this sole Religion with so many Asseverations in the head of Our Armies and the publick Attestation of our Barons with the circumspection used in the education of our Royal Off spring besides divers other undeniable Arguments onely demonstrate this but also that happy Alliance of Marriage We contracted twixt Our eldest Daughter and the Illustrious Prince of Orenge most clearly confirms the reallity of Our intentions herein by which Nuptial ingagement it appears further that Our endeavours are not only to make a bare profession thereof in Our own Dominions but to inlarge and corroborate it abroad as much as lieth in our Power This most holy Religion of the Anglican Church ordained by so many Convocations of learned Divines confirmed by so many Acts of National Parliaments and strengthened by so many Royal Proclamations together with the Ecclesiastick Discipline and Liturgy thereunto appertaining which Liturgy and Discipline the most eminent of Protestant Authors as well Germans as French as well Danes as Swedes and Switzeâ—s as well Belgians as Bohemians do with many Elogies and not without a kind of Envy approve and applaud in their publick Writings particularly in the transactions of the Synod of Dort wherein besides other of Our Divines who afterwards were Prelates one of Our Bishops assisted to whose dignity all due respects and precedency was given This Religion We say which Our Royal Father of blessed memory doth publickly assert in that His famous Confession address'd as we also do this our Protestation to all Christian Princes This this most holy Religion with the Hierarchy and Liturgy therof We solemnly protest that by the help of Almighty God we will endeavour to our utmost power and last period of our life to keep intire and inviolable and will be careful according to our duty to Heaven and the tenor of the foresaid most sacred Oath at Our Coronation that all our Ecclesiasticks in their several degrees and Incumbences shall preach and practise the same Wherefore we enjoyn and command all our Ministers of State beyond the Seas as well Ambassadors as Residents Agents and Messengers And We desire all the rest of Our loving Subjects that sojourn either for curiosity or commerce in any forraign Parts to communicate uphold and assert this Our solemn and sincere Protestation when opportunity of time and place shall be offered This Royal Declaration or Manifesto was committed to the management and care of James Howel Esq Clerk of His Majesties Privie Council who though then Prisoner in the Fleet performed the business very worthily and like himself CHARLES par la Providence de Dieu Roy de la grand ' Bretagne de France d' Irlande Defenseur de la Foy c. A tous ceux qui ceste presente Declaration verront particulierement a Ceux de la Religion Reformâ—e de quelque Nation degreou condition qu'ils soient Salut AYant receu advis de bonne main que plusieurs faux rapports lettres sont esparses parmi les Eglisses Reformees de là la mer par la politique ou plustost la pernicieuse industrie de personnes mal affectionnes a nostre governement que nous auons dessein a receder de celle Religion que Nous auons professè pratiquè tout le temps de nostre vie iusques a present de vouloir intro duire la papautè derechef en nos Dominions Laquelle conjecture ou calumnie plustost appuyee sur nul fundement imaginable a suscitè ces horribles tumultes allumè le feu d'une tres sâ—nglante guerre en tous les quatre coins de ceste fleurissante Monarchie soubs pretexte d'une chymerique Reformation la quelle seroit incompatible avec le governement les loix fondementales de ce Royaume Nous Desirons quil soit notoire a tout le monde que la moindre pensee de ce faire n'a pas entree en nostre imagination de departir ancunement de cell'Orthodoxe Religion qu'auec la Couronne le sceptre de ce Royaume Nous sommes tenus par un serment solennel sacramentaire a proteger defendre Ce qu'appert non seulement par nostre quotidienne presence es Exercies de la dite Religion avec tant d'asseverations a la teste de nos Armees la publicque Attestation de nos Barons avec le soin que nous tenons en la nourrituredes Princes Princesses nos enfans Mais le tres-heureux mariage que nous avons conclu entre la nostre plus aisnee le tres illustrie Prince d' Orenge en est encore un tres-evident tesmoignage par la quell'alliance il appert aussy que nostre desir est de n'en faire pas vne nue profession seulement dicelle mais de la vouloir estendre corroberer autant qu'il nous est possible Cest'Orthodoxe Religion de leglise Anglicane Ordonnee par tant de Conventione de Teologues confirmee par tant de arrests d'Parlement fortifie par tant d'Edicts royaux auec la discipline la Lyturgie a elle appartenant laquelle discipline Lyturgie les plus celebres Autheurs Protestants tant Francois qu' Allemands tant Seudois que Suisses tant Belgiens que Bohemiens approuent entierement non sans quelqu envie en leur escrits particulierement en la Synode de Dort ou un de nos Euesques assistoit la Reverence precedence deue a sa dignite Ecclesiastique luy fut exactement rendue Ceste tres sainte Religion que nostre feu pere de tres-heureuse memoire aduoue en sa celebre Confession de la Foy addressee come nous faisons ceste Declaration atous Princes Chrestiens Nous Protestons que moyennant la grace de Dieu nous tascherone de conseruer ceste Religion inviolable en son entier selon la mesure de puissance que Dieu amis entre nos mains Et nous requerons commandons a tous nos ministres d'estat tant Ambassadeurs que Residens Agens ou messagers a tous autres nos subjects qui font leur seiour es pays estrangers de communiquer maintenir aduouer ceste nostre solennelle Protestation toutes fois quantes que l'occasion se presentera TO THE MINISTERS OF THE REFORMED CHURCH AT PARIS Gentlemen HAving to contend with them who invite you to uphold their disloyalty by your example nothing can be more to our purpose then to prefix your example in the front of this work to teach them Loyalty During the Agitations of the State your Church as the Needle in the Marriners Compass kept steady upon the point of rest which is God and the King And your obedience served as an Ensign on a hill to France to guide the people to their duty Whereby you have justified the holiness of your profession making the world know the Religion you teach binds you to be good subjects and that you honour the King because ye fear God Therefore the English Covenanters
in their Armies they made use of all Religions yea that of the Church of Rome as we shall shew hereafter If it were lawful for them to make use of those who denied the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and of others that denied his Divinity and those who were re-baptized and denied Baptism to Infants and the Blessed Sacrament of the whole Church it were not less lawful for the King to make use of Souldiers of the Roman Religion and if those whom they now call Reformed embrace the Doctrine of the Jesuits touching the deposing and murdering of Kings and that persons of the Roman Religion reject this and joyn themselves with the Reformed Church in this point the King had reason to serve himself of the Last as well as of the First Moreover the King had but two Religions in his Armies which were too many And although the Roman is not tolerated by the Laws yet the Statutes give protection to the persons which make profession of it but the Covenanters Motly Army consisted of many Religions there can be no certain number of them for they multiplied and subdivided daily and these Religions had no tolleration by the Laws nor the persons which made profession of them But put the case that the Covenanters were a party Reformed uniform and illuminated since they have destroyed their King what Law Divine or Humane doth hinder him for using all means that God gives him to defend himself And if amongst his Loyal Subjects there be some who are blinded in matter of Religion why should he not make use of those who are blind to repress those who are illuminated and maintain his Life and Crown 'T is then a ridiculous Question which they demand of the King whether he will defend the reformed Religion with Souldiers of the Roman Religion for he makes not use of them to defend his Religion but his Person and Scepter which those whom they call Reformed would wickedly pluck out of his hands 'T is foolishly and unjustly done of them to complain that the King made them to kill the Protestants a name which they make a great noise with when they have lost the thing they were not Protestants but Rebels whom the King killed in his just defence The King was not to enquire of what Religion they were that made War upon him the true Religion gives not license to Malefactors to do evil and to binde the hands of the Judge that he should not punish them chiefly when the Malefactor fights against the Judge and he to whom God hath committed the sword to execute vengeance in wrath is constrained to make use of it to defend his life and authority the Malefactor who is instructed in a holy Religion is doubly guilty he is the evil servant in the Gospel who knows his Masters will but does it not and therefore he shall be beaten with many stripes This above written serves as an Answer to the eâ—clamations of our enemies That the King caused an Armie of Irish Papists to come over to kill the Protestants in England for it matters not what Religion the English be of if they be Rebels and who can blame him for employing Rebels converted against Rebels obstinate but onely those that perish by them But that which gives occasion of laughter in this Objection is that there were none and the Irish have not yet sent over their Army into England according to their promise to help the King We grant that the English are far more considerable to the King then the Irish suppose the difference be as great as betwixt a Son and a servant but if the Son prove unnatural and draws his sword against his Father who can blame the Father if he arms his servant were he a Barbary slave to defend his life 'T is not to purpose then for them so often to object to us that the Irish were the Executioners to cut the throats of a multitude of Protestants in Ireland and that it 's a horrible thing to bring them over into England to