations to lay the question before all men in an eev'n ballance though it were suppos'd that the testimony of one man in his own cause affirming could be of any moment to bring in doubt the autority of a Parlament denying But if these his fair spok'n words shall be heer fairly confronted and laid parallel to his own farr differing deeds manifest and visible to the whole Nation then surely we may look on them who notwithstanding shall persist to give to bare words more credit then to op'n deeds as men whose judgement was not rationally evinc'd and perswaded but fatally stupifi'd and bewitch'd into such a blinde and obstinate beleef For whose cure it may be doubted not whether any charm though never so wisely murmur'd but whether any prayer can be available This however would be remember'd and wel noted that while the K. instead of that repentance which was in reason and in conscience to be expected from him without which we could not lawfully re-admitt him persists heer to maintain and justifie the most apparent of his evil doings and washes over with a Court-fucus the worst and foulest of his actions disables and uncreates the Parlament it self with all our laws and Native liberties that ask not his leave dishonours and attaints all Protestant Churches not Prelaticall and what they piously reform'd with the slander of rebellion sacrilege and hypocrisie they who seem'd of late to stand up hottest for the Cov'nant can now sit mute and much pleas'd to hear all these opprobrious things utter'd against thir faith thir freedom and themselves in thir own doings made traitors to boot The Divines also thir wizzards can be so braz'n as to cry Hosanna to this his book which cries louder against them for no disciples of Christ but of Iscariot and to seem now convinc'd with these wither'd arguments and reasons heer the same which in som other writings of that party and in his own former Declarations and expresses they have so oft'n heertofore endeavour'd to confute and to explode none appearing all this while to vindicate Church or State from these calumnies and reproaches but a small handfull of men whom they defame and spit at with all the odious names of Schism and Sectarism I never knew that time in England when men of truest Religion were not counted Sectaries but wisdom now valor justice constancy prudence united and imbodied to defend Religion and our Liberties both by word and deed against tyranny is counted Schism and faction Thus in a graceless age things of highest praise and imitation under a right name to make them infamous and hatefull to the people are miscall'd Certainly if ignorance and perversness will needs be national and universal then they who adhere to wisdom and to truth are not therfore to be blam'd for beeing so few as to seem a sect or faction But in my opinion it goes not ill with that people where these vertues grow so numerous and well joyn'd together as to resist and make head against the rage and torrent of that boistrous folly and superstition that possesses and hurries on the vulgar sort This therefore we may conclude to be a high honour don us from God and a speciall mark of his favor whom he hath selected as the sole remainder after all these changes and commotions to stand upright and stedfast in his cause dignify'd with the defence of truth and public libertie while others who aspir'd to be the topp of Zelots and had almost brought Religion to a kinde of trading monopoly have not onely by thir late silence and neutrality bely'd thir profession but founder'd themselves and thir consciences to comply with enemies in that wicked cause and interest which they have too oft'n curs'd in others to prosper now in the same themselves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I. Upon the Kings calling this last Parlament THat which the King layes down heer as his first foundation and as it were the head stone of his whole Structure that He call'd this last Parlament not more by others advice and the necessity of his affaires then by his own chois and inclination is to all knowing men so apparently not true that a more unlucky and inauspicious sentence and more betok'ning the downfall of his whole Fabric hardly could have come into his minde For who knows not that the inclination of a Prince is best known either by those next about him and most in favor with him or by the current of his own actions Those neerest to
this King and most his Favorites were Courtiers and Prelates men whose chief study was to finde out which way the King inclin'd and to imitate him exactly How these men stood affected to Parlaments cannot be forgott'n No man but may remember it was thir continuall exercise to dispute and preach against them and in thir common discours nothing was more frequent then that they hoped the King should now have no need of Parlaments any more And this was but the copy which his Parasites had industriously tak'n from his own words and actions who never call'd a Parlament but to supply his necessities and having supply'd those as suddenly and ignominiously dissolv'd it without redressing any one greevance of the people Somtimes choosing rather to miss of his Subsidies or to raise them by illegal courses then that the people should not still miss of thir hopes to be releiv'd by Parlaments The first he broke off at his comming to the Crown for no other cause then to protect the Duke of Buckingham against them who had accus'd him besides other hainous crimes of no less then poysoning the deceased King his Father concerning which matter the Declaration of No more addresses hath sufficiently inform'd us And still the latter breaking was with more affront and indignity put upon the House and her worthiest Members then the former Insomuch that in the fifth year of his Raign in a Proclamation he seems offended at the very rumor of a Parlament divulg'd among the people as if he had tak'n it for a kind of slander that men should think him that way exorable much less inclin'd and forbidds it as a presumption to prescribe him any time for Parlaments that is to say either by perswasion or Petition or so much as the reporting of such a rumor for other manner of prescribing was at that time not suspected By which feirce Edict the people forbidd'n to complain as well as forc'd to suffer began from thenceforth to despaire of Parlaments Whereupon such illegal actions and especially to get vast summs of Money were put in practise by the King and his new Officers as Monopolies compulsive Knight-hoods Cote Conduct and Ship money the seizing not of one Naboths Vineyard but of whole Inheritances under the pretence of Forrest or Crown Lands corruption and Bribery compounded for with impunities granted for the future as gave evident proof that the King never meant nor could it stand with the reason of his affaires ever to recall Parlaments having brought by these irregular courses the peoples interest and his own to so direct an opposition that he might foresee plainly if nothing but a Parlament could save the people it must necessarily be his undoing Till eight or nine years after proceeding with a high hand in these enormities and having the second time levied an injurious Warr against his native Countrie Scotland and finding all those other shifts of raising Money which bore out his first expedition now to faile him not of his own chois and inclination as any Child may see but urg'd by strong necessities and the very pangs of State which his own violent proceedings had brought him to hee calls a Parlament first in Ireland which onely was to give him four Subsidies and so to expire then in England where his first demand was but twelve Subsidies to maintain a Scotch Warr condemn'd and abominated by the whole Kingdom promising thir greevances should be consider'd afterward Which when the Parlament who judg'd that Warr it self one of thir main greevances made no hast to grant not enduring the delay of his impatient will or els fearing the conditions of thir grant he breaks off the whole Session and dismisses them and thir greevances with scorn and frustration Much less therfore did hee call this last Parlament by his own chois and inclination but having first try'd in vaine all undue ways to procure Mony his Army of thir own accord being beat'n in the North the Lords Petitioning and the general voice of the people almost hissing him and his ill acted regality off the Stage compell'd at length both by his wants and by his feares upon meer extremity he summon'd this last Parlament And how is it possible that hee should willingly incline to Parlaments who never was perceiv'd to call them but for the greedy hope of a whole National Bribe his Subsidies and never lov'd never fulfill'd never promoted the true end of Parlaments the redress of greevances but still put them off and prolong'd them whether gratify'd ot not gratify'd and was indeed the Author of all those greevances To say therfore that hee call'd this Parlament of his own chois and inclination argues how little truth wee can expect from the sequel of this Book which ventures in the very first period to affront more then one Nation with an untruth so remarkable and presumes a more implicit Faith in the people of England then the Pope ever commanded from the Romish Laitie or els a natural sottishness fitt to be abus'd and ridd'n While in the judgement of wise Men by laying the foundation of his defence on the avouchment of that which is so manifestly untrue he hath giv'n a worse foile to his own cause then when his whole Forces were at any time overthrown They therfore who think such great Service don to the Kings affairs in publishing this Book will find themselves in the end mistak'n if sense and right mind or but any mediocrity of knowledge and remembrance hath not quite forsak'n men But to prove his inclination to Parlaments he affirms heer To have always thought the right way of them most safe for his Crown and best pleasing to his People What hee thought we know not but that hee ever took the contrary way wee saw and from his own actions we felt long agoe what he thought of Parlaments or of pleasing his People a surer evidence then what we hear now too late in words He alleges that the cause of forbearing to convene Parlaments was the sparkes which some mens distempers there studied to kindle They were indeed not temper'd to his temper for it neither was the Law nor the rule by which all other tempers were to bee try'd but they were esteem'd and chos'n for the fittest men in thir several Counties to allay and quench those distempers which his own inordinate doings had inflam'd And if that were his refusing to convene till those men had been qualify'd to his temper that is to say his will we may easily conjecture what hope ther was of Parlaments had not fear and his insatiat poverty in the midst of his excessive wealth constrain'd him Hee hoped by his freedom and their moderation to prevent misunderstandings And wherfore not by their freedom and his moderation But freedom he thought too high a word for them and moderation too mean a word for himself this was not the way to prevent misunderstandings He still fear'd passion and prejudice in other men not
in any Kings heart And thus his pregnant motives are at last prov'd nothing but a Tympany or a Queen Maries Cushion For in any Kings heart as Kings goe now what shadowie conceit or groundless toy will not create a jealousie That he had design'd to assault the House of Commons taking God to witness he utterly denies yet in his Answer to the City maintaines that any course of violence had bin very justifiable And we may then guess how farr it was from his designe However it discover'd in him an excessive eagerness to be aveng'd on them that cross'd him and that to have his will he stood not to doe things never so much below him What a becomming sight it was to see the King of England one while in the House of Commons by and by in the Guild-Hall among the Liveries and Manufactures prosecuting so greedily the track of five or six fled Subjects himself not the Sollicitor onely but the Pursivant and the Apparitor of his own partial cause And although in his Answers to the Parlament hee hath confess'd first that his manner of prosecution was illegal next that as hee once conceiv'd hec had ground anough to accuse them so at length that hee found as good cause to desert any prosecution of them yet heer he seems to reverse all and against promise takes up his old deserted accusation that he might have something to excuse himself instead of giving due reparation which he always refus'd to give them whom he had so dishonor'd That I went saith he of his going to the House of Commons attended with some Gentlemen Gentlemen indeed the ragged Infantrie of Stewes and Brothels the spawn and shiprack of Taverns and Dicing Houses and then he pleads it was no unwonted thing for the Majesty and safety of a King to be so attended especially in discontented times An illustrious Majestie no doubt so attended a becomming safety for the King of England plac'd in the fidelity of such Guards and Champions Happy times when Braves and Hacksters the onely contented Members of his Goverment were thought the fittest and the faithfullest to defend his Person against the discontents of a Parlament and all good Men. Were those the chos'n ones to preserve reverence to him while he enterd unassur'd and full of suspicions into his great and faithfull Councel Let God then and the World judge whether the cause were not in his own guilty and unwarrantable doings The House of Commons upon several examinations of this business declar'd it sufficiently prov'd that the comming of those soldiers Papists and others with the King was to take away some of thir Members and in case of opposition or denyal to have fal'n upon the House in a hostile manner This the King heer denies adding a fearful imprecation against his own life If he purposed any violence or oppression against the Innocent then saith he let the Enemie persecute my soule and tred my life to the ground and lay my honor in the dust What need then more disputing He appeal'd to Gods Tribunal and behold God hath judg'd and don to him in the sight of all men according to the verdict of his own mouth To be a warning to all Kings hereafter how they use presumptuously the words and protestations of David without the spirit and conscience of David And the Kings admirers may heer see thir madness to mistake this Book for a monument of his worth and wisdom when as indeed it is his Doomsday Booke not like that of William the Norman his Predecessor but the record and memorial of his condemnation and discovers whatever hath befal'n him to have bin hast'nd on from Divine Justice by the rash and inconsiderat appeal of his own lipps But what evasions what pretences though never so unjust and emptie will he refuse in matters more unknown and more involv'd in the mists and intricacies of State who rather then not justifie himself in a thing so generally odious can flatter his integritie with such frivolous excuses against the manifest dissent of all men whether Enemies Neuters or Friends But God and his judgements have not bin mock'd and good men may well perceive what a distance there was ever like to be between him and his Parlament and perhaps between him and all amendment who for one good deed though but consented to askes God forgiveness and from his worst deeds don takes occasion to insist upon his rightecusness IV. Vpon the Insolency of the Tumults WEE have heer I must confess a neat and well-couch'd invective against Tumults expressing a true feare of them in the Author but yet so handsomly compos'd and withall so feelingly that to make a Royal comparison I beleeve Rehoboam the Son of Solomon could not have compos'd it better Yet Rehoboam had more cause to inveigh against them for they had ston'd his Tribute-gatherer and perhaps had as little spar'd his own Person had hee not with all speed betak'n him to his Charret But this King hath stood the worst of them in his own House without danger when his Coach and Horses in a Panic fear have bin to seek which argues that the Tumults at Whitehall were nothing so dangerous as those at Sechem But the matter heer considerable is not whether the King or his Houshold Rhetorician have made a pithy declamation against Tumults but first whether these were Tumults or not next if they were whether the King himself did not cause them Let us examin therfore how things at that time stood The King as before hath bin prov'd having both call'd this Parlament unwillingly and as unwillingly from time to time condescended to thir several acts carrying on a disjoynt and privat interest of his own and not enduring to be so cross'd and overswaid especially in the executing of his chief bold est Instrument the Deputy of Ireland first tempts the English Army with no less reward then the spoil of London to come up and destroy the Parlament That being discover'd by some of the Officers who though bad anough yet abhorr'd so foul a deed the K. hard'nd in his purpose tempts them the 2d time at Burrow Bridge promises to pawn his Jewels for them that they should be mett assisted would they but march on w th a gross body of hors under the E. of Newcastle He tempts them yet the third time though after discovery his own abjuration to have ever tempted them as is affirmd in the Declaration of no more addresses Neither this succeeding he turnes him next to the Scotch Army by his own credential Letters giv'n to Oneal and Sr John Hinderson baites his temptation with a richer reward not only to have the sacking of London but four Northern Counties to be made Scottish w th Jewels of great value to be giv'n in pawn thewhile But neither would the Scots for any promise of reward be bought to such an execrable and odious treachery but with much honesty gave notice of
