the Ordinance of God persecuted his Vicegerent with Fire and Sword and ingulphed the Nation in a Sea of Blood Which perfidious and inhumane Enterprises that they might the better carry on and justifie they pretended to aim at nothing more than the Honour and Happiness of the King in delivering him from evil Counsellors the security of the Subjects in their Rights and Liberties and the Glory of God in the Purity of Religion By these Artifices they strangely â—rought upon the cheated People yea upon divers of the better sort of men â—hose Wisdom and Virtue might have â—ade them eminent if they had not â—…en unhappily infected with some particular Errors destructive of Government By these Methods I say they obtained large Contributions from Persons of all Conditions and all Sexes who freely sacrificed their Moneys to the Treasury for the promoting so specious Designs And besides these voluntary Offerings they seized the Revenues of the King Queen Prince Deans and Chapters and Plundered the Houses of the Nobility and Gentry whom they knew or suspected to be true and faithful to their Soveraign Hence it came to pass that a formidable strength was gathered to them and great Multitudes amassed in such considerable Bodies that they confidently promised themselves an easie Triumph over Captive Majesty And then after various Skirmishes and Battels Sieges and Storms after innumerable Butcheries and boundless Outrages of Violence and Cruelty Spoil and Rapine and Devastation in which many Thousands and Ten Thousand of Brave Men and Loyal Subjects were either Murdered or Maimed oâ— Imprisoned or Impoverished by the Permission of Heaven Villany and Treason was Crowned with succesâ— the Friends of Loyalty were scattered and the Combination of Wicked Usurpers prevailed over the most Just and Gracious Prince But how did they now manage their Victory and what was the blessed Reformation they purchased at the expense of so much Blood and Treasure They reformed the Church by pulling down her Walls and Pillars by devouring her Lands destroying her Ornaments Vestments and Utensils defacing her Beauty sequestring her regular Ministry extirpating her Primitive and Apostolick Government abolishing her excellent Liturgy throwing away all Forms of Publick Worship and tolerating all Religions or rather Irreligions Schisms and Heresies They reformed the State by the oppression of the People the invading and exhausting the Wealth of the Kingdom the Subversion of the Fundamental Laws the Violating those before accounted so sacred Priviledges of Parliament for which they pretended to have taken Arms the Cashiering the Peers of the Realm and the Ruine of the Monarchy They brought us to a glorious Liberty indeed when the King and the Lords being laid aside as useless the Nations Ears were nailed to the Door-posts of the House of Commons and when that House too having Imprisoned or Excluded the far greater and sounder part of her own Members acted all things according to the meer Will and Pleasure of a whole Legion of Arbitrary Princes an Insolent Imperious and Tyrannical Army These things happened to us before the horrid Fact of this Black and Guilty Day these made way for it But then at the Perpetration of that incomparable and unexampled Wickedness all manner of Sins and Mischiefs seemed to be as it were concentred in one Point That execrable Murder and Martyrdom of the most Sacred British Monarch Charles the First of Glorious Memory taking it with all its Circumstances was perhaps the greatest and most comprehensive Sin next to the Crucifixion of the Son of God and the Sin against the Holy Ghost that any of Adam's Degenerate Race was ever guilty of since the Creation of the World Was perhaps the greatest Judgment that the inflamed Wrath of Heaven did ever inflict on these sinful Nations since they were Nations was such a Sin of this then Barbarous Island and such a Judgment upon it as the wide Ocean with which it is environed could hardly afford us briny Tears enough to lament and deplore That a King should be Tryed and Sentenced in a Judicial manner with ceremonious Pomp as a Capital Criminal by the meanest of his own Subjects against all Laws Divine and Humane and contrary to their own publick Remonstrances Declarations Promises Vows and Covenants That a Protestant King should be Murdered not secretly in a Corner by the Dagger or Pistol or Poison of a bigotted Jesuit a Clement a Raviliac or some such Roman Assassin but openly upon a Scaffold neer the Gates of his own Palace by a bold barefac'd Protestant Execution before the Sun at Noon Day before thousands of his own Subjects before divers Foreigners of all Neighbouring Countries this is such a monstrous Parricide as hath been an astonishing Spectacle to the present Age and will be an incredible History in the future In short that a King so Wise and Just so Pious and Virtuous One whose Life was the visible Transcript of the excellent Religion he profess'd whose Government by a Redundancy of Goodness made his Subjects seem to Reign with him one who was so great a Patren of the Church so tender a Father of his Country should be