do as much here for at the worst they were but Executioners of Rebels Certainly civil War is a horrible thing where one destruction draws on another Abyssus abyssum advocat but since the enraged and implacable obstinacy of the Covenanters brought the King to this extremity that he could not quench the fire that they had kindled in his Kingdom but by ruine like those who would quench a Town all in flames with Cannon-shot what could we do other then call in the Irish to his succours having rebellions then on all sides Was it not wisely done of him to make an agreement with the most tractable and pliant and to serve himself with their Forces to make head against the others If the English would not have had the King made peace with the Irish why did they then refuse the peace and pardon which the King so often and so graciously rendred them And did he enter into Treaty with his Irish Subjects before he had a long time in vain sollicited his English to their duty Should he rather willingly have lost two Kingdoms to help his enemies to render themselves Masters of the third But say they the Irish shed abundance of Protestants blood in Ireland which should have been revenged in stead of granting them peace It s true they committed many fearful and strange cruelties but this blood hath been sufficiently revenged For for one which they put to death five of theirs have been killed since the beginning of the War And moreover this reason sounds ill in the mouthes of Christians who ought to leave vengeance to God We could not expect that the Covenanters would ever commend this peace which might have been so disadvantagious to them and might have supplied the King with many Souldiers if the Irish had kept their word The principal reason of their complaint was because the Londoners lost much hereby for they had advanced great sums of monies to the two Houses for which they were to have had the Irish Rebels Lands after they were extirpated which was to buy the Bears skin before he was killed and this partly was the cause of breaking up of the Treaty at Uxbridge for the Citizens of London would by no means hear of Peace unless the King would break his faith with the Irish and root them out for the quarrel that the English Covenanters had with them was not for their Religion or Rebellion but because they would not suffer themselves to be killed in a peaceable and quiet manner that thereby the Merchant Adventurers of London might have their Bargain And thus the Covenanters as much as in them lay justified the unjust arms of the Irish since they would by no means have peace with them And after all the King hath the sole power of Peace and War and if he will receive into grace and pardon his Subjects who have offended him he is to give account to none Yet nevertheless that it may appear
answered that he judged his agreement then profitable for the interests of his party and hereupon he was dismissed and sent away without any punishment and these Gentlemen condemned this accord and allyance by a publick Act. But where is the man that is so simple as to be deceived by so sottish a force But to undecive the abused and to shew that these Gentlemen gave no orders for to break this agreement they had news a while after that great succours were put into this Garrison of Derry then the Covenanters by the Troops of his Holiness and then all the Jugling was discovered and there rested then no other answer for them to give but that of the Italian who being exceedingly pained with the Gout and having prayed to God and all the Saints and yet found no ease began to call and pray to the Devil for help and gave this Reason to them that rebuked him for it Ogni adjuto e bono all help is good from whomsoever it come Now every man who shall compare their Protestations with their Actions may demand these Questions with astonishment and horror Are these the men who have so cried out against the murtherers which massacred so many thousand Protestants Are these they who before and after the Massacre did so press the King to sign their utter extirpation Are these those who rendred the King odious only for offering them peace and pardon Are these the men that stirred up the people against their King because he had some few Souldiers of the Roman Religion scattered here and there in his Armies for he never had an entire company of that Religion and yet behold they themselves entertain a great Body of an Army of the most refined Papists and the most violent enemies of the Reformed Religion to whom when the King treated with them he refused to give them any toleration Behold the Army of the Popes become the Parliaments behold the Murderers whom they would have rooted out become their Souldiers Behold the revenge of the blood of their Brethren which they made such a noise of The Massacre of the Protestants is pardoned the Murderers provided they massacre those that remain of them Is it to pay the Armies of his Holiness that such great Summes of Money are raised of the Protestants and that they suck the poor Families even to the very Marrow Is this the effect of so many solemn Professions of so many Fasts and publick Humiliations for the establishment of the Gospel in Ireland Where is their shame Where is their Ingenuity Where is their Conscience Be confounded Infamous Hypocrites and since ye cannot hereafter avoid the execration of men endeavour to prevent by your repentance the Judgment of God upon your Impostures CHAP. XXIV How the different Factions of the Covenant agreed to ruine the King and contributed to put him to death WE will not undertake to deprive the Independants of the glory to have been the last Actors in that exectable paracide committed upon the Sacred Majesty of their King an action which being the shame of the Nation and reproach of Religion was nevertheless set forth to the eyes of the world with the ostentation of Justice and Piety and for this horrible execution there was a solemn Thanksgiving enjoyned to be rendered to God by a publick Ordinance It 's true this Ordinance was ill obeyed and many Ministers cryed out against it which did so provoke their new Masters that they appointed a Committee to eject the Ministers out of their Benefices and to place in Lay persons Now because the Presbyterians thunder aloud against this action we will see whether they have not contributed to it and if their behaviour to their good King gave him occasion to hope for better dealing at their hands And for this purpose we may do well to consider the Propositions which they presented to the King at Beverly and since at Uxbridge and at New-Castle then when the Presbyterians held the better end of the staffe they required of him in substance that he should not dispose neither of the Militia nor of the civil Government nor of his Townes and Revenues nor of his Children nor of his Court nor of Honours nor of the Offices of the Crown and that he should hold no power in the Treaties of peace of War and of Commerce with his Neighbours That his Councel should no more depend upon him that he should have no Negative voice in Parliament and should be bound to grant whatsoever the Parliament would demand of him that he should shew no Acts of Grace nor execute Justice and not have the power to do either good or evil that he should consent that his party should be for ever ruined and deliver up all those who had served him to their rage and Butchery That he should utterly overthrow both the Civil and Ecclesiastical Government cut all the Nerves of Government and dispossess himself and his posterity without resource In brief that he should betray all the trusts God had committed to him and render himself the most miserable and guilty creature in the whole Universe All the choice left this poor Prince was whether he would be destroyed by his enemies or by his own proper Act for if he condescended not to these demands being then in their hands that made them the least he could expect was to be deposed and if he granted them he deposed himself Every man that hath either prudence or Conscience will chuse rather to be executed by another hand than be his own proper Executioner Read the Articles which are too long to be inserted here and if there were any thing that was his or which God had given him to keep that these Gentlemen demanded not of him except his life and if he could assure himself of his life after he had given his enemies the Sword of Justice and had by consequence acknowledged them his Superiours before whom he was Justiciable The Sequel of Affairs have shewed the truth of this consequence for it was upon the Presbyterian Principles that the Independants built their Conclusions Let them weigh well this reasoning Saint Paul teacheth us Rom. 13. that the Supream Magistrate beareth the Sword by God he is his Minister upon this ground the Supream Magistrate exerciseth Authority in the earth by way of force Observe that the Apostle saith not he beareth Swords he assignes him but one and this sword both executes Justice and the Militia by one and the same power Now the Presbyterians have a long time taught that the Sword of the Militia appertained of right and originally to the people of whom the Parliament is the Representative and if this Doctrine be not true their Arms were unjust but if it be true the sword of Justice also belongs to them for if upon these grounds it was lawful for them to wrest out of the hand of the King the Sword of the Militia to make use of it against him it was no less
THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH SCOTCH Presbytery Wherein is discovered their Designs and Practises for the Subversion of Government in CHURCH and STATE Written in French by an Eminent Divine of the REFORMED CHURCH and now Englished The Second Edition Corrected and Enlarged EPIPHANIUS Lib. 1. Haeres â—7 Quod hominum Genus ad Ecclesiae Dei probrum Scandalum adornasse submisisse Satanas videtur quippe qui Christianorum sibi nomen indiderint ut propâ—er eos offensae Gentes à sanctae Ecclesiae utilitate abhorreant nuntiatamque veritatem ob immania illorum facinora incredibilem nequitiam repudient ut inquam frequentibus illorum sceleribus animadversis eos quoque quia Sancta Dei Ecclesia sunt tales esse sibi persuadeant atque ita a verissima Dei Doctrina aures avertant ut certe paucorum improbitaâ—e conspecta in universos eadem Maledicta Conjiciunt Printed in Villa Franca Anno Dom. 1660. THE PREFACE WE will take our first rise from that Royal Declaration or Manifesto which his Majesty of great Britain Cha. the I. commanded to be exposed to the world for the satisfaction not only of his own people but of the Reformed Churches abroad at that time when the differences were at the highest 'twixt him and his Parliament-Subjects who practised all the artifices that could be by making use of Press and Pulpit for that purpose to make him not onely odious at home but sent clandestine Agenis and intelligence abroad to traduce him among the Reformed Princes and States that He was branling in his belief and had a design to re-introduce the Roman Religion into his Dominions which was the motive of publishing this Manifesto hereunto annext CAROLUS singulari Omnipotentis Dei providentia Angliae Scotiae Franciae Hiberniae Rex Fidei Defensor c. Universis singulis qui praesens hoc scriptum ceu protestationem inspexerint potissimam Reformatae Religionis cultoribus cujuscunque sint gentis gradus aut conditionis salutem c. CUM ad aures nostras non ita pridem fama pervenerit sinistros quosdam rumores literasque politica vel perniciosa potiùs quorundam industriâ sparsas esse nonnullis protestantium ecclesiis in exteris partibus emissas nobis esse animum consilium ab illa Orthodoxa Religione quam ab incunabilis imbibimus ad hoc usque momentum per integrum vitae nostrae curriculum amplexi sumus recedendi Papismum in haec Regna iterum introducendi Quae conjectura ceu nefanda potius calumnia nullo prorsus nixa vel imaginabili fundamento horrendos hosce tumultus rabiem plusquà m belluinam in Anglia suscitavit sub praetextu cujusdam chimericae Reformationis regimini legibusque hujus Dominii non solum incongâ—uae sed incompatibilis VOLUMUS ut toti Christiano Orbi innotescat ne minimam quidem animum nostâ—um incidisse cogitatiunculam hoc aggrediendi aut transversum unguem ab illa Religione discedendi quam cum corona sceptroque hujus regni solemni sacramentali juramento tenemur prositeri protegere propugnare Nec tantum constantissima nostra praxis quotidiana in exercitiis praefatae Religionis praesentia cum crebris in facie nostrorum agminum asseverationibus publicisque procerum hujus Regni testimoniis sedula in regiam nostram sobolem educando circumspectione omissis plurimis aliis argumentis luculentissimè hoc demonstrat sed etiam faelicissimum illud matrimonium quod inter nostram primogenitam illustrissimuÌ„ principem Auriacum sponte contraximus idem fortissimè attestatur Quo nuptiali faedere insuper constat nobis non esse proposituÌ„ illaÌ„ pâ—ofiteri solummodo sed expandere corroborare quantum in nobis situm est Hanc sacrosanctam Anglicanae Christi Ecclesiae Religionem tot Theologorum convocationibus sancitam tot comitiorum edictis confirmatam tot Regiis Diplomatibus stabilitam una cum regimine Ecclesiastico Liturgia ei annexa quam liturgiam regimenque celebriores protestantium Authores tam Germani quam Galli tam Dani quam Helvetici tam Batavi quam Bohemi multis elogiis nec sine quadam invidia in suis publicis scriptis comprobant applaudunt ut in transactionibus Dordrechtanae Synodus cui nonnulli nostrorum praesulum quorum Dignitati debita prestita fuit reverentia interfuerunt apparet Istam inquimus Religionem quam Regius noster pater beatissimae memoriae in illa celeberâ—ima fidei suae Confessione omnibus Christianis principibus ut haec praesens nostra protestatio exhibita publicè asserit Istam istam Religionem solenniter protestamur Nos integram sartam tectam inviolabilem conservaturos pro virili nostro divino adjuvante Numine usque ad extremaÌ„ virae nostrae perioduÌ„ protecturos omnibus nostris Ecclesiasticis pro muneris nostri supradicti sacro-sancti juramenti ratione doceri praedicari curaturos Quapropter injungimus in mandatis damus Omnibus ministris nostris in exteris partibus tam Legatis quam Residentibus Agentibusque nunciis reliquisque nostris subditis ubicunque Orbis Christiani terrarum aut curiositatis aut comercii gratia degentibus hanc solennem sinceram nostram protestationem quandocunque sese obtulerit loci temporis opportunitas communicare asserere asseverare Dat. in Academia Civitate nostra Oxoniensi pridei Idus Maii 1644. CHARLES by the Providence of Almighty God King of England Scotland France and Ireland Defender of the Faith c. To all who profess the true Reformed Protestant Religion of what Nation degree and condition soever they be to whom this present Declaration shall come Greeting WHereas We are given to understand That many false Rumors and scandalous Letters are spread up and down amongst the Reformed Churches in forreign Parts by the Pollitick or rather the pernitious industry of some ill affected persons that we have an inclination to recede from that Orthodox Religion which we were born baptized and bred in and which We have firmly professed and practised throughout the whole course of our life to this moment and that We intend to give way to the Introduction and publick exercise of Popery again in Our Dominions Which conjecture or rather most detestable calumny being grounded upon no imaginable foundation hath raised these horrid Tumults and more then barbarous Wars throughout this flourishing Island under pretext of a kind of Reformation which would not only prove incongruous but incompatible with the fundamental Laws and government of this Kingdom We desire that the whole Christian World should take notice and rest assured that We never entertained in Our imagination the least thought to attempt such a thing or to depart a jot from that holy Religion which when we received the Crown and Scepter of this Kingdom We took a most solemn Sacramental Oath to profess and protect Nor doth Our most constant practice and quotidian visible presence in the exercise of
did very ill to address themselves to you since they hold a method quite contrary for they dishonour and massacre their King under a colour of devotion to God and undertake to set up the Kingdome of Jesus Christ by the ruine of the Kingdome of their Soveraign which is as if they would build the Temple of God with Cannon shot and defend Religion in violating it The truth of the Gospel was never advanced by these wayes but the patience and even the sufferings of the Christians was it which propagated the Christian Religion and rendered the Church mighty and glorious Those who suffered under the Pagan and Arian Emperours conquered both the Empire and Emperours and the Champions of truth purchased a Kingdome to Jesus Christ not in shedding the blood of their Soveraigns but in pouring forth their own for righteousness by a voluntary submission to their judgement He who cannot frame himself to this Doctrine doth not so much as God requires of him if he makes profession of Christianity for Christ tells us in calling us that whosoever taketh not up his Cross and cometh not after me cannot be my Disciple and commands him who would imbrace the Gospel to set down before and calculate the expence as if he were about to build Certainly he that cannot resolve to subject himself to his Soveraign for the love of God and never draw his sword against him to whom God hath committed it made an ill calculation before he dedicated himself to Jesus Christ for he ought not to take upon him Christianity if he were not able to go through with it and was not resolved rather to suffer then resist and to spend his goods and life to preserve himself in that subjection commanded by the Word of God For maintaining this holy Doctrine we have been banished and pursued with Armes and after we had defended our Soveraign with more fidelity then success we have been constrained to forsake our dear Country driven from our houses and spoiled of our revenues but yet we praise God for giving them since he hath done us the honour that we should lose them for his service and we ought this to our King of whom our lands held to abandon them for love of him For to enter into a Covenant against him peaceably to enjoy his and the Kings his Predecessors bounty and to betray the truth and our consciences to save our moneys we could never resolve Now since those who have done the evil began first to cry out and have spread their unjust clamours through all the Reformed Churches we 'll make the same journey with our just complaints and after the example of the abased Levite by the Sonnes of Jemini we send this recital of our grievances through all the quarters of Israel Judg. 19.30 Consider of it take advice and speak your minds The injury which doth touch us nearest is not our Exile nor the loss of our goods nor theirs of our nearest Relations but the extreme wrong done to the Gospel and the Reformed Churches to whom these new Reformers falsly impute their Maximes of Rebellion and hereby render our most holy profession suspected and hateful to Princes of a contrary Religion This Gentlemen toucheth you very near considering your condition and the Summons the Assembly at Westminster made to you to covenant with them or to make a covenant like theirs The Epistle was addressed to the Church of Paris in the name of all the Reformed Churches of France and with the Epistle they sent the Oath of their Covenant which concludes with an Exhortation in form of a prayer to God That it would please him to stir up by their example other Churches who live under the Tyranny of Antichrist to swear this Covenant or one like it This same Epistle together with the Oath being sent to the Ministers of the Church of Genevah stirred up in them a holy jealousie and drew from that excellent person Monsieur Diodati who is now in glory an answer worthy of him in the name of all the Church Repell this horrible scandal which so extremely wrongs Christianity in general wash and cleanse this filthy attempt of the blackest oppression which above all is imputed to the most pure profession of the Gospel as if the Gospel opposed and affronted by a kind of antipathy and secret hatred all Royal Power of Soveraign Authority Pacifie the exasperated spirit and too much provoked of your King and drive him not upon Pinacles and Precipices Blessed be God who touched the