goes on therfore with vehemence to repeat the mischeifs don by these Tumults They first Petition'd then protected dictate next and lastly overaw the Parlament They remov'd obstructions they purg'd the Houses cast out rott'n members If there were a man of iron such as Talus by our Poet Spencer is fain'd to be the page of Justice who with his iron flaile could doe all this and expeditiously without those deceitfull formes and circumstances of Law worse then ceremonies in Religion I say God send it don whether by one Talus or by a thousand But they subdu'd the men of conscience in Parlament back'd and abetted all seditious and schismatical Proposals against government ecclesiastical and civil Now wee may perceave the root of his hatred whence it springs It was not the Kings grace or princely goodness but this iron flaile the People that drove the Bishops out of thir Baronies out of thir Cathedrals out of the Lords House out of thir Copes and Surplices and all those Papistical innovations threw down the High Commission and Star-chamber gave us a Triennial Parlament and what we most desir'd in revenge whereof he now so bitterly enveighs against them these are those seditious and scismatical Proposals then by him condescended to as acts of grace now of another name which declares him touching matters of Church and State to have bin no other man in the deepest of his solitude then he was before at the highest of his Sovrantie But this was not the worst of these Tumults they plaid the hasty midwives and would not stay the ripening but went streight to ripping up and forcibly cut out abortive Votes They would not stay perhaps the Spanish demurring and putting off such wholsome acts and counsels as the Politic Cabin at WhiteHall had no mind to But all this is complain'd heer as don to the Parlament and yet we heard not the Parlament at that time complaine of any violence from the people but from him Wherfore intrudes he to plead the cause of Parlament against the People while the Parlament was pleading thir own cause against him and against him were forc'd to seek refuge of the people 'T is plaine then that those confluxes and resorts interrupted not the Parlament nor by them were thought Tumultuous but by him onely and his Court Faction But what good Man had not rather want any thing he most desir'd for the public good then attain it by such unlawfull and irreligious meanes as much as to say Had not rather sit still and let his Country be Tyranniz'd then that the people finding no other remedie should stand up like Men and demand thir Rights and Liberties This is the artificialest peece of fineness to perswade men into slavery that the wit of Court could have invented But heare how much betterthe Moral of this Lesson would befitt the Teacher What good man had not rather want a boundless and arbitrary power and those fine Flowers of the Crown call'd Prerogatives then for them to use force and perpetual vexation to his faithfull Subjects nay to wade for them through blood and civil warr So that this and the whole bundle of those following sentences may be apply'd better to the convincement of his own violent courses then of those pretended Tumults Who were the chiefe Demagogues to send for those Tumults some alive are not ignorant Setting aside the affrightment of this Goblin word for the King by his leave cannot coine English as he could Money to be current and t is beleev'd this wording was above his known stile and Orthographie and accuses the whole composure to be conscious of som other Author yet if the people were sent for emboldn'd and directed by those Demagogues who saving his Greek were good Patriots and by his own confession Men of some repute for parts and pietie it helps well to assure us there was both urgent cause and the less danger of thir comming Complaints were made yet no redress could be obtain'd The Parlament also complain'd of what danger they sate in from another party and demanded of him a Guard but it was not granted What marvel then if it chear'd them to see some store of thir Friends and in the Roman not the pettifogging sense thir Clients so neer about them a defence due by nature both from whom it was offer'd and to whom as due as to thir Parents though the Court storm'd and fretted to see such honour giv'n to them who were then best Fathers of the Common-wealth And both the Parlament and people complain'd and demanded Justice for those assaults if not murders don at his own dores by that crew of Rufflers but he in stead of doing Justice on them justifi'd and abetted them in what they did as in his public Answer to a Petition from the City may be read Neither is it slightly to be pass'd over that in the very place where blood was first drawn in this cause as the beginning of all that follow'd there was his own blood shed by the Executioner According to that sentence of Divine justice In the place where Dogs lick'd the blood of Naboth shall Dogs lick thy blood eev'n thine From hence he takes occasion to excuse that improvident and fatal error of his absenting from the Parlament When he found that no Declaration of the Bishops could take place against those Tumults Was that worth his considering that foolish and self-undoing Declaration of twelve Cypher Bishops who were immediatly appeacht of Treason for that audacious Declaring The Bishops peradventure were now and then pulld by the Rochers and deserv'd another kind of pulling but what amounted this to the feare of his own person in the streets Did he not the very next day after his irruption into the House of Commons then which nothing had more exasperated the people goe in his Coach unguarded into the City did hee receave the least affront much less violence in any of the Streets but rather humble demeanours and supplications Hence may be gather'd that however in his own guiltiness hee might have justly fear'd yet that hee knew the people so full of aw and reverence to his Person as to dare commit himself single among the thickest of them at a time when he had most provok'd them Besides in Scot-Land they had handl'd the Bishops in a more robustious manner Edinburrow had bin full of Tumults two Armies from thence had enterd England against him yet after all this he was not fearfull but very forward to take so long a journey to Edinburrow which argues first as did also his rendition afterward to the Scotch Army that to England he continu'd still as he was indeed a stranger and full of diffidence to the Scots onely a native King in his confidence though not in his dealing towards them It shews us next beyond doubting that all this his feare of Tumults was but a meer colour and occasion tak'n of his resolved absence from the Parlament for some other end not
cannot but be farr short of spirit and autority without dores to govern a whole Nation Her tarrying heer he could not think safe among them who were shaking hands with Allegiance to lay faster hold on Religion and taxes them of a duty rather then a crime it being just to obey God rather then Man and impossible to serve two Maisters I would they had quite shak'n off what they stood shaking hands with the fault was in thir courage not in thir cause In his Prayer he prayes that The disloyaltie of his Protestant Subjects may not be a hindrance to her love of the true Religion and never prays that the dissoluteness of his Court the scandals of his Clergy the unsoundness of his own judgement the lukewarmness of his life his Letter of compliance to the Pope his permitting Agents at Rome the Popes Nuntio and her Jesuited Mother here may not be found in the sight of God farr greater hindrances to her conversion But this had bin a suttle Prayer indeed and well pray'd though as duely as a Pater-noster if it could have charm'd us to sit still and have Religion and our Liberties one by one snatch'd from us for fear least rising to defend our selves wee should fright the Queen a stiff Papist from turning Protestant As if the way to make his Queen a Protestant had bin to make his Subjects more then half way Papists He prays next That his constancy may be an antidote against the poyson of other mens example His constancy in what Not in Religion for it is op'nly known that her Religion wrought more upon him then his Religion upon her and his op'n favouring of Papists and his hatred of them call'd Puritants the ministers also that prayd in Churches for her Conversion being checkt from Court made most men suspect she had quite perverted him But what is it that the blindness of hypocrisy dares not doe It dares pray and thinks to hide that from the eyes of God which it cannot hide from the op'n view of man VIII Upon His repulse at Hull and the fate of the Hothams Hull a town of great strength and opportunitie both to sea and land affaires was at that time the Magazin of all those armes which the King had bought with mony most illegally extorted from his subjects of England to use in a causless and most unjust civil warr against his Subjects of Scotland The King in high discontent and anger had left the Parlament and was gon toward the North the Queen into Holland where she pawn'd and set to sale the Crown-Jewels a crime heretofore counted treasonable in Kings and to what intent these summs were rais'd the Parlament was not ignorant His going northward in so high a chafe they doubted was to possess himself of that strength which the storehouse and situation of Hull might add suddenly to his malignant party Having first therefore in many Petitions earnestly pray'd him to dispose and settle with consent of both Houses the military power in trusty hands and he as oft refusing they were necessitated by the turbulence and danger of those times to put the Kingdom by thir own autority into a posture ofdefence and very timely sent sir John Hotham a member of the House and Knight of that county to take Hull into his custody and some of the Train'd bands to his assistance For besides the General danger they had before the Kings going to York notice giv'n them of his privat Commissions to the Earl of Newcastle and to Colonel Legg one of those imploid to bring the Army up against the ParParlament who had already made som attempts the latter of them under a disguise to surprise that place for the Kings party And letters of the Lord Digby were intercepted wherin was wisht that the K. would declare himself and retire to some safe place other information came from abroad that Hull was the place design'd for some new enterprise And accordingly Digby himself not long after with many other Commanders and much forrain Ammunition landed in those parts But these attempts not succeeding and that Town being now in custody of the Parlament he sends a message to them that he had firmely resolv'd to go in person into Ireland to chastise those wicked Rebels for these and wors words he then gave them and that toward this work he intended forthwith to raise by his commissions in the Counties neere Westchester a guard for his own person consisting of 2000. foot and 200. horse that should be arm'd from his Magazin at Hull On the other side the Parlament forseeing the Kings drift about the same time send him a Petition that they might have leave for necessary causes to remoove the magazin of Hull to the Towre of London to which the King returnes his denial and soon after going to Hull attended with about 400. Horse requires the Governour to deliver him up the Town wherof the Governour besought humbly to be excus'd till he could send notice to the Parlament who had intrusted him wherat the King much incens'd proclaims him Traitor before the Town Walls and gives immediat order to stop all passages between him and the Parlament Yet he himself dispatches post after post to demand justice as upon a Traitor using a strange iniquitie to require justice upon him whom he then way layd and debari'd from his appearance The Parlament no sooner understood what had pass'd but they declare that Sir John Hotham had don no more then was his duty and was therfore no Traitor This relation being most true proves that which is affirm'd heer to be most fals seeing the Parlament whom he accounts his greatest Enemies had more confidence to abett and own what Sir John Hotham had don then the King had confidence to let him answer in his own behalf To speake of his patience and in that solemn manner he might better have forborne God knows saith he it affected me more with sorrow for others then with anger for my self nor did the affront trouble me so much as their sin This is read I doubt not and beleev'd and as there is some use of every thing so is there of this Book were it but to shew us what a miserable credulous deluded thing that creature is which is call'd the Vulgar who notwithstanding what they might know will beleeve such vain-glories as these Did not that choleric and vengefull act of proclaiming him Traitor before due process of Law having bin convinc'd so late before of his illegallity with the five Members declare his anger to be incens'd doth not his own relation confess as much and his second Message left him fuming three dayes after and in plaine words testifies bis impatience of delay till Hotham be severely punish'd for that which he there termes an insupportable affront Surely if his sorrow for Sir John Hothams sin were greater then his anger for the affront it was an exceeding great sorrow indeed and wondrous charitable But if it