persecuted and driven out of the World by his own rebellious Children with all this hellish Insolency and Indignity after they had most solemnly professed that they would make him a Glorious King after he had most sincerely endeavoured to make them a Happy People and after they had obtained from him so large Concessions as no King granted before as no Subjects before demanded I say that men should ever be so wicked as to act such an ingrateful Villany among us that God should ever be so angry as to permit such an over-whelming Calamity to befall us this is a strange and a new thing in the Earth such as our Ancestors never heard of such as I wish Posterity may never imitate Thus they made their Soveraign a Glorious King indeed when they would not have him to Reign over them when they would not suffer him to be any longer Rex Diabolorum as the King of England hath been sometimes called and then truly was but furiously removed him to a Celestial Throne among the blessed Saints and Angels Thus they effectually separated him from ill Counsellors when they sent him to that High and Holy Place where 't is impossible there should be any But that Angelical advancement which made his Martyrdom a Royal Triumph was the greater aggravation of the Regicides Diabolical Guilt And that far more exceeding and eternal weight of Glory which turned his Loss of three Temporal Crowns into a light Affliction to himself made his three Kingdoms Loss of so Glorious a Prince the heavier Judgment upon them Had our many Usurpers been only the Authors of this one Mischief this alone would have abundantly proved them the great Plague of Heaven for the Transgression of our Land But after and besides this behold a long Train of direful Consequences The King being Murdered his only lawful Successor the
is thine Thine is the Kingdom O Lord and thou art exalted above all Both Riches and Honour come of thee and thou reignest over all Theocracy or the Government of God himself is most perfectly and necessarily Monarchical which is a clear Indication of the supereminent Excellency of this Form of Government and that the happy Settlement and durable Establishment of a Nation may be most effectually promoted by it Secondly Monarchy is the Government which God hath chosen and appointed among the Children of Men for the good of humane Societies in Nations and Kingdoms As himself by Right of Creation and Conservation hath an immense Monarchy over all the World so he hath ordained finite and limited Monarchies in the several Regions of the Earth in each of which it pleased his Divine Providence always to set up one Deputy or Vicegerent who next and immediately under himself was Supreme Lord and Governor of all until at length Rebellions and Usurpations in some few of them violated the Order of God converted Monarchies into Popular States and advanced the Subjects above the Soveraign As it is in Gods Power alone to appoint Rulers and Magistrates and to confer an Authority to govern the World so his Wisdom is best able to judge what Form of Polity is most conducive to the Welfare of Mankind And therefore such sort of Governours and Governments as by his Providence have been most anciently and universally established ought by infinite Degrees to be preferred before any of the new Models which have been contrived and introduced by those Troublers of the World that are given to Change We justly value things according to their Original and their Antiquity Now if we would know the Original and the Antiquity of Monarchical Government we must look back as far as Adam and look up as high as God Monarchy began in Heaven and to make this lower World happy it was soon after established upon Earth Although the Empire of Nimrod be the first that is expresly mentioned in the Sacred Writings yet the first of Men was undoubtedly a Monarch who during the many hundred years he lived in the World was the only Soveraign under God and all his numerous Posterity were as much his Subjects as they were his Children being obliged by the Law of God and Nature to revere his irresistible Authority and to pay a dutiful Obedience to him After his Death his second Son Abel being slain and Cain the Eldest cursed by God for the Murder of him the Empire descended to Seth his third Son who as it is conceived established Religion and made Laws and Constitutions concerning Divine Worship For in his Days we read that Men began to call on the Name of the Lord After Seth Enosh his Son succeeded in the Government After Enosh the following Patriarchs And so long as the World was but one Nation and of one Language we may rationally suppose that they had but one King But at the Confusion of Languages each Division of People had their Head who undertook to conduct them to some convenient Region where they might dwell together and so he who was their Leader became their Prince as Heber was the King of the Hebrews From hence-forward there were various Kingdoms dispersed over the Face of the Earth which were both distinguished and protected from each other by the separate Rule and Government of their several Princes And such was the firm and