heart of this great person whose memory shall be for ever precious for rendring so open a testimony to the truth And because he have not suffered himself to be flâ—ered and perswaded by the complements of these enemies to his a Mjesty to applaud them in their evil actions such are these Refiners of Reformation as not content by their factious zeal to set their own country on fire but they labour also to cast the fire into their neighbours and to blow Rebellion through all Europe And of late the most enormous actions of the English drew from Master Salmasius Prince of Letters and the Honour of France a defence of the Right of Kings God was so pleased to raise up the Learnedst pen of these times to defend the best cause of the world in which this great person hath highly honoured his country But to speak right he more honoured himself and the Church wherein he was educated For if hereafter these malefactors dare be so bold as to say the Reformed Churches approved their actions they shall produce this book which condemns them and defends the Royal cause with such wisdome and efficacy of spirit suitable to the dignity of the subject and shall require them to produce if they can any one of the Reformed Churches who have in the least manner written in favour of their proceedings It should have been a strange and shameful thing if there were none found amongst the Reformed Churches who should not disown their wicked Doctrines and cause all Princes and people of the world to know that the Reformed Churches are very far from following their counsels and abhor their seductions to disloyalty from what part soever they come Heretofore indeed it was accounted the duty of charity and prudence to cover the faults of this faction and if corruption enter into Israel not to publish it in Gath but when the Doctrine of Rebellion disputed in corners ascends the Pulpit hold assizes in open Court sends forth Ambassadors invites the Reformed Churches to their party and imploy the Gospel Piety zeal of Gods Glory to raise subjects against their Soveraigns now 't is time or never to pluck off their mask of hypocrisie and shew where the evil lies and discover the wickedness of a party 〈◊〉 preserve from shame and disgrace the general and the rather since the Aphorismes of Rebellion and seducing people to sedition are reproached to the Protestants and imployed by the enemies of our
holy Religion to stir up Princes against the Church and the pure profession of the Gospel T is the duty of the Reformed Churches to speak aloud that 't is not we that teach the people are above their King and that endeavour by Letters and Intelligences a general rising but that it 's the Covenanters of England who attempting to cut off their King and Monarchy by the sword labour in vain to seduce their neighbours to encrease their party thereby to hide themselves in the multitude of their complices they came forth of us long since but were not of us and for their Doctrines and actions which are the only things evil in their Reformation they never received any countenance or incouragement from us We assure our selves Gentlemen in that Divine assistance which hath to this present upheld you that ye will never be seduced to defend evil neither by complacency nor contradiction but will follow the precept of the Apostle Saint James Jam. 2.1 My Brethren have not the Faith of our Lord Jesus Christ the Lord of Glory with respect of persons Ye will consider that those who chase us seek not your alliance but to strengthen their separation from us and not to imbrace good Doctrine or follow your councel which if they had asked and followed the one had never sold their King nor the other over massacred him Believe it Sirs they are your best friends at distance rather then neer and if ye never converse with them ye will never be weary of their company Your free meek and solid piety which feeds it self simply upon the substance of Religion without picking quarrels at the shell is very far from sordid superstition and the Hypocondriak and bloody zeal of these Covenanters who pretend to advance the Kingdome of Jesus Christ by cutting the throats of his Disciples and cementing his Temple with blood instead of the cement of charity and in the mean while make some petty circumstances the principals of Religion and cut out their holy Doctrine according to the Discipline which they are forging as he that cuts his flesh to make his doublet fit for his body By how much more these are wicked by so much the more are they worthy of compassion whom we must behold as people drunken with the Wine of Astonishment which they themselves confess in their Epistle they sent unto you they shall find the rest of their description in that place where they borrowed those words and shall there behold themselves set forth as a wild Bull in a net they are full of the fury of the Lord Isa 51.20 For as the wild Bull rageth when he feels himself intangled and intangleth and insnares himself more by raging so these miserable people who by an impetuosity without reason rid themselves out of all Laws Ecclesiastical and Civil are insnared in stronger bonds then before and by their bruitish fury are more and more intangled These these are the sad effects of the just wrâ—th of God who hath smote those with blindness who have abused the light of the Gospel and have given them the hearâ— of a beast Dan. 4.16 as he did to Nebuchadnezzar whâ— have cast off all humanity God by his mercy reduce to their senses and guide them and us in his paths and grant his peace to them that are far off and to them that are near Isa 57.19 For in civil wars that party that is neerest to God and right is yet very far from his duty Your wisdome will instruct you to profit by the folly of your neighbours and their evil actions teach you to do well they will let you see that to destroy the Ecclesiastical and Political Order by a bloody war to reform Religion is to commit the fault in the vulgar Latine Translation Evertit domum instead of Eveâ—rit Luke 15.8 That is to overthrow the house in stead of sweeping it the folly is the greater when its only to find a trifle and that they overthrow both Church and State for some particularity which were it good cannot recompence the general destruction You will also learn by the proceedings of these Covenanters that its impossible to alter the foundation of Church and State without pulling down the house which is the work of the blind as Sampson to over-turn the Pillars of the publick building that those that thrust them down might be crushed to pieces under the fall that those that take the Church and State apieces to cleanse it have not the power to put it together and in order again when they please and that all violent changes in a State as in an old body are alwayes for the worst We hope also that our good God beholding us with pity in this our weak condition will give you somewhat to observe and learn from us as that a Rebellion which pulls down Monarchy without thinking so lifts it up and fortifie't as a violent Crysis which if it takes not away the Patient contributes to his recovery For the insolence of the new masters doth mind the people of their duty to their lawful Prince and the unlocked for success of a new Obligarchy sowes dissention amongst the Usurpers The conduct of the Providence of God in the movings of States teacheth us that in chastising Kings by the rebellion of their subjects hereby he punisheth the people more then their Kings and those very Kings that God gives people in his wrath Hosea 13.11 are not taken away without his fury and the publick ruine which is then greatest when he takes from an ungrateful people a King whom he have given in his mercy the wise and fearing God should consider their sufferings under their Soveraigns as sinister influences of celestial bodies against which no man in his wits will draw his sword for both the one and the other comes from heaven and cannot be remedied but by humility prayers and veneration all other remedies are worse then the evil Also amidst your grief to behold the ruine of our not long since flourishing Churches you may comfort your selves in the weakness of our condition which now renders us less subject to the like dangers for as full and sanguine bodies are most subject to violent feavers and sharp diseases which those of weaker complexions are ordinarily free from so those persons who have power in their hands and are puffed up with a long prosperity ordinarily fall into most violent evils which seiseth not upon them but with too much strength Then when the Church hath the least lustre she oft times is neerest to God as the Moon is never neerer the Sun then when she is in the lowest degree of her declension and without light to our regard The Power of God is made perfect in our weakness and we hope to behold you subsist yea encrease and grow in bowing down under the storm whilst those that have so striven and contended against their Soveraigns shall be rooted out by their arrogancy By humility and submission under