prayers and praises By this reason we ought as freely to pay all things to all men for of all that we receive from God what doe we pay for more then prayers and praises we look'd for the discharge of his Office the payment of his dutie to the Kingdom and are payd Court payment with empty sentences that have the sound of gravity but the significance of nothing pertinent Yet again after his mercy past and granted he returnes back to give sentence upon Hotham and whom he tells us he would so fain have sav'd alive him he never leaves killing with a repeated condemnation though dead long since It was ill that sombody stood not neer to whisper him that a reiterating Judge is worse then a tormentor He pitties him he rejoyces not he pitties him again but still is sure to brand him at the taile of his pitty with som ignominious mark either of ambition or disloyaltie And with a kind of censorious pitty aggravats rather then less'ns or conceals the fault To pitty thus is to triumph He assumes to foreknow that after times will dspute whether Hotham were more infamous at Hull or at Tower-hill What knew he of after times who while he sits judging and censuring with out end the fate of that unhappy Father and his son at Towerhill knew not that the like fate attended him before his own Palace Gate and as little knew whether after times reserve not a greater infamy to the story of his own life and raigne He saies but over again in his prayer what his Sermon hath Preacht How acceptably to those in heav'n we leave to be decided by that precept which forbidds Vaine Repetitions Sure anough it lies as heavie as he can lay it upon the head of poore Hotham Needs he will fast'n upon God a peece of revenge as done for his sake and takes it for a favor before he know it was intended him which in his closet had bin excusable but in a Writt'n and publish'd prayer too presumptuous Ecclesiastes hath a right name for such kind of Sacrifices Going on he prayes thus Let not thy Justice prevent the objects and opportunities of my mercy To folly or to blasphemy or to both shall we impute this Shall the Justice of God give place and serv to glorifie the mercies of a man All other men who know what they ask desire of God that thir doings may tend to his glory but in this prayer God is requir'd that his justice would forbeare to prevent and as good have said to intrench upon the glory of a mans mercy If God forbeare his Justice it must be sure to the magnifying of his own mercy How then can any mortal man without presumption little less then impious take the boldness to aske that glory out of his hand It may be doubted now by them who understand Religion whether the King were more unfortunat in this his prayer or Hotham in those his sufferings IX Upon the listing and raising Armies c. IT were an endless work to walk side by side with the Verbosity of this Chapter onely to what already hath not bin spok'n convenient answer shall be giv'n Hee begins againe with Tumults all demonstration of the Peoples Love and Loyaltie to the Parlament was Tumult thir Petitioning Tumult thir defensive Armies were but listed Tumults and will take no notice that those about him those in a time of peace listed into his own House were the beginners of all these Tumults abusing and assaulting not onely such as came peaceably to the Parlament at London but those that came Petitioning to the King himself at York Neither did they abstain from doing violence and outrage to the Messengers sent from Parlament he himself either count nancing or conniving at them He supposes that His recess gave us confidence that he might be conquer'd Other men suppose both that and all things els who knew him neither by nature Warlike nor experienc'd nor fortunate so farr was any man that discern'd aught from esteeming him unconquerable yet such are readiest to imbroile others But he had a soule invincible What praise is that The stomach of a Child is ofttimes invincible to all correction The unteachable man hath a soule to all reason and good advice invincible and he who is intractable he whom nothing can perswade may boast himself invincible whenas in some things to be overcome is more honest and laudable then to conquer He labours to have it thought that his fearing God more then Man was the ground of his sufferings but he should have known that a good principle not rightly understood may prove as hurtfull as a bad and his feare of God may be as faulty as a blind zeale He pretended to feare God more then the Parlament who never urg'd him to doe otherwise he should also have fear'd God more then he did his Courtiers and the Bishops who drew him as they pleas'd to things inconsistent with the feare of God Thus boasted Saul to have perform'd the Commandment of God and stood in it against Samuel but it was found at length that he had fear'd the people more then God in saving those fatt Oxen for the worship of God which were appointed for destruction Not much unlike if not much wors was that fact of his who for feare to displease his Court and mungrel Clergy with the dissolutest of the people upheld in the Church of God while his power lasted those Beasts of Amalec the Prelats against the advice of his Parlament and the example of all Reformation in this more unexcusable then Saul that Saul was at length convinc'd he to the howr of death fix'd in his fals perswasion and sooths himself in the flattering peace of an erroneous and obdurat conscience singing to his soul vain Psalms of exultation as if the Parlament had assail'd his reason with the force of Arms and not lie on the contrary their reason with his Armes which hath bin prov'd already and shall be more heerafter He twitts them with his Acts of grace proud and unself-knowing words in the mouth of any King who affects not to be a God and such as ought to be as odious in the ears of a free Nation For if they were unjust acts why did he grant them as of grace If just it was not of his grace but of his duty and his Oath to grant them A glorious King he would be though by his sufferings But that can never be to him whose sufferings are his own doings He faines a hard chois put upon him either to kill his own Subjects or be kill'd Yet never was King less in danger of any violence from his Subjects till he unsheath'd his Sword against them nay long after that time when he had spilt the blood of thousands they had still his person in a foolish veneration Hee complaines That civil Warr must be the fruits of of his seventeen yeares raigning with such a measure of Justice Peace and
Plenty and Religion as all Nations either admir'd or envi'd For the Justice we had let the Counsel-Table Starr-Chamber High Commission speak the praise of it not forgetting the unprincely usage and as farr as might be the abolishing of Parlaments the displacing of honest Judges the sale of Offices Bribery and Exaction not found out to be punish'd but to be shar'd in with impunity for the time to come Who can number the extortions the oppressions the public robberies and rapines committed on the Subject both by Sea and Land under various pretences Thir possessions also tak'n from them one while as Forrest Land another while as Crown-Land nor were thir Goods exempted no not the Bullion in the Mint Piracy was become a project own'd and authoriz'd against the Subject For the peace we had what peace was that which drew out the English to a needless and disshonourable voyage against the Spaniard at Cales Or that which lent our shipping to a treacherous and Antichristian Warr against the poore Protestants of Rochell our suppliants What peace was that which fell to rob the French by Sea to the imbarring of all our Merchants in that Kingdom which brought forth that unblest expedition to the I le of Rhee doubtfull whether more calamitous in the success or in the designe betraying all the flowre of our military youth and best Commanders to a shamefull surprisal and execution This was the peace we had and the peace we gave whether to freinds or to foes abroad And if at home any peace were intended us what meant those Irish billeted Souldiers in all parts of the Kingdom and the designe of German Horse to fubdue us in our peacefull Houses For our Religion where was there a more ignorant profane and vitious Clergy learned in nothing but the antiquitie of thir pride thir covetousnes and superstition whose unsincere and levenous Doctrine corrupting the people first taught them loosness then bondage loosning them from all sound knowledge and strictness of life the more to fit them for the bondage of Tyranny and superstition So that what was left us for other Nations not to pitty rather then admire or envy all those seaventeen yeares no wise man could see For wealth and plenty in a land where Justice raignes not is no argument of a flourishing State but of a neerness rather to ruin or commotion These were not some miscariages onely of Goverment which might escape but a universal distemper and reducement of law to arbitrary power not through the evil counsels of some men but through the constant cours practise of al that were in highest favour whose worst actions frequently avowing he took upon himself and what faults did not yet seem in public to be originally his such care he took by professing and proclaiming op'nly as made them all at length his own adopted sins The persons also when he could no longer protect he esteem'd and favour'd to the end but never otherwise then by constraint yeilded any of them to due punishment thereby manifesting that what they did was by his own Autority and approbation Yet heer he asks whose innocent blood he hath shed What widdows or Orphans teares can witness against him After the suspected Poysoning of his Father not inquir'd into but smother'd up and him protected and advanc'd to the very half of his Kingdom who was accus'd in Parlament to be Author of the fact with much more evidence then Duke Dudley that fals Protector is accus'd upon record to have poison'd Edward the sixt after all his rage and persecution after so many Yeares of cruel Warr on his People in three Kingdoms Whence the Author of Truths manifest a Scotchman not unacquainted with affaires positively affirmes That there hath bin more Christian blood shed by the Commission approbation and connivance of King Charles and his Father James in the latter end of thir raigne then in the Ten Roman Persecutions Not to speake of those many whippings Pillories and other corporal inflictions wherwith his raign also before this Warr was not unbloodie some have dy'd in Prison under cruel restraint others in Banishment whose lives were shortn'd through the rigour of that persecution wherwith so many yeares he infested the true Church And those six Members all men judg'd to have escap'd no less then capital danger whom he so greedily pursuing into the House of Commons had not there the forbearance to conceal how much it troubl'd him That the Birds were flowne If som Vultur in the Mountains could have op'nd his beak intelligibly and spoke what fitter words could he have utter'd at the loss of his prey The Tyrant Nero though not yet deserving that name sett his hand so unwillingly to the execution of a condemned Person as to wish He had not known letters Certainly for a King himself to charge his Subjects with high treason and so vehemently to prosecute them in his own cause as to doe the Office of a Searcher argu'd in him no great aversation from shedding blood were it but to satisfie his anger and that revenge was no unpleasing morsel to him wherof he himself thought not much to be so diligently his own Caterer But we insist rather upon what was actual then what was probable He now falls to examin the causes of this Warr as a difficulty which he had long studied to find out It was not saith he my withdrawing from White Hall for no account in reason could be giv'n of those Tumults where an orderly Guard was granted But if it be a most certain truth that the Parlament could never yet obtain of him any Guard fit to be confided in then by his own confession some account of those pretended Tumults may in reason be giv'n and both concerning them and the Guards anough hath bin said alreadie Whom did he protect against the Justice of Parlament Whom did he not to his utmost power Endeavouring to have rescu'd Strafford from thir Justice though with the destruction of them and the City to that end expressly commanding the admittance of new Soldiers into the Tower rais'd by Suckling and other Conspirators under pretence for the Portugall though that Embassador beeing sent to utterly deny'd to know of any such Commission from his Maister And yet that listing continu'd Not to repeat his other Plot of bringing up the two Armies But what can be disputed with such a King in whose mouth and opinion the Parlament it self was never but a Faction and thir Justice no Justice but The dictates and overswaying insolence of Tumults and Rabbles and under that excuse avouches himself op'nly the generall Patron of most notorious Delinquents and approves their flight out of the Land whose crimes were such as that the justest and the fairest tryal would have soonest condemn'd them to death But did not Catiline plead in like manner against the Roman Senat and the injustice of thir trial and the justice of his flight from Rome Coesar also then hatching Tyranny injected
doe such a business then they themselves who complain most But he must chew such Morsels as Propositions ere he let them down So let him but if the Kingdom shall tast nothing but after his chewing what does he make of the Kingdom but a great baby The streitness of his conscience will not give him leave to swallow down such Camels of sacrilege and injustice as others doe This is the Pharisee up and down I am not as other men are But what Camels of Injustice he could devoure all his three Realms were wittness which was the cause that they almost perish'd for want of Parlaments And he that will be unjust to man will be sacrilegious to God and to bereave a Christian conscience of libertie for no other reason then the narrowness of his own conscience is the most unjust measure to man and the worst sacrilege to God That other which he calls sacrilege of taking from the Clergy that superfluous wealth which antiquitie as old as Constantine from the credit of a Divine vision counted poyson in the Church hath bin ever most oppos'd by men whose righteousness in other matters hath bin least observ'd He concludes as his manner is with high commendation of his own unbiass'd rectitude and beleives nothing to be in them that dissent from him but faction innovation and particular designes Of these repetitions I find no end no not in his prayer which being founded upon deceitfull principl's and a fond hope that God will bless him in those his errors which he calls honest finds a fitt answer of S. James Yee ask and receave not because yee aske amiss As for the truth and sinceritie which he praies may be alwaies found in those his Declarations to the people the contrariety of his own actions will bear eternal witness how little carefull or sollicitous he was what he promis'd or what he utterd there XII Vpon the Rebellion in Ireland THe Rebellion and horrid massacher of English Protestants in Ireland to the number of 1 54000. in the Province of Ulster onely by thir own computation which added to the other three makes up the total summ of that slaughter in all likelyhood fowr times as great although so sudden and so violent as at first to amaze all men that were not accessory yet from whom and from what counsels it first sprung neither was nor could be possibly so secret as the contrivers therof blinded with vaine hope or the despaire that other plots would succeed suppos'd For it cannot be imaginable that the Irish guided by so many suttle and Italian heads of the Romish party should so farr have lost the use of reason and indeed of common Sense as not supported with other strength then thir own to begin a Warr so desperate and irreconcileable against both England and Scotland at once All other Nations from whom they could expect aid were busied to the utmost in thir own most necessary concernments It remaines then that either some autoritie or som great assistance promis'd them from England was that wheron they cheifly trusted And as it is not difficult to discern from what inducing cause this insurrection first arose so neither was it hard at first to have apply'd some effectual remedy though not prevention And yet prevention was not hopeles when Strafford either beleivd not or did not care to beleive the several warnings and discoveries therof which more then once by Papists and by Friers themselves were brought him besides what was brought by depositition divers months before that Rebellion to the Arch bishop of Canterbury and others of the Kings Counsel as the Declaration of no addresses declares But the assurance which they had in privat that no remedy should be apply'd was it seemes one of the chief reasons that drew on thir undertaking And long it was ere that assurance faild them untill the Bishops and Popish Lords who while they sate and Voted still oppos'd the sending aid to Ireland were expelld the House Seeing then the maine incitement and Autority for this Rebellion must be needs deriv'd from England it will be next inquir'd who was the prime Author The King heer denounces a malediction temporal and eternal not simply to the Author but to the malitious Author of this blood-shedd and by that limitation may exempt not himself onely but perhaps the Irish Rebels themselves who never will confess to God or Man that any blood was shed by them malitiously but either in the Catholic cause or common Liberty or some other specious Plea which the conscience from grounds both good and evil usually suggests to it self thereby thinking to elude the direct force of that imputation which lies upon them Yet he acknowledges It fell out as a most unhappy advantage of some mens malice against him but indeed of most mens just suspicion by finding in it no such wide departure or disagreement from the scope of his former Counsels and proceedings And that he himself was the Author of that Rebelion he denies both heer and elswhere with many imprecations but no solid evidence What on the other side against his denyal hath bin affirm'd in three Kingdoms being heer briefly set in view the Reader may so judge as he findes cause This is most certain that the King was ever friendly to the Irish Papists and in his third yeare against the plain advice of Parlament like a kind of Pope sold them many indulgences for Mony and upon all occasions advancing the Popish party and negotiating under hand by Priests who were made his Agents ingag'd the Irish Papists in a Warr against the Scotch Protestants To that end he furnish'd them and had them train'd in Arms and kept them up either op'nly or under hand the onely army in his three Kingdoms till the very burst of that Rebellion The Summer before that dismal October a Committy of most active Papists all since in the head of that Rebellion were in great favour at White-Hall and admitted to many privat consultations with the King and Queen And to make it evident that no mean matters were the subject of those Conferences at their request he gave away his peculiar right to more then five Irish Counties for the payment of an inconsiderable Rent They departed not home till within two Mounths before the Rebellion and were either from the first breaking out or soon after found to be the cheif Rebels themselves But what should move the King besides his own inclination to Popery and the prevalence of his Queen over him to hold such frequent and close meetings with a Committy of Irish Papists in his own House while the Parlament of England sate unadvis'd with is declar'd by a Scotch Author and of it self is cleare anough The Parlament at the beginning of that Summer having put Strafford to death imprison'd others his chief Favorites and driv'n the rest to fly the K. who had in vain tempted both the Scotch and the English Army to come up against