stable Foundation which Monarchy had in all the former Ages of the World that the Earth knew no other Power for above three thousand years For the first Republick that History takes notice of was at Athens and it began as some say after the Expiration of the Reign of Eryxias which happened in the thirteenth Olympiad and neer the Year of the World 3275 or at the farthest after the Death of King Codrus who lived somewhat above an hundred years before and is said to be the last King of Athens by Justin and some others Afterwards Sparta Corinth Thebes and other Cities of Greece followed the Example of Athens But those little Common-Wealths were continually plagued either with intestine Broils or Foreign Wars and the Athenians in particular which were the first that changed their Government paid dearly for it when instead of one King they had thirty Tyrants reigning over them And at last when these quarrelsome States had almost ruined one another they were all made to submit to the Macedonian Empire and never suffered to erect that Form of Government again After these I have not read of any Republick of Note in the World besides the Roman until our few Modern Common-wealths were set up whose later Date is easily known Since then it was Monarchy under which the Nations of the world lived and flourished in a settled and uninterrupted course for so many thousand years it is not probable that the happy State of a Land should be so well prolonged under any sort of Popular Government which turbulent Innovations have introduced Thirdly As it is not to be doubted but Monarchy was anciently the Universal Government of the World set up by Divine Order and Approbation so it is particularly most clear and certain from Holy Scripture that it was of Gods own especial Designation and Appointment among his peculiar People the Children of Israel whom he had chosen above all other Nations to be the Objects of his singular Favour Their Government was Monarchical as soon as they became a Nation even from the time of their Deliverance out of the Egyptian Slavery and so it all along continued until after that the Son of God came down from Heaven to be their King their Nation was most justly destroyed for their horrid Impiety in rejecting and crucifying that Prince of Peace The first Governour God placed over them was Moses who was their Lawgiver and Judge and as real a Soveraign as ever raigned He was King in Jeshurun Deut. 33. 5. or according to some Versions King in Israel He was a King as the Learned Grotius saith upon the Place Non quidem Nomine Pompâ sed Jure regio His Power was Supreme Sacred and Inviolable his Will and Command uncontrolable and those that denied or disputed his Authority received the most exemplary Vengeance from Heaven that was ever inflicted upon the worst of Mankind He appointed indeed divers inferior Magistrates and Judges as Jethro advised him he chose able men out of all Israel and made them Heads over the People Rulers of Thousands Hundreds Fifties and Tens but the Supreme Power he wisely reserved in his own Hands and all the most difficult and weighty Causes were brought to him that they might be decided by his final and determinative Sentence from whence there was no Appeal Neither were any Sacred or Ecclesiastical matters exempted from his Regulation and Government The whole Aaronical Ministry which consisted in Typical Rites Ceremonies and Sacrifices was ordered and appointed by him although executed by
with those who would exchange this sober rational well-tempered Religion either for the Extravagancies of Enthusiasm or the Follies of Superstition the Delusions of the Sectaries or the Idolatries of the Romanists Shall we joyn with those who would exchange decent and duly regulated Ceremonies either for rude and unseemly Gestures on the one side or for a Multitude of ridiculous and pompous Rites on the other who would turn pious and primitive Discipline into lawless liberty or intolerable Impositions sound and ancient Doctrine in all Points agreeable to the written Word of God either into uncertain and unwritten Traditions or into novel Enthusiastick Divinity and serious well compos'd Forms of Prayer understood by the People either into mere Battologies and Extemporary Effusions or into unedifying Masses in an unknown Tongue It is a great and a most true commendation of our Religion worthy to be ever remembred which was given by his late Sacred Majesty in some of his last Words to the then Prince of Wales our now most Gracious Soveraign His words are these I do require and intreat you as your Father and your King that you never suffer your Heart to receive the least check against or Disaffection from the true Religion established in the Church of England I tell you I have tried it and after much Search and many Disputes have concluded it to be the best in the World not only in the Community as Christian but also in the special Notion as Reformed keeping the middle way between the Pomp of Superstitious Tyranny and the Meanness of Fantastick Anarchy And as for the Government over us if Reason and Scripture may be heard it is the most excellent