the mighty hand of God which leads his Church through waies he knows safest for them and stopping the ear to all factious Councils cloathed with the zeal of Religion ye will at last obtain that testimony of God which he gives to the Church of Ephesus I know thy works and thy labour and thy patience and how thou canst not bear them which are evil and thou hast tried them which say they are Apostles and are not and hast found them liars and hast borne and hast patience and hast not fainted Rev. 2.2 and thus ye shall surely obtain the promised reward following To him that overcometh will I give to eate of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God v. 7. This hope is our support in the depth of our afflictions for under that terrible weight of publick and particular miseries capable to bear down the strongest and firmest spirits we are raised and kept up by this consolation that we serve a good Master who will never forsake them who forsake all which is most dear to them to follow him What though our sufferings be the effects of our sinnes yet are they also honourable markes of our loyalty both to God and our King and though we have left our estates a little before death would have taken them away yet God hath by his grace preserved in us a good conscience riches which is not subject to sequestration but dying we shall carry away with us In these great tryalls of our faith and patience whilst we seek ease in pouring forth our griefs into the bosome of our brethren behold yet another encrease of affliction upon affliction for we find to our great regret that the subtilty of our enemies have begotten an evil understanding between you and some of ours to which some have much contributed if the complaints we hear be true that they have manifested and declared themselves contrary to the Doctrine of the Reformed Churches and that they have despised your assemblies as not being Churches and maintained that there could be no Church where there was no Bishop As for their Doctrine if it be divers from our publick Confession they are no more of our Church then of yours and to satisfie you upon this point we have joyned the Confession of the Church of England which all thâ—se who have been received into holy Orders sware to defend at their reception and all who were to be admitted into Churches were injoyned at their entrance publickly to read and to professe thereupon their consent to them under pain of losing their Benefices If any have departed from that profession which they did so solemnly make the body of the Church which maintains that holy Doctrine is no way responsible for their erring If the Rebels had not prevented the King from assembling a nationall Synod to which his Majesty purposed to invite other Reformed Churches your Judgments would have been heard for the purging our Churches of all new Doctrines which without all comparison are worse and in a farre greater number amongst our enemies then amongst the Royall party As for this position that there cannot be a Church without a Bishop we account it full of rashnesse and void of Charity It 's indeed a cruel sentence to deprive of the benefit of the Gospel and of their union with Christ all those Churches which live under the Crosse and cannot enjoy the Episcopal Order That Famous Dr. Andrews Bishop of Winchester was not of this opinion for in one of his Epistles touching Episcopacy He saith he should be harder than Iron who would not acknowledge that there are holy Churâ—â—es that subsist and flourish without Bishops and with what respect our Bishops speak of your Church you shall read in this ensuing Treatise It 's easie to see that the Episcopal Order is wholly incompatible with the present condition of the Reformed Churches of France for if there were twenty or thirty Bishops amongst you that should Govern all the other Churches it would be easie for those of the contrary Religion under whom you live to fil up those places with some persons who should be at their devotion whence would follow either a seduction or an oppression of the other Pastors But whilst the Gentlemen of the Clergy in the Court behold all Pastors equal they will lose their cunning in this multitude and although they be excellent in playing on the Organs yet they have not fingers enough to touch every Key If your Order of equality might or ought to be conserved if it should please God the French Monarchy should embraâ—e the Reformation it s a thing we will not touch but if that only were the obstruction we account you too wise and good Christians and such as would not hinder the setling of the holy Doctrine for maintaining a point of Discipline You then Gentlemen joyning to your Christian charity the French courtesie pardon our English Schollers who peradventure have brought with them from the Vniversity an humour a little affirmative and from the fresh remembrance of their Glorious Church retain yet an admiration of home things which is an humour Neighbour Nations observe in the English and which those that heretofore have known England will easily pardon Consider on the other side whether some of yours have not given them just occasion to be so sharp and bitter and to passe their limits in their affirmations it cannot be denied but we have met with spirits possessed with the reports of our adversaries who have been more ready to court you than we as alwaies those that have 〈◊〉 â—vil cause are ever more diligent to gain by faction that which they want and cannot obtain by right It may be also that your people have manifested themselves too rigid in their Opinions as well as some of ours upon points which touch not the principles of Religion and as it is ordinary for humane infirmity to turn custom into necessity you may not wonder that if some of yours maintain as necessary and perpetual which your wise Reformers established as arbitrary and for the present necessity as it is formally declared by the last Article of your Discipline We have placed in the Front of this work the Manifesto of the Late King Charles the First of Blessed and Glorious Memory in which he takes a religious care to satisfie you touching his Constancy in the Reformed Religion and of his Resolution to enlarge and strengthen it in all forraign Countries to the utmost of his power he could no more to manifest how much he valued your affection and good opinion and we following the example of our holy and Glorious Martyr labour here to knit with you a holy union which our enemies have so vigorously laboured to break and in these our great afflictions do take care to prevent your and to give you saving Councell Know then Gentlemen that your most holy Religion is much defamed by the Actions of these paraciâ—â— Zealots
change and abolish Ceremonies or Rites of the Church ordained onely by mans authoritie so that all things be done to edifying XXXV THe second Book of Homilies the severall titles whereof we have ioyned under this Article doth contain a godly and wholsome Doctrine and necessary for these times as doth the former book of Homilies which were set forth in the time of Edward the sixth and therefore we judge them to be read in Churches by the Ministers diligently and distinctly that they may be understanded of the people Of the Names of the Homilies 1 OF the right use of the Church 2 Against peril of Idolatry 3 Of repairing and keeping clean of Churches 4 Of good works first of Fasting 5 Against Gluttony and Drunkennesse 6 Against Excesse of Apparel 7 Of Prayer 8 Of the Place and Time of Prayer 9 That Common Prayers and Sacraments ought to be ministred in a known Tongue 10 Of the reverent estimation of Gods Word 11 Of Alms doing 12 Of the Nativity of Christ 13 Of the passion of Christ 14 Of the Resurrection of Christ 15 Of the worthy receiving of the Sacrament of the Body and Bloud of Christ 16 Of the Gifts of the holy Ghost 17 For the Rogation daies 18 Of the State of Matrimony 19 Of Repentance 20 Against Idlenesse 21 Against Rebellion XXXVI THe Book of Consecration of Archbishops and Bishops and ordering of Priests and Deacons lately set forth in the time of Edward the sixth and confirmed at the same time by authority of Parliament doth contain all things necessary to such Consecration and ordering neither hath it any thing that of it selfe is superstitious and ungodly And therefore whosoever are consecrated or ordered according to the Rites of that Book since the second year of the aforenamed King Edward unto this time or hereafter shall be consecrated or ordered according to the same Rites we decree all such to be rightly orderly and lawfully consecrated and ordered XXXVII THe Queens Majestie hath the chief power in this Realm of England and other her Dominions unto whom the chief government of all estates of this Realm whether they be Ecclesiasticall or Civil in all causes doth appertain and is not nor ought to be subject to any forreign Iurisdiction Where wee attribute to the Queenes Majestie the chiefe government by which titles we understand the mindes of some slanderous folkes to be oâ—fended we give not to our Princes the ministring either of Gods word or of the Sacraments the which thing the Injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen do most plainly testifie but that only prerogative which we see to have been given alwaies to all godly Princes in holy Scriptures by God himself that is that they should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God whether they be Ecclesiasticall or Temporall and restraine with the Civil sword the stubborne and evil deers The Bishop of Rome hath no Iurisdiction in this Realm of England The Lawes of the Realm may punish Christian men with death for heinous and grievous offences It is lawful for Christian men at the Commandment of the Magistrate to weare weapons and serve in the warres XXXVIII THe Riches and goods of Christians are not common as touching the right title and possession of the same as certain Anabaptists do falsly boast Notwithstanding every man ought of such things as he possesseth liberally to give almes to the poore according to his ability XXXIX AS we confesse that vaine and rash swearing is forbidden Christian men by our Lord Iesus Christ and Iames his Apostle So we judge that Christian Religion doth not prohibite but that a man may sweare when the Magistrate requireth in a cause of faith and charitie so it be done according to the Prophets teaching in justice judgment and truth The Contents Chap. 1. OF the Seditious Liberty of the new Doctrines which hath been the principal means of the Covenant p. 1. Chap. 2. That the Covenanters are destitute of all Proofs for their war made against the King p. 12. Chap. 3. Express Texts of Scripture which commands Obedience and forbids Resistance to Soverigns p. 23. Chap. 4. The Evasions of the Covenanters upon the Texts of Saint Paul Rom. 13. and how in time they refuse the judgment of Scripture p. 28. Chap. 5. What Constitution of State the Covenanters forge and how they refuse the judgment of the Laws of the Kingdom p. 40. Chap. 6. What Examples in the Histories of England the Covenanters make use of to authorize their actions p. 46. Chap. 7. Declaring wherein the Legislative power of Parliament consists p. 50. Chap. 8. How the Covenanters will be Judges in their own cause p. 63. Chap. 9. That the most noble and best part of the Parliament retired to the King being driven away by the worser p. 65. Chap. 10. A Parallel of the Covenant with the holy League of