the Parlament and Citty finding no compliance answerable to his hope from the Protestant Armies betakes himself last to the Irish who had in readiness an Army of eight thousand Papists which he had refus'd so oft'n to disband and a Committy heer of the same Religion With them who thought the time now come which to bring about they had bin many yeares before not wishing only but with much industrie complotting to do som eminent service for the Church of Rome thir own perfidious natures against a Puritan Parlmt the hated English thir Masters he agrees concludes that so soon as both Armies in England were disbanded the Irish should appeare in Arms maister all the Protestants and help the King against his Parlament And we need not doubt that those five Counties were giv'n to the Irish for other reason then the four Northern Counties had bin a little before offerd to the Scots The King in August takes a journey into Scotland and overtaking the Scotch Army then on thir way home attempts the second time to pervert them but without success No sooner comm into Scotland but he laies a plot so saith the Scotch Author to remove out of the way such of the Nobility there as were most likely to withstand or not to furder his designes This being discover'd he sends from his side one Dillon a Papist Lord soon after a cheif Rebell with Letters into Ireland and dispatches a Commission under the great Seale of Scotland at that time in his own custody commanding that they should forthwith as had bin formerly agreed cause all the Irish to rise in Armes Who no sooner had receiv'd such command but obey'd and began in Massacher for they knew no other way to make sure the Protestants which was commanded them expressly and the way it seems left to thir discretion He who hath a mind to read the Commission it self and sound reason added why it was not likely to be forg'd besides the attestation of so many Irish themselves may have recourse to a Book intitl'd The Mysterie of Iniquity Besides what the Parlament it self in the Declaration of no more addresses hath affirm'd that they have one copy of that Commission in thir own hands attested by the Oathes of some that were ey-witnesses and had seen it under the Seale Others of the principal Rebels have confess'd that this Commission was the summer before promis'd at London to the Irish Commissioners to whom the King then discoverd in plain words his great desire to be reveng'd on the Parlament of England After the Rebellion brok'n out which in words onely he detested but under hand favour'd and promoted by all the offices of freindship correspondence and what possible aide he could afford them the particulars wherof are too many to be inserted heer I suppose no understanding Man could longer doubt who was Author or Instigator of that Rebellion If there be who yet doubt I referr them especially to that Declaration of July 1643. with that of no addresses 1647. and another full volum of examinations to be sett out speedily concerning this matter Against all which testimonies likelyhoods evidences and apparent actions of his own being so abundant his bare deniall though with imprecation can no way countervaile and least of all in his own cause As for the Commission granted them he thinkes to evade that by retorting that some in England fight against him and yet pretend his authority But though a Parlament by the known Laws may affirme justly to have the Kings authority inseparable from that Court though divided from his Person it is not credible that the Irish Rebels who so much tenderd his Person above his Autoritie and were by him so well receavd at Oxford would be so farr from all humanitie as to slander him with a particular Commission sign'd and sent them by his own hand And of his good affection to the Rebels this Chapter it self is not without witness He holds them less in fault then the Scots as from whom they might allege to have fetch'd thir imitation making no difference between men that rose necessarily to defend themselves which no Protestant Doctrin ever disallow'd against them who threatn'd Warr and those who began a voluntary and causeless Rebellion with the Massacher of so many thousands who never meant them harme He falls next to flashes and a multitude of words in all which is contain'd no more then what might be the Plea of any guiltiest Offender He was not the Author because he hath the greatest share of loss and dishonour by what is committed Who is there that offends God or his Neighbour on whom the greatest share of loss and dishonour lights not in the end But in the act of doing evil men use not to consider the event of thir evil doing or if they doe have then no power to curb the sway of thir own wickedness So that the greatest share of loss and dishonour to happ'n upon themselves is no argument that they were not guilty This other is as weake that a Kings interest above that of any other man lies chiefly in the common welfare of his Subjects therfore no King will do aught against the Common welfare For by this evasion any tyrant might as well purge himself from the guilt of raising troubles or commotions among the people because undoubtedly his chief Interest lies in thir sitting still I said but now that eev'n this Chapter if nothing els might suffice to discover his good affection to the Rebels which in this that follows too notoriously appeares imputing this insurrection to the preposterous rigor and unreasonable severitie the covetous zeale and uncharitable fury of some men these some men by his continual paraphrase are meant the Parlament and lastly to the feare of utter extirpation If the whole Irishry of Rebells had fee'd som advocate to speak partially and sophistically in thir defence he could have hardly dazl'd better Yet never the less would have prov'd himself no other then a plausible deceiver And perhaps nay more then perhaps for it is affirm'd extant under good evidence that those fained terrors and jealousies were either by the King himself or the Popish Preists w ch were sent by him put into the head of that inquisitive people on set purpose to engage them For who had power to oppress them or to releive them being opprest but the King or his immediat Deputy This rather should have made them rise against the King then against the Parlament Who threat'nd or ever thought of thir extirpation till they themselves had begun it to the English As for preposterous riger covetous zeale and uncharitable fury they had more reason to suspect those evils first from his own commands whom they saw using daily no greater argument to prove the truth of his Religion then by enduring no other but his owne Prelatical and to force it upon others made Episcopal Ceremonial and common-Prayer-Book Warrs But the Papists
understood him better then by the outside and knew that those Warrs were their Warrs Although if the Common-wealth should be afraid to suppress op'n Idolatry lest the Papists thereupon should grow desperat this were to let them grow and become our persecuters while we neglected what we might have don Evangelically to be their Reformers Or to doe as his Father James did who in stead of taking heart and putting confidence in God by such a deliverance as from the Powder Plot though it went not off yet with the meer conceit of it as some observe was hitt into such a Hectic shivering between Protestant and Papist all his life after that he never durst from that time doe otherwise then equivocat or collogue with the Pope and his adherents He would be thought to commiserat the sad effects of that Rebellion and to lament that the teares and blood spilt there did not quench the sparks of our civil discord heer But who began these dissentions and what can be more op'nly known then those retardings and delaies which by himself were continually devis'd to hinder and put back the releif of those distressed Protestants which undoubtedly had it not bin then put back might have sav'd many streames of those teares and that blood wherof he seems heer so sadly to bewaile the spilling His manifold excuses diversions and delaies are too well known to be recited heer in particular and too many But he offer'd to goe himself in person upon that expedition and reck'ns up many surmises why he thinks they would not suffer him But mentions not that by his underdealing to debaush Armies heer at home and by his secret intercours with the cheif Rebels long ere that time every where known he had brought the Parlament into so just a diffidence of him as that they durst not leave the Public Armes to his disposal much less an Army to his conduct He concludes That next the sin of those who began that Rebellion theirs must needs be who hinder'd the suppressing or diverted the aides But judgement rashly giv'n oft-times involves the Judge himself He findes fault with those who threatn'd all extremity to the Rebels and pleads much that mercy should be shown them It seems he found himself not so much concern'd as those who had lost Fathers Brothers Wives and Children by thir crueltie whom in justice to retaliat is not as he supposes unevangelical so long as Magistracy and Warr is not laid down under the Gospel If this his Sermon of affected mercy were not too Pharisaical how could he permit himself to cause the slaughter of so many thousands heer in England for meer Prerogatives the Toys and Gewgaws of his Crown for Copes and Surplices the Trinkets of his Priests and not perceave his zeale while he taxes others to be most preposterous and unevangelical Neither is there the same cause to destroy a whole City for the ravishing of a Sister not don out of Villany and recompence offer'd by Mariage nor the same case for those Disciples to summon sire from Heav'n upon the whole City where they were deny'd lodging and for a Nation by just Warr and execution to slay whole Families of them who so barbarously had slaine whole Families before Did not all Israel doe as much against the Benjamits for one Rape committed by a few and defended by the whole Tribe and did they not the same to Jabesh Gilead for not assisting them in that revenge I speak not this that such measure should be meted rigorously to all the Irish or as remembring that the Parlament ever so Decreed but to shew that this his Homily hath more of craft and affectation in it then of sound Doctrin But it was happy that his going into Ireland was not consented to For either he had certainly turn'd his rais'd Forces against the Parlament it self or not gon at all or had he gon what work he would have made there his own following words declare He would have punisht some no question for some perhaps who were of least use must of necessity have bin sacrific'd to his reputation and the conveniencie of his affaires Others he would have disarm'd that is to say in his own time but all of them he would have protected from the fury of those that would have drown'd them if they had refus'd to swim down the popular stream These expressions are too oft'n mett and too well understood for any man to doubt his meaning By the fury of those he meanes no other then the Justice of Parlament to whom yet he had committed the whole business Those who would have refus'd to swim down the popular streame our constant key tells us to be Papists Prelats and thir Faction these by his own confession heer he would have protected against his Puritan Parlament And by this who sees not that he and the Irish Rebels had but one aime one and the same drift and would have forthwith joyn'd in one body against us He goes on still in his tenderness of the Irish Rebels fearing least our zeale should be more greedy to kill the Beare for his skin then for any harme he hath don This either justifies the Rebels to have don no harme at all or inferrs his opinion that the Parlament is more bloody and rapacious in the prosecution of thir Justice then those Rebels were in the execution of thir barbarons crueltie Let men doubt now and dispute to whom the King was a Freind most to his English Parlament or to his Irish Rebels With whom that we may yet see furder how much he was thir Freind after that the Parlament had brought them every where either to Famin or a low condition he to give them all the respit and advantages they could desire without advice of Parlament to whom he himself had committed the mannaging of that Warr makes a Cessation in pretence to releive the Protestants overborne there with numbers but as the event prov'd to support the Papists by diverting and drawing over the English Army there to his own service heer against the Parlament For that the Protestants were then on the winning hand it must needs be plaine who notwithstanding the miss of those Forces which at thir landing heer maister'd without difficulty great part of Wales and Cheshire yet made a shift to keep thir own in Ireland But the plot of this Irish Truce is in good part discoverd in that Declaration of September 30 th 1643. And if the Protestants were but handfuls there as he calls them why did he stop and way-lay both by Land and Sea to his utmost power those Provisions and Supplies which were sent by the Parlament How were so many handfuls call'd over as for a while stood him in no small stead and against our main Forces heer in England Since therfore all the reasons that can be giv'n of this Cessation appeare so fals and frivolous it may be justly fear'd that the designe it self was most wicked and pernicious