Form of Government It is a Monarchy and the best sort of Monarchy not a Despotical and Arbitrary but a Political or Paternal Monarchy such as is administred by Just and equal Laws not an Elective but an Hereditary Monarchy free from all Interregnum and from many Mischiefs to which Elective Kingdoms are subject It is such a Monarchy as by an adadmirable Temperament preserves at once both the just Liberty of the Subject and the Soveraign Majesty of the King It is a Monarchy of great Antiquity We have been under the Government of Kings beyond the utmost Records of all History Of Kings we may justly boast more than any other Nation in the World For it was our Island that yielded the first King and the first Emperor that ever embraced the Faith of Christ Lucius and Constantine Princes who in the Glory and Stability of their Actions abundantly answered the significant Omens of their Illustrious Names One of our Kings also was the first who cast of the Antichristian Usurpations of the Church of Rome and settled the Reformation by a Law And it hath been ever since under the same good Conduct of Kings that the true Christian Reformed Religion hath been hitherto preserved among us Shall we then be so unwise as to hearken to the Antimonarchical Insinuations of those restless Demagogues who would alter and change subvert and destroy this most excellent this most ancient Form of Government And what if some Men will not or cannot apprehend that our Government deserves to be thus extolled What if they suppose this Constitution to be none of the best Yet every plain Country-man may understand That the Mischiefs of a Change are unspeakable A Change of Government cannot ordinarily be introduced without a Rebellion and all the fatal Consequences that attend it a Rebellion which commonly begins with factious Combinations under Pretence of Defending Religion Liberty and Property proceeds by armed Force and all the Ways of secret Stratagem or open Assault and ends in Blood and Slaughter Spoil and Devastation Rapine and Plunder Oppression and Sacriledge a Rebellion I say which if prosperous and successful make a great Change indeed overturns all Order and Rule and licenses all the Injustice in the World lays the Reins upon mens necks and takes off the Restraints of their Appetites throws down the Fences of Law and leaves all open to the Incursions of Violence gathers mens Lusts into a common Storm and fills all things with Horror and Confusion breaks up the Foundations of the Earth and lets in a kind of Hell upon us All these dire Effects of Subverting the Government this Nation hath sadly felt and if we took any Notice of the Black and Fatal Day in the last week they must needs at this Time be fresh in our Memories But perhaps all this doth not discourage the men that are given to Change The seditious Incendiaries care not although the whole Kingdom be in a Flame if they can but warm themselves at the Fire and at the End of all this Blood-shed Ruine and Devastation they expect nothing less than the rich Spoils of a happy Victory and the Glory of Triumph I shall therefore consider in the last Place what may abundantly confute and confound such vain Hopes The dismal Presage in my Text concerning the swift Vengeance that shall surprize such ill Men and the unknown Misery into which both they and their Associates may tumble headlong For their Calamity shall rise suddenly and who knoweth the Ruine of them both that is both of them that are given to change and those that joyn with them Or else it may be understood of the Destruction that shall come upon them both from the Lord and the King Who can tell what terrible Judgment what heavy Punishment both God and his Vicegerent may inflict upon them Who can measure the divine Vengeance which is armed with infinite Power Who can limite or appease the Wrath of a King which is as the Roaring of a Lyon or as a Messenger of Death Kings are said to have long Hands and God hath longer and heavier which can soon reach and will most severely chastise such Disturbers and Overturners of Peace and Government In the Thirteenth to the Romans St. Paul hath very plainly foretold their Fate that they shall receive to themselves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Judgment or as we render it Damnation If we take the Word in the mildest Sense the meaning is that according to the ordinary Course of Gods Providence they shall receive some grievous Punishment here in this World They seldom die the common Death of men nor are they visited after the visitation of all men but are usually cut off by the visible Strokes of Vindictive Justice And their Punishment is as signal as their Villany They resist the Ordinance of God and they receive a Punishment worthy of God Every Age hath afforded Examples of this but I will only instance in the Judgments which followed the first notorious Sedition that happened in World and the last great Rebellion in our own Nation That first Sedition of which we have a large and full Account in the sixteen Chapter of Numbers was the Insurrection of Corah and his Accomplices against Moses and Aaron under pretence of