France under Henry the Third Pag. 71. Chap. 11. The Doctrine of the English Covenanters parallel'd with the Doctrine of the Jesuits p. 72. Chap. 12. How the Covenanters wrong the Reformed Churches in inviting them to joyn with them with an Answer for the Churches of France p. 81. Chap. 13. The preceding Answer confirmed by Divines of the Reformed Religion with an Answer to some Objections of the Covenanters upon this Subject p. 101. Chap. 14. How the Covenanters have no reason to invite the Reformed Churches to their Alliance since they differ from them in many things of great importance p. 115. Chap. 15. Of abolishing the Lyturgy in doing of which the Covenanters oppose the Reformed Churches p. 122. Chap. 16. Of the great prudence and wisdom of the first English Reformers and of the Fool hardinesse of these at present p. 132. Chap. 17. How the Covenanters labour in vain to sow Sedition between the Churches of England and France upon the point of Discipline Of the Christian prudence of the French Reformers and of the nature of Discipline in general p. 145. Chap. 18. How the Discipline of the Covenanters is far from the practise of other Churches p. 156. Chap. 19. That the Covenanters ruine the Ministers of the Gospel under colour of Reformation p. 163. Chap. 20. Of the Corruption of Religion objected to the English Clergy and the waies that the Covenanters took to remedy them Pag. 167. Chap. 21. An Answer to the Objection That the King made War against the Parliament p. 176. Chap. 22. Of the Depraved and Evil Faith of the Covenanters p. 184. Chap. 23. Of the Instruments both Parties made use of and of the Irish Affairs p. 207 Chap. 24. How the different Factions of the Covenant agreed to ruine the King and contributed to put him to death p. 226. Chap. 25. Of the cruelty of the Covenanters towards the good Subjects of the King p. 232. CHAP. I. Of the seditious Liberty of New Doctrines which hath been the principal means of the Covenant A Compleat History of our Affairs since
the beginning of these Commotions would be the best Apology for the Justice of our Cause but this let some brave Spirits labour that are furnished with Records and Intelligences and who are indued with a judicious Candor which may leave to after Age an accomplished portraicture of the wickednesse of this last Age but that we shall not undertake here Yet neverthelesse since the Question of Right depends upon that of Fact and that to judge of a Different we must know who began the Quarrel it is necessary that something be said of the occasions and beginning of this here for in regard of the progresse it is so notoriously and prodigiously wicked on our Enemies side that their neighbours that formerly had too good an opinion of their Cause acknowledge now that they have rendred it very evil It shall be our Task then to let the world see that it hath been Evil from the very beginning and that their first proceedings were contrary to the Word of God to the constitution of the Kingdom and to natural Equity Yea that all those fearfull prodigies of Iniquity which the world beholds with a just execration are the necessary consequences of their first avowed and published principles Ye must therefore know that the Parliament assembled in Novemb. 1640 was composed for the most part of Persons of Honour affectious to their Religion King and Country and of some others also whose designes aimed at a general overthrow of all things These finding themselves to be few in number labour to joyn to their Faction the numerous and meaner sort of people of London who being kept under a just and gracious Soveraign in their duty and in happy subjection could not be induced to mutiny by no other motive then that of Religion which is the handle by which the Politicians in all times have wound and turned about the Spirits of the people We will not neverthelesse deprive them of this Glory that it was they that first brought the Reformation of Religion upon the Stage but the Honour is due to them who since have suffered for their Loyalty towards God and the King that in this holy enterprise they only carried themselves vigorously and sincerely but their good Zeal by the Cunning of the Party was driven so far that labouring to reform the Clergie they served without thinking the design of them that would destroy them and to cause afterward Monarchy to stumble upon the Ruines of the Church This profession of the Parliament to Reform the Church fils the hearts of all good men with joy and hope for although that the excellent Order in the English Church deserves highly to be respected and admired the purity of the Gospel there being clothed with Honour and defended by an Episcopal Gravity yet is it of our Government and of all other in the world be they Ecclesiastical or Civil as with Watches that how good and excellent soever they be length of time disorders them that ever and anon they have need of mending and making clean It is almost an Age since the Doctrine and Discipline of our Church hath been renewed and it is a wonder both the one and the other have been so well conserved in so long a space Nevertheless the faults of some Particulars ought not to be imputed to the General The Church hath flourished under our Discipline and the Truth hath been preserved and the Good being put in the Ballance against the Evil the people had far more cause to glorifie God than to complain but we have to do with Spirits whose nature is like Lapwings which in a Garden full of fruits feed only on the Caterpillars There is nothing so well done that doth not displease some even the works of God displease the Devil because they are well done and in all those works wherein the spirit of man hath a part there is nothing so perfect which may not be amended Our Lyturgie so holy and so highly esteemed in all the Reformed Churches hath nevertheless given offence to many persons amongst us And although it was for a very small matter yet those who were affectionate to peace were content to change somthing and so to purchase Concord with their Dissenting Brethren at that price Whence this overture of Reformation opened a gate to the Liberty of them that desired a change and the Parliament being composed of persons of different inclinations in matters of Religion every one had liberty to say and write what he pleased and had a Party in the Assembly of Estates that protected and encouraged them The Germans never wrote so much upon Logick in a hundred years as the English wrote of the Designs of their Ecclesiastical Discipline in three moneths every week brought forth a thousand seditious pamphlets which supplied the scarcity of Coals every writer made a Platform of Reformation according to his humour and in this new building none would content himself to be a Mason but every one would be Architect and there was none of them who called not his reformation the only Kingdom of Jesus Christ out of which there was no salvation But these Kingdoms of Jesus Christ agreed one with another and with the nature of the thing as the Titles and Chapters of Montagues Essays The people are called a Beast with many Heads and when all these heads shall cry out at one time and every one with a different cry I leave you to gâ—esse what an odious discord they make in the ears both of God and man In the midst of this universal distraction it was appointed that a certain number of Divines differing in the point of Discipline should meet together to confer about Religion as well for the interiour as the exteriour part where many Bishops and other of the chief of the Clergy men the Bishop of Lincolne who afterward was Arch-Bishop of York made this Proposition to them That the Divines should in no wise touch upon the point of Discipline until such time as they were agreed about the points of Doctrine hoping thereby that their spirits being united by the bond of one common but holy Faith they would easily accord about the exteriour Government or Discipline This Counsel was embraced by all and so wisely managed by that great Person that in three Meetings the Divines accorded upon all the substance of Religion and formed hereupon divers Articles and with one consent condemned divers opinions This general consent in Doctrine filled them with hope that the points of Discipline would pass with the like sweetness and indeed there wanted not much to have made us happy But before the report of this good Agreement could be published abroad the Factious party of the State fearing above all things this accord in Religion suddenly raised a strong Quarrel against the Degree of Bishops as an appurtenance of Antichrist and another about their sitting in Parliament and did so exasperate the people against the Prelates that in stead of pursuing their design of