so oft'n contrary to the commands of God He would perswade the Scots that thir chief Interest consists in thir fidelity to the Crown But true policy will teach them to find a safer interest in the common friendship of England then in the ruins of one ejected Family XIIII Upon the Covnant VPON this Theme his Discours is long his Matter little but repetition and therfore soon answerd First after an abusive and strange apprehension of Covnants as if Men pawn'd thir souls to them with whom they Covnant he digresses to plead for Bishops first from the antiquity of thir possession heer since the first plantation of Christianity in this Iland next from a universal prescription since the Apostles till this last Centurie But what availes the most Primitive Antiquity against the plain sense of Scripture which if the last Centurie have best follow'd it ought in our esteem to be the first And yet it hath bin oft'n prov'd by Learned Men from the Writings and Epistles of most ancient Christians that Episcopacy crept not up into an order above the Presbyters till many years after that the Apostles were deceas'd He next is unsatisfied with the Covnant not onely for some passages in it referring to himself as he supposes with very dubious and dangerous limitations but for binding men by Oath and Covnant to the Reformation of Church Discipline First those limitations were not more dangerous to him then he to our Libertie and Religion next that which was there vow'd to cast out of the Church an Antichristian Hierarchy which God had not planted but ambition and corruption had brought in and fosterd to the Churches great dammage and oppression was no point of controversie to be argu'd without end but a thing of cleer moral necessity to be forthwith don Neither was the Covnant superfluous though former engagements both religious and legal bound us before But was the practice of all Churches heertofore intending Reformation All Israel though bound anough before by the Law of Moses to all necessary duties yet with Asa thir King enter'd into a new Covnant at the beginning of a Reformation And the Jews after Captivity without consent demanded of that King who was thir Maister took solemn Oath to walk in the Command'ments of God All Protestant Churches have don the like notwithstanding former engagements to thir several duties And although his aime were to sow variance between the Protestation and the Covnant to reconcile them is not difficult The Protestation was but one step extending onely to the Doctrin of the Church of England as it was distinct from Church Discipline the Covnant went furder as it pleas'd God to dispense his light and our encouragement by degrees and comprehended Church Goverment Former with latter steps in the progress of well doing need not reconcilement Nevertheless he breaks through to his conclusion That all honest and wise men ever thought themselves sufficently bound by former ties of Religion leaving Asa Ezra and the whole Church of God in sundry Ages to shift for honestie and wisdom from som other then his testimony And although after-contracts absolve not till the former be made void yet he first having don that our duty returns back which to him was neither moral nor eternal but conditional Willing to perswade himself that many good men took the Covnant either unwarily or out of fear he seems to have bestow'd som thoughts how these good men following his advice may keep the the Covnant and not keep it The first evasion is presuming that the chief end of Covnanting in such mens intentions was to preserve Religion in purity and the Kingdoms peace But the Covnant will more truly inform them that purity of Religion and the Kingdoms peace was not then in state to be preservd but to be restor'd and therfore binds them not to a preservation of what was but to a Reformation of what was evil what was Traditional and dangerous whether novelty or antiquity in Church or State To doe this clashes with no former Oath lawfully sworn either to God or the King and rightly understood In general he brands all such confederations by League and Covnant as the common rode us'd in all Factious perturbations of State and Church This kinde of language reflects with the same ignominy upon all the Protestant Reformations that have bin since Luther and so indeed doth his whole Book replenish'd throughout with hardly other words or arguments then Papists and especially Popish Kings have us'd heertofore against thir Protestant Subjects whom he would perswade to be every man his own Pope and to absolve himfelf of those ties by the suggestion of fals or equivocal interpretations too oft repeated to be now answer'd The Parlament he saith made thir Covnant like Manna agreeable to every mans Palat. This is another of his glosses upon the Covnant he is content to let it be Manna but his drift is that men should loath it or at least expound it by thir own relish and latitude of sense wherin least any one of the simpler sort should faile to be his crafts maister he furnishes him with two or three laxative he termes them general clauses which may serve somwhat to releeve them against the Covnant tak'n intimating as if what were lawfull and according to the Word of God were no otherwise so then as every man fansi'd to himself From such learned explications and resolutions as these upon the Covnant what marvel if no Royalist or Malignant refuse to take it as having learnt from these Princely instructions his many Salvo's cautions and reservations how to be a Covnanter and Anticovnanter how at once to be a Scot and an Irish Rebel He returns again to disallow of that Reformation which the Covnant vows as being the partiall advice of a few Divines But matters of this moment as they were not to be decided there by those Divines so neither are they to be determin'd heer by Essays curtal Aphorisms but by solid proofs of Scripture The rest of his discourse he spends highly accusing the Parlament that the main Reformation by them intended was to robb the Church and much applauding himself both for his forwardness to all due Reformation and his aversness from all such kind of Sacrilege All which with his glorious title of the Churches Defender we leave him to make good by Pharaoh's Divinity if he please for to Josephs Pietie it will be a task unsutable As for the parity and poverty of Ministers which he takes to be so sad of consequence the Scripture reck'ns them for two special Legacies left by our Saviour to his Disciples under which two Primitive Nurses for such they were indeed the Church of God more truly flourisht then ever after since the time that imparitie and Church revennue rushing in corrupted and beleper'd all the Clergie with a worse infection then Gehezi's some one of whose Tribe rather then a King I should take to be compiler of that unsalted and
Simonical praier annex'd Although the Praier it self strongly prays against them For never such holy things as he means were giv'n to more Swine nor the Churches Bread more to Dogs then when it fed ambitious irreligious and dumb Prelats XV. Upon the many Jealousies c. TO wipe off jealousies and scandals the best way had bin by clear Actions or till Actions could be clear'd by evident reasons but meer words we are too well acquainted with Had his honour and reputation bin dearer to him then the lust of Raigning how could the Parlament of either Nation have laid so oft'n at his dore the breach of words promises acts Oaths and execrations as they doe avowedly in many of thir Petitions and addresses to him thether I remitt the Reader And who can beleive that whole Parlaments elected by the People from all parts of the Land should meet in one mind and resolution not to advise him but to conspire against him in a wors powder plot then Catesbies to blow up as he termes it the peoples affection towards him and batter down thir loyalty by the Engins of foule aspersions Water works rather then Engines to batter with yet thosé aspersions were rais'd from the foulness of his own actions Whereof to purge himself he uses no other argument then a general and so oft'n iterated commendation of himself and thinks that Court holy water hath the vertue of expiation at least with the silly people To whom he familiarly imputes sin where none is to seem liberal of his forgiveness where none is ask'd or needed What wayes he hath tak'n toward the prosperitie of his people which he would seem so earnestly to desire if we doe but once call to mind it will be anough to teach us looking on the smooth insinuations heer that Tyrants are not more flatterd by thir Slaves then forc'd to flatter others whom they feare For the peoples tranquilitie he would willingly be the Jonah but least he should be tak'n at his word pretends to foresee within Kenn two imaginarie windes never heard of in the Compass which threaten if he be cast overboard to increase the storm but that controversy divine lot hath ended He had rather not rule then that his people should be ruin'd and yet above these twenty yeres hath bin ruining the people about the niceties of his ruling He is accurate to put a difference between the plague of malice the ague of mistakes the itch of noveltie and the leprosie of disloyaltie But had he as wel known how to distinguish between the venerable gray haires of ancient Religion and the old scurffe of Superstition between the wholsome heat of well Governing and the fevorous rage of Tyrannizing his judgement in Statephysic had bin of more autoritie Much he Prophesies that the credit of those men who have cast black scandals on him shal ere long be quite blasted by the same furnace of popular obloquie wherin they sought to cast his name and honour I beleive not that a Romish guilded Portrature gives better Oracle then a Babylonish gold'n Image could doe to tell us truely who heated that Furnace of obloquy or who deserves to be thrown in Nebuchadnezzar or the three Kingdoms It gave him great cause to suspect his own innocence that he was oppos'd by so many who profest singular pietie But this qualm was soon over and he concluded rather to suspect their Religion then his own innocence affirming that many with him were both learned and Religious above the ordinary size But if his great Seal without the Parlament were not sufficient to create Lords his Parole must needs be farr more unable to create learned and religious men and who shall authorize his unlerned judgement to point them out He guesses that many well minded men were by popular Preachers urg'd to oppose him But the opposition undoubtedly proceeded and continues from heads farr wiser and spirits of a nobler straine those Priest-led Herodians with thir blind guides are in the Ditch already travailing as they thought to Sion but moor'd in the I le of Wight He thanks God for his constancy to the Protestant Religion both abroad and at home Abroad his Letter to the Pope at home his Innovations in the Church will speak his constancy in Religion what it was without furder credit to this vain boast His using the assistance of some Papists as the cause might be could not hurt his Religion but in the setling of Protestantism thir aid was both unseemly suspicious inferr'd that the greatest part of Protestants were against him his obtruded settlement But this is strange indeed that he should appear now teaching the Parlament what no man till this was read thought ever he had lernt that difference of perswasion in religious matters may fall out where ther is the samenes of allegeance subjection If he thought so from the beginning wherfore was there such compulsion us'd to the puritans of England the whole realm of Scotl. about conforming to a liturgie Wherfore no Bishop no king Wherfore episcopacie more agreeable to monarchie if different perswasions in religion may agree in one duty allegeance Thus do court maxims like court Minions rise or fall as the king pleases Not to tax him for want of Elegance as a courtier in writing Oglio for Olla the Spanish word it might be wel affirm'd that there was a greater Medley disproportioning of religions to mix Papists with Protestants in a Religious cause then to entertaine all those diversifi'd Sects who yet were all Protestants one Religion though many Opinions Neither was it any shame to Protestants that he a declar'd Papist if his own letter to the Pope not yet renowne'd bely him not found so few protestants of his religion as enforc'd him to call in both the counsel the aid of papists to help establish protestancy who were led on not by the sense of thir Allegeance but by the hope of his Apostacy to Rome from disputing to warring his own voluntary and first appeale His hearkning to evil Counselers charg'd upon him so oft'n by the Parlament he puts off as a device of those men who were so eager to give him better counsell That those men were the Parlament that he ought to have us'd the counsel of none but those as a King is already known What their civility laid upon evil Counselers he himself most commonly own'd but the event of those evil counsels the enormities the confusions the miseries he transferrs from the guilt of his own civil broiles to the just resistance made by Parlament imputes what miscarriages of his they could not yet remove for his opposing as if they were some new misdemeanors of their bringing in and not the inveterat diseases of his own bad Goverment which with a disease as bad he falls again to magnifie and commend and may all those who would be govern'd by his Retractions and concessions rather then by Laws of
commends had rather bin in his way it would perhaps in som measure have perform'd the end for which they say Liturgie was first invented and have hinder'd him both heer and at other times from turning his notorious errors into his Praiers XVIII Upon the Uxbridge Treaty c. IF the way of Treaties be look'd upon in general as a retiring from bestial force to human reason his first Aphorism heer is in part deceav'd For men may Treat like Beasts as well as fight If som fighting were not mar-like then either fortitude were no vertue or no fortitude in fighting And as Politicians ofttimes through dilatory purposes and emulations handle the matter there hath bin no where found more bestialitie then in treating which hath no more commendation in it then from fighting to come to undermining from violence to craft and when they can no longer doe as Lions to doe as Foxes The sincerest end of Treating after War once Proclaim'd is either to part with more or to demand less then was at first fought for rather then to hazzard more lives or wors mischiefs What the Parlament in that point were willing to have don when first after the Warr begun they Petition'd him at Colebrook to voutsafe a treaty is unknown For after he had tak'n God to witness of his continual readiness to Treat or to offer Treaties to the avoiding of bloodshed had nam'd Windsor the place of Treaty and pass'd his royal word not to advance furder till Commissioners by such a time were speeded towards him taking the advantage of a thick Mist which fell that evening weather that soon invited him to a designe no less treacherous and obscure he follows at the heels those Me engers of Peace with a traine of covert Warr and with a bloody surprise falls on our secure Forces which lay quartering at Brentford in the thoughts and expectation of a Treaty And although in them who make a Trade of Warr and against a natural Enemy such an onset might in the rigor of Military Law have bin excus'd while Armes were not yet by agreement suspended yet by a King who seem'd so heartily to accept of treating with his subjects and professes heer He never wanted either desire or disposition to it professes to have greater confidence in his Reason then in his Sword and as a Christian to seek Peace and ensue it such bloody and deceitful advantages would have bin forborn one day at least if not much longer in whom there had not bin a thirst rather then a detestation of civil Warr and blood and a desire to subdue rather then to treat In the midst of a second Treaty not long after fought by the Parlament and after much adoe obtain'd with him at Oxford what suttle and unpeaceable designes he then had in chace his own Letters discover'd What attempts of treacherous hostility successful and unsuccessful he made against Bristow Scarborow and other places the proceedings of that Treaty will soon put us in mind and how he was so far from granting more of reason after so much of blood that he deny'd then to grant what before he had offerd making no other use of Treaties pretending Peace then to gaine advantages that might enable him to continue Warr. What marvel then if he thought it no diminution of himself as oft as he saw his time to be importunate for Treaties when hee sought them onely as by the upshot appeard to get opportunities and once to a most cruel purpose if we remember May 1643. and that Messenger of Peace from Oxford whose secret Message and Commission had it bin effected would have drownd the innocence of our Treating in the blood of a designed Massacher Nay when treaties from the Parlament sought out him no less then seven times oft anough to testifie the willingness of thir obedience and too oft for the Majesty of a Parlament to court thir Subjection he in the confidence of his own strength or of our divisions returnd us nothing back but denials or delaies to thir most necessary demands and being at lowest kept up still and sustain'd his almost famishd hopes with the howrly expectation of raising up himself the higher by the greater heap which he sate promising himself of our sudden ruin through dissention But he inferrs as if the Parlament would have compell'd him to part with somthing of his honour as a King What honour could he have or call his joyn'd not onely with the offence or disturbance but with the bondage and destruction of three Nations wherof though he be careless and improvident yet the Parlament by our Laws and freedom ought to judge and use prevention our Laws els were but cobweb Laws And what were all his most rightful honours but the peoples gift and the investment of that lustre Majesty and honour which for the public good no otherwise redounds from a whole Nation into one person So far is any honour from being his to a common mischeif and calamity Yet still he talks on equal termes with the grand Representative of that people for whose sake he was a King as if the general welfare and his subservient Rights were of equal moment or consideration His aime indeed hath ever bin to magnifie and exalt his borrowd Rights and Prerogatives above the Parlament and Kingdom of whom he holds them But when a King setts himself to bandy against the highest Court and residence of all his Regal power he then in the single person of a Man fights against his own Majesty and Kingship and then indeed sets the first hand to his own deposing The Treaty at Uxbridge he saith gave the fairest hopes of a happy composure fairest indeed if his instructions to bribe our Commissioners with the promise of Security rewards and places were faire What other hopes it gave no man can tell There being but three maine heads whereon to be treated Ireland Episcopacy and the Militia the first was anticipated and forestall'd by a Peace at any rate to be hast'nd with the Irish Rebels ere the Treaty could begin that he might pretend his word and honour past against the specious and popular arguments he calls them no better which the Parlament would urge upon him for the continuance of that just Warr. Episcopacy he bids the Queen be confident he will never quitt which informes us by what Patronage it stood and the Sword he resolves to clutch as fast as if God with his own hand had put it into his This was the moderation which he brought this was as farr as Reason Honour Conscience and the Queen who was his Regent in all these would give him leave Lastly for composure in stead of happy how miserable it was more likely to have bin wise men could then judge when the English during Treaty were call'd Rebels the Irish good and Catholic Subjects and the Parlament before hand though for fashions sake call'd a Parlament yet by a Jesuitical slight not acknowledg'd though call'd
all of them agree in one song with this heer that they are sorry to see so little regard had to Laws establisht and the Religion settl'd Popular compliance dissolution of all order and goverment in the Church Scisms Opinions Undecencies Confusions Sacrilegious invasions contempt of the Clergie and thir Liturgie Diminution of Princes all these complaints are to be read in the Messages and Speeches almost of every Legat from the Pope to those States and Citties which began Reformation From whence he either learnt the same pretences or had them naturally in him from the same spirit Neither was there ever so sincere a Reformation that hath escap'd these clamours He offer'd a Synod or Convocation rightly chosen So offerd all those Popish Kings heertofore a cours the most unsatisfactory as matters have been long carried and found by experience in the Church liable to the greatest fraud and packing no solution or redress of evil but an increase rather detested therfore by Nazianzen and som other of the Fathers And let it bee produc'd what good hath bin don by Synods from the first times of Reformation Not to justifie what enormities the Vulgar may committ in the rudeness of thir zeal we need but onely instance how he bemoanes the pulling down of Crosses and other superstitious Monuments as the effect of a popular and deceitful Reformation How little this savours of a Protestant is too easily perceav'd What he charges in defect of Piety Charity and Morality hath bin also charg'd by Papists upon the best reformed Churches not as if they the accusers were not tenfold more to be accus'd but out of thir Malignity to all endeavour of amendment as we know who accus'd to God the sincerity of Job an accusation of all others the most easie when as there livs not any mortal man so excellent who in these things is not alwaies deficient But the infirmities of best men and the scandals of mixt Hypocrits in all times of reforming whose bold intrusion covets to bee ever seen in things most sacred as they are most specious can lay no just blemish upon the integritie of others much less upon the purpose of Reformation it self Neither can the evil doings of som be the excuse of our delaying or deserting that duty to the Church which for no respect of times or carnal policies can be at any time unseasonable He tells with great shew of piety what kinde of persons public Reformers ought to be and what they ought to doe T is strange that in above twenty years the Church growing still wors and wors under him he could neither be as he bids others be nor doe as he pretends heer so well to know nay which is worst of all after the greatest part of his Raign spent in neither knowing nor doing aught toward a Reformation either in Church or State should spend the residue in hindring those by a seven years Warr whom it concernd with his consent or without it to doe thir parts in that great performance T is true that the method of reforming may well subsist without perturbation of the State but that it falls out otherwise for the most part is the plaine Text of Scripture And if by his own rule hee had allow'd us to feare God first and the King in due order our Allegeance might have still follow'd our Religion in a fit subordination But if Christs Kingdom be tak'n for the true Discipline of the Church and by his Kingdom be meant the violence he us'd against it and to uphold an Antichristian Hierarchie then sure anough it is that Christs Kingdom could not be sett up without pulling down his And they were best Christians who were least subject to him Christs Goverment out of question meaning it Prelatical hee thought would confirm his and this was that which overthrew it He professes to own his Kingdom from Christ and to desire to rule for his glory and the Churches good The Pope and the King of Spain profess every where as much and both his practice and all his reasonings all his enmitie against the true Church we see hath bin the same with theirs since the time that in his Letter to the Pope he assur'd them both of his full compliance But evil beginnings never bring forth good conclusions they are his own words and he ratifi'd them by his own ending To the Pope he ingag'd himself to hazard life and estate for the Roman Religion whether in complement he did it or in earnest and God who stood neerer then he for complementing minded writ down those words that according to his resolution so it should come to pass He praies against his hypocrisie and Pharisaical washings a Prayer to him most pertinent but choaks it straight with other words which pray him deeper into his old errors and delusions XXI Vpon His Letters tak'n and divulg'd THE Kings Letters taken at the Battell of Naesby being of greatest importance to let the people see what Faith there was in all his promises and solemn Protestations were transmitted to public view by special Order of the Parlament They discover'd his good affection to Papists and Irish Rebels the straight intelligence he held the pernitious dishonorable peace he made with them not solicited but rather soliciting w ch by all invocations that were holy he had in public abjur'd They reveal'd his endeavours to bring in forren Forces Irish French Dutch Lorrainers and our old Invaders the Danes upon us besides his suttleties and mysterious arts in treating to summ up all they shewd him govern'd by a Woman All which though suspected vehemently before and from good grounds beleev'd yet by him and his adherents peremptorily deny'd were by the op'ning of that Cabinet visible to all men under his own hand The Parlament therfore to cleer themselves of aspersing him without cause and that the people might no longer be abus'd and cajol'd as they call it by falsities and Court impudence in matters of so high concernment to let them know on what termes thir duty stood and the Kingdoms peace conceavd it most expedient and necessary that those Letters should be made public This the King affirmes was by them don without honour and civilitie words which if they contain not in them as in the language of a Courtier most commonly they do not more of substance and realitie then complement Ceremony Court fauning and dissembling enter not I suppose furder then the eare into any wise mans consideration Matters were not then between the Parlament and a King thir enemie in that state of trifling as to observ those superficial vanities But if honour and civilitie mean as they did of old discretion honesty prudence and plaine truth it will be then maintain'd against any Sect of those Cabalists that the Parlament in doing what they did with those Letters could suffer in thir honour and civilitie no diminution The reasons are already heard And that it is with none more familiar then with Kings
to transgress the bounds of all honour and civility there should not want examples good store if brevity would permitt In poynt of Letters this one shall suffice The Duchess of Burgundie and heire of Duke Charles had promis'd to her Subjects that shee intended no otherwise to Govern then by advise of the three Estates but to Lewis the French King had writt'n Letters that shee had resolv'd to committ wholly the managing of her affaires to foure Persons whom shee nam'd The three Estates not doubting the sincerity of her Princely word send Embassadors to Lewis who then beseig'd Arras belonging to the Duke of Burgondy The King taking hold of this occasion to set them at division among themselves question'd thir Credence which when they offerd to produce with thir instructions he not only shewes them the privat Letter of thir Duchess but gives it them to carry home wherwith to affront her which they did shee denying it stoutly till they spredding it before her face in a full assembly convicted her of an op'n Iye Which although Commines the historian much blames as a deed too harsh and dishonourable in them who were Subjects and not at Warr with thir Princess yet to his Maister Lewis who first divulg'd those Letters to the op'n shaming of that young Governess he imputes no incivilitie or dishonour at all although betraying a certaine confidence repos'd by that Letter in his royal secrecie With much more reason then may letters not intercepted only but won in battell from an enemie be made public to the best advantages of them that win them to the discovery of such important truth or falshood Was it not more dishonourable in himself to faine suspicions and jealousies which we first found among those Letters touching the chastitie of his Mother thereby to gaine assistance from the King of Denmark as in vindication of his Sister The Damsell of Burgundie at sight of her own letter was soon blank and more ingenuous then to stand out-facing but this man whom nothing will convince thinks by talking world without end to make good his integrity and faire dealing contradicted by his own hand and seale They who can pick nothing out of them but phrases shall be counted Bees they that discern furder both there and here that constancy to his Wife is set in place before Laws and Religion are in his naturalities no better then Spiders He would work the people to a perswasion that if he be miserable they cannot be happy VVhat should hinder them VVere they all born Twins of Hippocrates with him and his fortune one birth one burial It were a Nation miserable indeed not worth the name of a Nation but a race of Idiots whose happiness and welfare depended upon one Man The happiness of a Nation consists in true Religion Piety Justice Prudence Temperance Fortitude and the contempt of Avarice and Ambition They in whomsoever these vertues dwell eminently need not Kings to make them happy but are the architects of thir own happiness and whether to themselves or others are not less then Kings But in him which of these vertues were to be found that might extend to the making happy or the well-governing of somuch as his own houshold which was the most tious and ill govern'd in the whole Land But the op'ning of his Letters was design'd by the Parlament to make all reconciliation desperate Are the lives of so many good and faithfull men that dy'd for the freedom of thir Country to be so slighted as to be forgott'n in a stupid reconcilement without Justice don them VVhat he feares not by VVarr and slaughter should we feare to make desperate by op'ning his Letters VVhich fact he would parallell with Chams revealing of his Fathers nakedness VVhen he at that time could be no way esteem'd the Father of his Countrey but the destroyer nor had he ever before merited that former title He thanks God he cannot onely beare this with patience but with charity forgive the doers Is not this meer mockery to thank God for what he can doe but will not For is it patience to impute Barbarism and inhumanity to the op'ning of an Enemies Letter or is it Charity to cloth them with curses in his Prayer whom he hath forgiv'n in his Discours In which Prayer to shew how readily he can return good for evil to the Parlament and that if they take away his Coat he can let them have his Cloak also for the dismantling of his Letters he wishes They may be cover'd with the Cloak of confusion VVhich I suppose they do resigne with much willingness both Livery Badge and Cognizance to them who chose rather to be the Slaves and Vassals of his will then to stand against him as men by nature free born and created with a better title to thir freedom then any King hath to his Crown XXII Vpon His going to the Scots THe Kings comming in whether to the Scots or English deserv'd no thanks for necessitie was his Counselor and that he hated them both alike his expressions every where manifest Som say his purpose was to have come to London till hearing how strictly it was proclaim'd that no man should conceal him he diverted his course But that had bin a frivolous excuse and besides he himself rehearsing the consultations had before he took his journey shewes us cleerly that he was determin'd to adventure upon their Loyalty who first began his troubles And that the Scots had notice of it before hath bin long since brought to light What prudence there could be in it noman can imagin Malice there might be by raising new jealousies to divide Freinds For besides his diffidence of the English it was no small dishonour that he put upon them when rather then yeild himself to the Parlament of England he yeelded to an hireling Army of Scots in England payd for thir Service heer not in Scotch coyn but in English Silver nay who from the first beginning of these troubles what with brotherly assistance and what with mounthly pay have defended thir own Liberty and consciences at our charge However it was a hazardous and rash journey taken to resolve riddles in mens Loyaltie who had more reason to mistrust the Riddle of such a disguised yeelding and to put himself in their hands whose Loyalty was a Riddle to him was not the cours to be resolv'd of it but to tempt it What providence deny'd to force he thought it might grant to fraud which he stiles Prudence But Providence was not couzen'd with disguises neither outward nor inward To have known his greatest danger in his supposed safety and his greatest safety in his supposed danger was to him a fatal Riddle never yet resolv'd wherin rather to have imployd his main skill had bin much more to his preservation Had he known when the Game was lost it might have sav'd much contest but the way to give over fairely was not to slip out of op'n Warr into a