Reformation they were constrained to provide for the safety of their own lives After this there was no more speech of the Agreement in Religion for that would utterly have spoiled their work for it had never been possible to have raised the people against the King if the conclusion of this conference had been made known to the world that the King the Court and the Bishops made profession of the sincere reformed Religion Now because all the Lies and Subtilties of the Devil were not capable to impute unto them another Confession of Faith but that which they maintain which was Holy and Orthodox known every where and confirmed by the Confessions of all the reformed Churches of Europe the Factious perswaded the people both by their Sermons and seditious Libels that the degree of Bishops was an essential Branch and Mark of Antichrist and that to pull them down was to do the work of the Lord and to ruine Antichrist and that if the King would maintain them he would be destroyed with them as being one of those Kings who gave his power to the Beast And besides the destruction of Bishops they openly demanded the Abolition of the Divine Service received in the Church of England condemning the use of all other prayers yea even of the Lords Prayer quarrelling with the Apostles Creed denied the necessity of the Sacraments boasted of a new Light that had appeared to them from Heaven to draw them out of Popish Darkness and all that was not compatible with their extravagant Illuminations they called Popery and the Ministers that disobeyed them Baal's Priests and the supporters of Antichrist By such kind of people were the great multitudes stirred who came crying at the Gates of the King and Parliament for Reformation threatning with fire and sword all those that should oppose it Of these Assemblies we may speak what is spoken of the uproar at Ephesus Acts 19.32 The Assembly was confused and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together for those that called for Reformation understood not one another and their opinions were different in Religion as appears at this day agreeing only in this to pull down the Ecclesiastical Government and what New Government they will build upon the Ruines of the Old we shall know when the sword hath decided the controversie but whilst the Mariners strive the Ship sinks The Lord behold his poor Church in compassion We have great hope now beholding the diversity of Opinions and Inclinations that these evil ingredients will together make a good Temperature and that the disorder yea even the Licentiousness it self will inforce order as commonly evil Manners beget good Laws but to attain this it 's required in this general confusion that those of clear and sound judgments who see the bottom of the evil and know the Remedy of it But having considered them that walk before in the design of Reformation we find that they are such that neither know the Remedy nor the Evil. As for the Evil in stead of having their eyes upon the errors of particulars against the principal points of Faith and Confession of the English Church they grew obstinate against certain small and indifferent Ceremonies which the King had many times offered to change by a Synod lawfully assembled and cast all the Fire of their passion upon the Episcopall preheminence a Surpliss a Festival Forms of Prayer Painted windows and condemning many good things amongst â—he evil And as for the Remedy we have here whereat to admire that striking at so small and light evils they would employ such extream Remedies nothing being able to serve but general destruction as if to heal the pain of the Teeth they would cut off the Head in stead of proceeding by an amiable conference appointing a deputation of the Clergy of the Kingdom to assemble in a Synod to calm the fiery spirits and to keep the people in obedience to their Soveraign and to fasten the building that shaked by the Ciment of Charity they made open profession that the Reformation could not be effected but by blood that they would have no peace with the Bishops and their Clergy that they must destroy before they build raze Babylon as they called our Discipline even to the very foundations overthrow the Altars of Baal and sacrifice all his Priests that now the time was come that the Israel of God ought to pillage the Egyptians And that now the just should wash their footsteps in the blood of the ungodly for such they accounted us and thus they did us the honour to plunder and kill us in Scripture Language And with this Divinity the Pulpits sounded aloud and the people publickly exhorted to take up Arms against the King and to destroy all Ministers both of Church and State that should joyn with him and for this effect these following Texts of Scripture were pressed by their zealous Preachers Luke 19.27 Those mine enemies which would not that I should reign over them bring hither and slay them before me Judg. 5.23 Curse ye Meroz curse ye bitterly the Inhabitants thereof because they came not to the help of the Lord to help the Lord against the mighty Jer. 48.10 Cursed be he that doth the work of the Lord deceitfully and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from bloud and these they appropriated to their war against their King and Clergy of England and all that adhered unto them there being no way of Reformation in these mens accounts but to kill us for the Love of God and the Advancement of his Kingdom Now being exceedingly astonished how men of Learning could possibly be so bewitched with a furious and foolish zeal we found at length having sounded the depth of their opinions that their Brains were troubled with Prophesies and Revelations that their principal reading was in Commentaries upon the Revelation which they interpreted according to their fancies and that they had studied more what God would do hereafter than what their Duty was to do for the present that they made no Conscience to transgress the declared Will of God in his Commands to accomplish the secret will of his Decree That they were Millenariâ—s expecting a Temporal Kingdom of Jesus Christ believing that the time of that Kingdom was now come and to establish that Kingdom they were to pluck down that of Antichrist as they understood the ancient Ecclesiastical Order and to dispossess Kings drive away the wicked dash the children of Babel against the stones tread the winepress of the wrath of God till the Blood rose to their Bridle reins that thereby Christ alone may reign in the world and the meek inherit the earth We have since enough tasted of the fruits of their meekness All this is drawn from the model of the Common-wealth of John a Leyden and the Prophets of Munster But if any of the Covenanters shall disavow these opinions they cannot deny but they were preached publickly and ordinarily neither can they
deny but the defenders of this pernicious Doctrine were the chief of their New Reformation and the Authors of the war people whose Counsels were applauded as Oracles and who drew after them their party by the repetition of their sanctified strength of zeal those who dared to contradict them did it very fearfully and kissing their hands before they spake but they themselves carried all before them acting with a prophetick liberty and boldness also after all they only were the men to be trusted and who were put upon all great designs and employments for they feared that they who are less governed by Enthusiasms might at last so far forget themselves as to be faithful to their Sovereign and yield to a peaceable accomodation Behold here then wherefore we would not joyn our selves with these Reformers because we see that even they themselves have the greatest need of Reformation being far gone from the Doctrine of the reformed Churches erring in the Faith but yet more in Charity It 's they would sweep the Church as God swept Babylon with the Beesom of destruction They speak not of reforming neither Doctrines nor Manners but to ruine the Persons They account the most part of the Clergy of the Kingdom unworthy to be corrected but altogether to be rooted out that one part of the Reformation was to ruine the King and to take the sword from his side to cut off his head the favourers of tumults were the only persons that were caressed they lent their ears to the populâ—r tumults whilst they shut the mouths and bound the hands of the Magistrates It was they taught that the people were above the King and that the Command of Saint Paul that every one should be subject to the higher Powers obligeth the King for to obey the People it was they that upheld yea favoured and courted all sorts of pernicious Sects provided that they would bandy with them against their King It was they that suffered to go unpunished the Blasphemies in the Pulpits the Insolencies Sacriledges and horrible profanations of the Service of God and permitted all things to those who were of the zealous party We beheld on the other side that the King took knowledge of the grievances of his people as well for the spiritual as temporal and laboured sincerely to remedy them that he consented to the alteration of offensive things in Religion and to the punishment of those who were accused as troublers of the Church provided that the things and persons were examined by regular and lawful waies of a general Synod which he offered to assemble he also was pleased to yield of his own right to augment the rights of his Subjects and daily multiplied acts of favour capable to convert the most alienated spirits passed by the many and great affronts that were done to his authority and endeavoured by all waies possible to overcome evil with good But the more the King yielded the more insolent were the factious against him he offered to reform both the State and Church but they would not permit him they themselves would do that work without him The King sent divers messages to know of them what things they would reform but to this they answered only with complaints Neither could he obtain any declaration of that which they desired until that his Forts Magazines Ships and Revenues were taken from him the reason of which hath since been given by one of their principal Champions Having to sow the Lords Field they had need to make a fence about it before they begin that the work-men might labour without interruption and that to lance the Apostume of a sick State they must first bind the Patient Our Conscience could not accomodate it self to this prudence neither ever expect any good from such a way of Reformation which would bind the Royal hands and feet of Majesty before they would declare what they desired of his Favour and cut asunder the Nerves of his Authority and subsistance under colour to establish the Kingdom of Jesus Christ A strange proceeding to us that have learned of St Paul that a Prince beareth not the sword in vain Rom. 13.4 But in that is the Minister of God to execute wrath and that to resist him yea when he should make use of the sword to commit injustice is to resist the Ordinance of God But if he use it well or ill that ought to be left to him who gave it him and to whom only he ought to render account his Subjects ought to counsel him if he did ill and refuse to assist him in evil doing and not repress him by Arms That if this Command of St Paul obliged the Romans to obey a cruel vicious Prince and enemy to God we should account our selves much more bound to obey a just merciful religious Prince whose life was a rare example of piety and sanctity and his Government so just and peaceable that he might well be called the Father of his Subjects who wanted nothing to make them happy but to know their happiness CHAP. II. That the Covenanters are destitute of all Proofs from Holy Scripture for their War made