instruments also of his designes The Ministers which were sent him no marvel he indur'd not for they Preacht repentance to him the others gave him easie confession easie absolution nay strength'nd his hands and hard'nd his heart by applauding him in his wilfull wayes To them he was an Ahab to these a Constantine it must follow then that they to him were as unwelcome as Eliah was to Ahab these as deer and pleasing as Amaziah the Priest of Bethel was to Jeroboam These had learnt well the lesson that would please Prophesie not against Bethel for it is the Kings Chappel the Kings Court and had taught the King to say of those Ministers which the Parlament had sent Amos hath conspir'd against me the Land is not able to beare all his words Returning to our first Parallel this King lookt upon his Prelats as Orphans under the sacrilegious eyes of many rapacious Reformers and there was as great feare of Sacrilege between Micah and his Mother till with thir holy treasure about the loss whereof there was such cursing they made a grav'n and a molt'n Image and got a Priest of thir own To let go his Criticizing about the sound of Prayers imperious rude or passionat modes of his own divising we are in danger to fall again upon the flats and shallows of Liturgie Which if I should repeat again would turn my answers into Responsories and begett another Liturgie having too much of one already This onely I shall add that if the heart as he alleges cannot safely joyn with another mans extemporal sufficiency because we know not so exactly what they mean to say then those public Prayers made in the Temple by those forenamed Kings and by the Apostles in the Congregation and by the ancient Christians for above three hundred yeares before Liturgies came in were with the People made in vain After he hath acknowledg'd that kings heertofore prayd without Chaplains eev'n publicly in the Temple it self and that every privat Beleever is invested with a royall Priesthood yet like one that relisht not what he tasted of the heav'nly gift and the good word of God whose name he so confidently takes into his mouth he frames to himself impertinent and vain reasons why he should rather pray by the officiating mouth of a Closet Chaplain Their prayers saith he are more prevalent they flow from minds more enlightn'd from affections less distracted Admitt this true which is not this might be somthing said as to thir prayers for him but what availes it to thir praying with him If his own minde be incumbred with secular affaires what helps it his particular prayer though the mind of his Chaplain be not wandring either after new preferment or his Dinner The fervencie of one man in prayer cannot supererogate for the coldness of another neither can his spiritual defects in that duty be made out in the acceptance of God by another mans abilities Let him endeavour to have more light in himself And not to walk by another mans Lamp but to get Oyle into his own Let him cast from him as in a Christian warrfare that secular incumbrance which either distracts or overloads him his load els will never be the less heavie because another mans is light Thus these pious flourishes and colours examin'd throughly are like the Apples of Asphaltis appearing goodly to the sudden eye but look well upon them or at least but touch them and they turne into Cinders In his Prayer he remembers what voices of joy and gladness there were in his Chappell Gods house in his opinion between the Singing men and the Organs and this was unity of spirit in the bond of peace the vanity superstition and misdevotion of which place was a scandall farr and neer Wherin so many things were sung and pray'd in those Songs which were not understood and yet he who makes a difficulty how the people can joyne thir hearts to extemporal prayers though distinctly heard and understood makes no question how they should joyn thir hearts in unitie to songs not understood I beleeve that God is no more mov'd with a prayer elaboratly pend then men truely charitable are mov'd with the pen'd speech of a Begger Finally O yee Ministers ye pluralists whose lips preserve not knowledge but the way ever op'n to your bellies read heer what work he makes among your wares your Gally pots your Balmes and Cordials in print not onely your sweet Sippets in widows houses but the huge gobbets wherewith he charges you to have devourd houses and all the houses of your Brethren your King and your God Crie him up for a Saint in your Pulpits while he cries you down for Atheists into Hell XXV Vpon His penitentiall Meditations and Vowes at Holmby IT is not hard for any man who hath a Bible in his hands to borrow good words and holy sayings in abundance but to make them his own is a work of grace onely from above He borrows heer many penitential Verses out of Davids Psalmes So did many among those Israelites who had revolted from the true worship of God invent to themselves instruments of music like David and probably Psalmes also like his and yet the Profet Amos complaines heavily against them But to prove how short this is of true repentance I will recite the penitence of others who have repented in words not borrowd but thir own and yet by the doom of Scripture it self are judg'd reprobates Cain said unto the Lord My iniquity is greater then I can beare behold thou hast driv'n me this day from the face of the earth and from thy face shall I be bid And when Esau heard the words of his Father he cry'd with an exceeding bitter cry and said Bless me eev'n me also O my Father yet found no place of repentance though he sought it carefully with teares Heb. 12. And Pharaoh said to Moses The Lord is righteous I and my people are wicked I have sind against the Lord your God and against you And Balaam said Let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be like his And Saul said to Samuel I have sin'd for I have transgress'd the commandment of the Lord yet honour me now I pray thee before the Elders of my People And when Ahab heard the words of Eliah he rent his cloaths and put sackcloth upon his flesh and fasted and lay in sackcloth and went softly Jehoram also rent his cloaths and the people look'd and behold he had Sackcloth upon his flesh yet in the very act of his humiliation he could say God doe so and more also to me if the head of Elishah shall stand on him this day Therfore saith the Lord They have not cri'd unto me with thir heart when they howl'd upon thir beds They returne but not to the most High Hosea 7. And Judas said I have sind in that I have betray'd innocent blood And Simon Magus sayd Pray yee to the Lord for me that
none of these things come upon me All these took the paines both to confess and to repent in thir own words and many of them in thir own tears not in Davids But transported with the vain ostentation of imitating Davids language not his life observe how he brings a curse upon himself and his Fathers house God so disposing it by his usurp'd and ill imitated prayer Let thy anger I beseech thee le against me and my Fathers house as for these Sheep what have they don For if David indeed sind in numbring the people of which fault he in earnest made that confession acquitted the whole people from the guilt of that sin then doth this King using the same words bear witness against himself to be the guilty person and either in his soule and conscience heer acquitts the Parlament and the people or els abuses the words of David and dissembles grossly to the very face of God which is apparent in the next line wherein he accuses eev'n the Church it self to God as if she were the Churches enemie for having overcom his Tyranny by the powerfull and miraculous might of Gods manifest arme For to other strength in the midst of our divisions and disorders who can attribute our Victories Thus had this miserable Man no worse enemies to sollicit and mature his own destruction from the hast'nd sentence of Divine Justice then the obdurat curses which proceeded against himself out of his own mouth Hitherto his Meditations now his Vowes which as the Vowes of hypocrits use to be are most commonly absurd and som wicked Jacob Vow'd that God should be his God if he granted him but what was necessary to perform that Vow life and subsistence but the obedience profferd heer is nothing so cheap He who took so hainously to be offer'd nineteen Propositions from the Parlament capitulates heer with God almost in as many Articles If he will continue that light or rather that darkness of the Gospel which is among his Prelats settle thir luxuries and make them gorgeous Bishops If he will restore the greevances and mische ifs of those obsolete and Popish Laws which the Parlament without his consent hath abrogated and will suffer Justice to be executed according to his sense If he will suppress the many Scisms in Church to contradict himself in that which he hath foretold must and shall come to pass and will remove Reformation as the greatest Scism of all and Factions in State by which he meanes in every leafe the Parlament If he will restore him to his negative voice and the Militia as much to say as arbitrary power which he wrongfully averrs to be the right of his Predecessors If he will turne the hearts of his people to thir old Cathedral and Parochial service in the Liturgie and thir passive obedience to the King If he will quench the Army and withdraw our Forces from withstanding the Piracy of Rupert and the plotted Irish invasion If he will bless him with the freedom of Bishops again in the House of Peers and of fugitive Delinquents in the House of Commons and deliver the honour of Parlament into his hands from the most natural and due protection of the people that entrusted them with the dangerous enterprize of being faithfull to thir Country against the rage and malice of his tyran nous opposition If he will keep him from that great offence of following the counsel of his Parlament and enacting what they advise him to which in all reason and by the known Law and Oath of his Coronation he ought to doe and not to call that Sacrilege which necessity through the continuance of his own civil Warr hath compelld them to necessity which made David eat the Shew-bread made Ezechiah take all the Silver which was found in Gods House and cut off the Gold which overlayd those dores and Pillars and give it to Sennacherib necessity which oft times made the Primitive Church to sell her sacred utensils eev'n to the Communion Chalice If he will restore him to a capacity of glorifying him by doing that both in Church and State which must needs dishonour and pollute his name If he will bring him again with peace honour and safety to his cheife Citty without repenting without satisfying for the blood spilt onely for a few politic concessions which are as good as nothing If he will put again the Sword into his hand to punish those that have deliverd us and to protect Delinquents against the Justice of Parlament Then if it be possible to reconcile contradictions he will praise him by displeasing him and serve him by disserving him His glory in the gaudy Copes and painted Windows Miters Rochets Altars and the chanted Service-Book shall be dearer to him then the establishing his Crowne in righteousness and the spiritual power of Religion He will pardon those that have offended him in particular but there shall want no suttle wayes to be eev'n with them upon another score of thir suppos'd offences against the Common-wealth wherby he may at once affect the glory of a seeming justice and destroy them pleasantly while he faines to forgive them as to his own particular and outwardly bewailes them These are the conditions of his treating with God to whom he bates nothing of what he stood upon with the Parlament as if Commissions of Array could deale with him also But of all these conditions as it is now evident in our eyes God accepted none but that final Petition which he so oft no doubt but by the secret judgement of God importunes against his own head praying God That his mercies might be so toward him as his resolutions of Truth and Peace were toward his People It follows then God having cutt him off without granting any of these mercies that his resolutions were as fained as his Vows were frustrat XXVI Vpon the Armies surprisall of the King at Holmeby TO give account to Royalists what was don with thir vanquisht King yeilded up into our hands is not to be expected from them whom God hath made his Conquerors And for brethren to debate rippe up thir falling out in the eare of a common enemy thereby making him the judge or at least the wel pleas'd auditor of thir disagreement is neither wise nor comely To the King therfore were he living or to his Party yet remaining as to this action there belongs no answer Aemulations all men know are incident among Military men and are if they exceed not pardonable But som of the former Army eminent anough for thir own martial deeds and prevalent in the House of Commons touch'd with envy to be so farr outdon by a new modell which they contemn'd took advantage of Presbyterian and Independent names and the virulence of som Ministers to raise disturbance And the Warr being then ended thought slightly to have discarded them who had faithfully don the work without thir due pay and the reward of thir invincible valour But
him nor condemn'd themselves But he will needs have vengeance to pursue and overtake them though to bring it in it cost him an inconvenient and obnoxious comparison As the Mice and Ratts overtook a German Bishop I would our Mice and Ratts had bin as Orthodoxal heer and had so pursu'd all his Bishops out of England then vermin had ridd away vermin which now hath lost the lives of too many thousand honest men to doe He cannot but observe this Divine Justice yet with sorrow and pitty But sorrow and pitty in a weak and over-maister'd enemy is lookt upon no otherwise then as the ashes of his revenge burnt out upon it self or as the damp of a coold fury when we say it gives But in this manner to sit spelling and observing divine justice upon every accident slight disturbance that may happ'n humanly to the affaires of men is but another fragment of his brok'n revenge yet the shrewdest the cunningest obloquy that can be thrown upon thir actions For if he can perswade men that the Parlament and thir cause is pursu'd with Divine vengeance he hath attain'd his end to make all men forsake them and think the worst that can be thought of them Nor is he onely content to suborn Divine Justice in his censure of what is past but he assumes the person of Christ himself to prognosticate over us what he wishes would come So little is any thing or person sacred from him no not in Heav'n which he will not use and put on if it may serve him plausibly to wreck his spleen or ease his mind upon the Parlament Although if ever fatal blindness did both attend and punish wilfulness if ever any enjoy'd not comforts for neglecting counsel belonging to thir peace it was in none more conspicuously brought to pass then in himself and his predictions against the Parlament and thir adherents have for the most part bin verify'd upon his own head and upon his chief Counselors He concludes with high praises of the Army But praises in an enemy are superfluous or smell of craft and the Army shall not need his praises nor the Parlament fare worse for his accusing prayers that follow Wherin as his Charity can be no way comparable to that of Christ so neither can his assurance that they whom he seems to pray for in doing what they did against him knew not what they did It was but arrogance therfore and not charity to lay such ignorance to others in the sight of God till he himself had bin infallible like him whose peculiar words he overweeningly assumes XXVII Intitil'd to the Prince of Wales VVHat the King wrote to his Son as a Father concerns not us what he wrote to him as a King of England concerns not him God and the Parlament having now otherwise dispos'd of England But because I see it don with some artifice and labour to possess the people that they might amend thir present condition by his or by his Sons restorement I shall shew point by point that although the King had bin reinstall'd to his desire or that his Son admitted should observe exactly all his Fathers precepts yet that this would be so farr from conducing to our happiness either as a remedy to the present distempers or a prevention of the like to come that it would inevitably throw us back again into all our past and fulfill'd miseries would force us to fight over again all our tedious Warrs and put us to another fatal struggling for Libertie and life more dubious then the former In which as our success hath bin no other then our cause so it will be evident to all posteritie that his misfortunes were the meer consequence of his perverse judgement First he argues from the experience of those troubles which both he and his Son have had to the improvement of thir pietie and patience and by the way beares witness in his own words that the corrupt education of his youth which was but glanc'd at onely in some former passages of this answer was a thing neither of mean consideration nor untruly charg'd upon him or his Son himself confessing heer that Court delights are prone either to root up all true vertue and honour or to be contented only with some leaves and withering formalities of them without any reall fruits tending to the public good Which presents him still in his own words another Rehoboam soft'nd by a farr wors Court then Salomons and so corrupted by flatteries which he affirmes to be unseparable to the overturning of all peace and the loss of his own honour and Kingdoms That he came therfore thus bredd up and nurtur'd to the Throne farr wors then Rehoboam unless he be of those who equaliz'd his Father to King Salomon we have heer his own confession And how voluptuously how idlely raigning in the hands of other men he either tyranniz'd or trifl'd away those seventeen yeares of peace without care or thought as if to be a King had bin nothing els in his apprehension but to eat and drink and have his will and take his pleasure though there be who can relate his domestic life to the exactness of a diary there shall be heer no mention made This yet we might have then foreseen that he who spent his leisure so remissly and so corruptly to his own pleasing would one day or other be wors busied and imployd to our sorrow And that he acted in good earnest what Rehoboam did but threat'n to make his little finger heavier then his Fathers loynes and to whip us with his two twisted Scorpions both temporal and spiritual Tyranny all his Kingdoms have felt What good use he made afterward of his adversitie both his impenitence and obstinacy to the end for he was no Manasseh and the sequel of these his meditated resolutions abundantly express retaining commending teaching to his Son all those putrid and pernicious documents both of State and of Religion instill'd by wicked Doctors and receav'd by him as in a Vessel nothing better seasond which were the first occasion both of his own and all our miseries And if he in the best maturity of his yeares and understanding made no better use to himself or others of his so long and manifold afflictions either looking up to God or looking down upon the reason of his own affaires there can be no probability that his son bred up not in the soft effeminacies of Court onely but in the rugged and more boistrous licence of undisciplin'd Camps and Garrisons for yeares unable to reflect with judgement upon his own condition and thus ill instructed by his Father should give his mind to walk by any other rules then these bequeath'd him as on his Fathers death-bed as the choisest of all that experience w ch his most serious observation and retirement in good or evil dayes had taught him David indeed by suffering without just cause learnt that meekness and that wisdom by adversity
whomsoever and that if Kings presume to overtopp the Law by which they raigne for the public good they are by Law to be reduc'd into order and that can no way be more justly then by those who exalted them to that high place For who should better understand thir own Laws and when they are transgrest then they who are govern'd by them and whose consent first made them and who can have more right to take knowledge of things don within a free Nation then they within themselves Those objected Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy we swore not to his Person but as it was invested with his Autority and his autority was by the People first giv'n him conditionally in Law and under Law and under Oath also for the Kingdoms good and not otherwise the Oathes then were interchang'd and mutual stood and fell together he swore fidelity to his trust not as a deluding ceremony but as a real condition of thir admitting him for King and the Conqueror himself swore it ofter then at his Crowning they swore Homage and Fealty to his Person in that trust There was no reason why the Kingdom should be furder bound by Oaths to him then he by his Coronation Oath to us which he hath every way brok'n and having brok'n the ancient Crown-Oath of Alfred above mention'd conceales not his penalty As for the Covnant if that be meant certainly no discreet Person can imagin it should bind us to him in any stricter sense then those Oaths formerly The acts of Hostility which we receav'd from him were no such dear obligements that we should ow him more fealty and defence for being our Enemy then we could before when we took him onely for a King They were accus'd by him and his Party to pretend Liberty and Reformation but to have no other end then to make themselves great and to destroy the Kings Person and autority For which reason they added that third Article testifying to the World that as they were resolvd to endeavor first a Reformation in the Church to extirpat Prelacy to preserve the Rights of Parlament and the Liberties of the Kingdom so they intended so farr as it might consist with the preservation and defence of these to preserve the Kings Person and Autority but not otherwise As farr as this comes to they Covnant and Swear in the sixth Article to preserve and defend the persons and autority of one another and all those that enter into that League so that this Covnant gives no unlimitable exemption to the Kings Person but gives to all as much defence and preservation as to him and to him as much as to thir own Persons and no more that is to say in order and subordination to those maine ends for which we live and are a Nation of men joynd in society either Christian or at least human But if the Covnant were made absolute to preserve and defend any one whomsoever without respect had either to the true Religion or those other Superiour things to be defended and preserv'd however it cannot then be doubted but that the Covnant was rather a most foolish hasty and unlawfull Vow then a deliberate and well-waighd Covnant swearing us into labyrinths and repugnances no way to be solv'd or reconcil'd and therfore no way to be kept as first offending against the Law of God to Vow the absolute preservation defence and maintaining of one Man though in his sins and offences never so great and hainous against God or his Neighbour and to except a Person from Justice wheras his Law excepts none Secondly it offends against the Law of this Nation wherein as hath bin prov'd Kings in receiving Justice undergoing due tryal are not differenc'd from the meanest Subject Lastly it contradicts and offends against the Covnant it self which Vows in the fourth Article to bring to op'n trial and condign punishment all those that shall be found guilty of such crimes and Delinqnencies wherof the King by his own Letters and other undeniable testimonies not brought to light till afterward was found and convicted to be chief actor in what they thought him at the time of taking that Covnant to be overrul'd onely by evil Counselers And those or whomsoever they should discover to be principal they vow'd to try either by thir own supreme Judicatories for so eev'n then they call'd them or by others having power from them to that effect So that to have brought the King to condign punishment hath not broke the Covnant but it would have broke the Covnant to have sav'd him from those Judicatories which both Nations declar'd in that Covnant to be Supreme against any person whatsoever And besides all this to sweare in covnant the bringing of his evil counselers and accomplices to condign punishment and not onely to leave unpunisht and untoucht the grand offender but to receive him back againe from the accomplishment of so many violences and mischeifs dipt from head to foot and staind over with the blood of thousands that were his faithfull subjects forc'd to thir own defence against a civil Warr by him first rais'd upon them and to receive him thus in this goarie pickle to all his dignities and honours covering the ignominious and horrid purple-robe of innocent blood that sate so close about him with the glorious purple of Royaltie and Supreme Rule the reward of highest excellence and vertue here on earth were not only to sweare and covnant the performance of an unjust Vow the strangest and most impious to the face of God but were the most unwise and unprudential act as to civil goverment For so long as a King shall find by experience that doe the worst he can his Subjects overaw'd by the Religion of thir own Covnant will only prosecute his evil instruments not dare to touch his Person and that whatever hath bin on his part offended or transgress'd he shall come off at last with the same reverence to his Person and the same honour as for well doing he will not faile to finde them worke seeking farr and neere and inviting to his Court all the concours of evil counselers or agents that may be found who tempted with preferments and his promise to uphold them will hazard easily thir own heads and the chance of ten to one but they shall prevaile at last over men so quell'd and fitted to be slaves by the fals conceit of a Religious Covnant And they in that Superstition neither wholly yeilding nor to the utmost resisting at the upshot of all thir foolish Warr and expence will finde to have don no more but fetchd a compass only of thir miseries ending at the same point of slavery and in the same distractions wherin they first begun But when Kings themselves are made as liable to punishment as thir evil counselers it will be both as dangerous from the King himself as from his Parlament to those that evilcounsel him and they who else would be his readiest Agents in
evil will then not feare to disswade or to disobey him not onely in respect of themselves and thir own lives which for his sake they would not seem to value but in respect of that danger which the King himself may incurr whom they would seem to love and serve with greatest fidelitie On all these grounds therfore of the covnant it self whether religious or political it appeares likeliest that both the English Parlament and the Scotch Commissioners thus interpreting the Covnant as indeed at that time they were the best and most authentical interpreters joyn'd together answered the King unanimously in thir Letters dated Jan. 13 th 1645. that till securitie and satisfaction first giv'n to both Kingdoms for the blood spilt for the Irish Rebels brought over and for the Warr in Ireland by him fomented they could in no wise yeild thir consent to his returne Here was satisfaction full two yeares and upward after the Covnant tak'n demanded of the King by both Nations in Parlament for crimes at least Capital wherwith they charg'd him And what satisfaction could be giv'n for so much blood but Justice upon him that spilt it Till which don they neither took themselves bound to grant him the exercise of his regal Office by any meaning of the Coynant which they then declar'd though other meanings have bin since contriv'd nor so much regarded the safety of his person as to admitt of his return among them from the midst of those whom they declar'd to be his greatest enemies nay from himself as from an actual enemy not as from a king they demanded security But if the covnant all this not with standing swore otherwise to preserv him then in the preservation of true religion our liberties against which he fought if not in armes yet in resolution to his dying day and now after death still fights against in this his book the covnant was better brok'n thē he sav'd And god hath testifi'd by all propitious the most evident signes whereby in these latter times he is wont to testifie what pleases him that such a solemn and for many Ages unexampl'd act of due punishment was no mockery of Justice but a most gratefull and well-pleasing Sacrifice Neither was it to cover their perjury as he accuses but to uncover his perjury to the Oath of his Coronation The rest of his discours quite forgets the Title and turns his Meditations upon death into obloquie and bitter vehemence against his Judges and accussers imitating therin not our Saviour but his Grand-mother Mary Queen of Scots as also in the most of his other scruples exceptions and evasions and from whom he seems to have learnt as it were by heart or els by kind that which is thought by his admirers to be the most vertuous most manly most Christian and most Martyr-like both of his words and speeches heer and of his answers and behaviour at his Tryall It is a sad fate he saith to have his Enemies both accusers Parties and Judges Sad indeed but no sufficient Plea to acquitt him from being so judg'd For what Malefactor might not somtimes plead the like If his own crimes have made all men his Enemies who els can judge him They of the Powder-plot against his Father might as well have pleaded the same Nay at the Resurrection it may as well be pleaded that the Saints who then shall judge the World are both Enemies Judges Parties and Accusers So much he thinks to abound in his own defence that he undertakes an unmeasurable task to bespeak the singular care and protection of God over all Kings as being the greatest Patrons of Law Justice Order and Religion on Earth But what Patrons they be God in the Scripture oft anough hath exprest and the earth it self hath too long groan'd under the burd'n of thir injustice disorder and irreligion Therfore To bind thir Kings in Chaines and thir Nobles with links of Iron is an honour belonging to his Saints not to build Babel which was Nimrods work the first King and the beginning of his Kingdom was Babel but to destroy it especially that spiritual Babel and first to overcome those European Kings which receive thir power not from God but from the beast and are counted no better then his ten hornes These shall hate the great Whore and yet shall give thir Kingdoms to the Beast that carries her they shall committ Fornication with her and yet shall burn her with fire and yet shall lament the fall of Babylon where they fornicated with her Rev. 17. 18. chapt Thus shall they be too and fro doubtfull and ambiguous in all thir doings untill at last joyning thir Armies with the Beast whose power first rais'd them they shall perish with him by the King of Kings against whom they have rebell'd and the Foules shall eat thir flesh This is thir doom writt'n Rev. 19. and the utmost that we find concerning them in these latter days which we have much more cause to beleeve then his unwarranted Revelation here prophecying what shall follow after his death with the spirit of Enmity not of Saint John He would fain bring us out of conceit with the good success which God hath voutsaf'd us Wee measure not our Cause by our success but our success by our cause Yet certainly in a good Cause success is a good confirmation for God hath promis'd it to good men almost in every leafe of Scripture If it argue not for us we are sure it argues not against us but as much or more for us then ill success argues for them for to the wicked God hath denounc'd ill success in all that they take in hand He hopes much of those softer tempers as he calls them and less advantag'd by his ruin that thir consciences doe already gripe them T is true there be a sort of moodie hot-brain'd and alwayes unedify'd consciences apt to engage thir Leaders into great and dangerous affaires past retirement and then upon a sudden qualm and swimming of thir conscience to betray them basely in the midst of what was chiefly undertak'n for their sakes Let such men never meet with any faithfull Parlament to hazzard for them never with any noble spirit to conduct and lead them out but let them live and die in servil condition and thir scrupulous queasiness if no instruction will confirme them Others there be in whose consciences the loss of gaine and those advantages they hop'd for hath sprung a sudden leake These are they that cry out the Covnant brok'n and to keep it better slide back into neutrality or joyn actually with Incendiaries and Malignants But God hath eminently begun to punish those first in Scotland then in Ulster who have provok'd him with the most hatefull kind of mockery to break his Covnant under pretence of strictest keeping it and hath subjected them to those Malignants with whom they scrupl'd not to be associats In God therfore we shall not feare what their fals fraternity can doe against us He seeks againe with cunning words to turn our success into our sin But might call to mind that the Scripture speakes of those also who when God slew them then sought him yet did but flatter him with thir mouth and ly'd to him with thir tongues for thir heart was not right with him And there was one who in the time of his affliction trespass'd more against God This was that King Abaz He glories much in the forgivness of his Enemies so did his Grandmother at her death Wise men would sooner have beleev'd him had he not so oft'n told us so But he hopes to erect the Trophies of his charity over us And Trophies of Charity no doubt will be as glorious as Trumpets before the almes of Hypocrites and more especially the Trophies of such an aspiring charitie as offers in his Prayer to share Victory with Gods compassion which is over all his works Such Prayers as these may happly catch the People as was intended but how they please God is to be much doubted though pray'd in secret much less writt'n to be divulg'd Which perhaps may gaine him after death a short contemptible and soon fading reward not what he aims at to stirr the constancie and solid firmness of any wise Man or to unsettle the conscience of any knowing Christian if he could ever aime at a thing so hopeless and above the genius of his Cleric elocution but to catch the worthles approbation of an inconstant irrational and Image-doting rabble that like a credulous and hapless herd begott'n to servility and inchanted with these popular institutes of Tyranny subscrib'd with a new device of the Kings Picture at his praiers hold out both thir eares with such delight and ravishment to be stigmatiz'd and board through in witness of thir own voluntary and beloved baseness The rest whom perhaps ignorance without malice or some error less then fatal hath for the time misledd on this side Sorcery or obduration may find the grace and good guidance to bethink themselves and recover THE END