against the King THese violent beginnings of the Covenanters and their Progress also which overthrows all humane Authority had great need to strengthen it self by Divine Authority to satisfie the Conscience whence is it that they made a great noise of it in their Pulpits but not in their Disputes for those that exhorted the people in Scripture-term to War against the King hang down the head when in conference their Proofs are demanded saying that It is not for Divines but Lawyers to decide the present quarrel Whence it appears that there is a great difference betwixt the terms and proofs of Scripture and that many that have the voice of the Lamb speak as the Dragon But fearing lest they should accuse us that we suppress their proofs behold here all that they make use of both in their Books and Sermons part borrowed from the writings of the Jesuites and part from two Books which are Printed with Machiavels Prince and not without great reason for there are three wicked Books together and its a wonder how that in threescore years their Books have not been burnt for company by the hands of the common Executioner They alledge the example of David who had six hundred men for his guard when he was pursued by Saul 1 Sam. 22.2 The example of the Army of Israel which saved Jonathan when Saul would have put him to death 1 Sam. 14.45 Of Ehud who slew Eglon King of Moab an Oppressor of the Israelites Judg. 3.21 The example of the Town of Libnah which revolted from the obedience of Jehoram because he had forsaken the Lord God of his Fathers 2 Chr. 21.10 Of Jehu that cut off the House of Ahab 2 Kings 9. The example of Jehojadah the High Priest who commanded Athaliah the Queen to be put to death 2 Kings 11.15 Of the Priests
of Jerusalem who resisted Uzziah the King when he would have exercised the Priests Office 2 Chron. 26.18 The example of Elisha who caused the door to be shut when Joram the King of Israel sent a messenger to cut off his head 2 Kings 6.13 And also the malediction that Deborah gave to the Inhabitants of Meroz because they came not to the help of the Lord when Barak fought against Siserae Iudges 5.23 Likewise the malediction pronounced by Jeremy against him that should do the work of the Lord deceitfully and that should keep his sword from shedding the blood of the Moabites Jer. 48.10 The Idols of Laban and the Genealogies of the Patriarchs might also have been brought to this purpose it must needs be that the Spirit of Error and of Lies have a great power upon the understanding of these people for to perswade them by such reasons to hazard their Goods and Lives and Consciences in an open War against their Soveraign All these passages of Scripture are Examples and particular Cases and all except one far from the point in controversie but in a matter of such importance as the resisting of the King which is so expresly forbidden and under pain of damnation there is need of a formal command or of a permission expressed that exempts Christians at least in some certain cases for the crime of resisting the higher powers which is to resist God and from the punishment of eternal damnation without this all the Examples of Subjects rising up against their Princes from the very Creation of the World cannot nor is able to put Conscience into a quiet condition He hath but small knowledge that knows not that Examples prove nothing but that such a thing hath been done and is possible not that it ought to be done or that it is lawful to be done if there be not a Law built upon the Example and a Soveraign Authority given to it that it may be a pattern for the future and then it s not the Example but the Law that we are bound to follow which cannot be said of the Examples before alledged which beside the general insufficiency of Examples in matter of proof touch not the point of Resistance in question except the first which is wholly contrary to it Which is the Example of David who being persecuted by Saul took six hundred men for his Guard this might suffice for Answer That this action is not recommended by the Word of God nor proposed as an example for us to follow Christian piety and prudence may imitate many actions of holy persons which are not formally recommended in the word of God but the question being to exempt us from a prohibition and a formal threatning Rom. 13.2 one of the most considerable and penal in all the Scripture we may receive no example to the contrary if it be not expresly recommended and turned into a command and besides the last command ought to have the advantage and to be obeyed before the first Moreover extraordinary Cases in Scripture wherein there is a Miraculous and Prophetick Conduct cannot serve for a pattern in ordinary cases David was Anointed King over Israel by a special command of God and in all the List of the Kings of Judah there were none but Saul and David called to the Kingdom in this manner And this holy Unction gave them priviledges in Israel which were onely proper to them and which the Gentlemen of the Covenant have not in England for ordinary cases there are perpetual and inviolable precepts and these precepts are wholly contrary to the resisting of Soveraigns by Arms. Our Enemies nevertheless challenge a particular Interest in this example of David because they account themselves the anointed of the Lord but deny this Title to their King if he be not one of the Elect of God but let them learn that that which renders Kings the anointed of the Lord is not true Faith nor the Gifts of the Spirit but that Soveraign power which they have from on high And therefore Cyrus a Pagan King is called by God himself his anointed and his Shepherd Isai 45.1 If then Kings are the anointed of the Lord without consideration of their Religion or vertue it follows then that they lose not their unction neither by their Errors nor their Vices and that falling from the grace of God yet they fall not from that power which they held of him This is spoken of by the way against the Heresie of most part of the Covenanters who deny the divine Unction of Kings and fasten it to their fâ—ntasies in Religion And we have cause to give thanks to these men who alledge to us the example of David there being nothing in all the Scripture more contrary to them for in stead of that they pursued the King with weapons in their hands and gave him Battel David fled continually from place to place and never struck one stroke nor drew his Sword against his King Twice he let him escape when he had him in his power and having taken away his spear restored it to him again and having but cut off the Lap of his garment his heart smote him for it and when one counselled him to dispatch him then when he was in his hands he said The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my Master the Lords anointed to stretch forth my hand against him seeing he is the Anointed of the Lord 1 Sam. 24.6 And when his servants would have slain him he saith Destroy him not for who can stretch forth his hand against the Lords Anointed and be guiltless 1 Sam. 26.9 This Divine Title bound his hands and possessed his spirit with fear and astonishment And since our Enemies make him to say that he would not stretch forth his hand against the King if he descended not in Battel against him let them well read the Text but especially in the Original and they shall find no such thing David doth rather put Saul wholly into the hands of God Vers 10. The Lord shall smite him or his day shall come to die or he shall descend into the battel and perish The Lord forbid that I should stretch forth my hand against the Lords Anointed He doth not say that he will not stretch forth his hand against him unless that the Lord smite him for if God smite him what need had David to smite him He doth not say he would descend into Battel against him for then his Actions would have contradicted his Words for he always fled from him the Event proved that his words were Prophetical and that hâ— waited whilest Saul should be slain in a strange War and that the hand of the Lord should be upon him And if David never gave him Battel we cannot impute it to his weakness for he might as well have defeated the Army of Saul as that of the Philistines before Keilah with his small number if God who guided him in all his ways had
Scripture where it 's commanded for Subjects to take up Arms for Religion against their Soveraign He returned this Scripture Stand fast therefore in the Liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free Gal. 5.1 But we maintain against him that both Saint Peter and Saint Paul preserved themselves more stedfast in their Christian Liberty in suffering death than all the Armies of the Covenanters in fighting and that they take the waies not to establish but to shake and overthrow their liberty in Christ We need not prove that Saint Paul in this Scripture never meant to speak of fighting but to preserve the spirit free from superstition Christian Liberty consists not in shaking off the yoke of Superiour Powers but of that of Error and vice and that liberty which our enemies have assumed to present their Petitions to their King upon their Pikes point and in the end to kill him was not the liberty from which Christ had made them free Let them learn the Lesson of Saint Peter to carry themselves as free and not using their Liberty for a Cloak of Maliciousness CHAP. IV. The Evasions of the Covenanters upon the Texts of Saint Paul Rom. 13. And how in Fine they refuse the Judgment of Scripture THE Apostle commands Rom. 13.1 That every Soul be subject to the higher Powers for there is no power but of God The Powers that be are ordained of God To this Scripture some of them answer that evil Kings are not ordained of God having learned this Doctrine of Goodman but therein they directly contradict Saint Paul who spake of the Powers then in being they that were then when Saint Paul wrote this Epistle were one of the three Nero's Successors of Tyberius the best of them were nothing worth a child is capable to distinguish betwixt the wickedness of a Prince and his authority the first whereof is of himself the second is of God and it 's of the power that Saint Paul speaks of without distinction of persons As for the following verse where Saint Paul infers thus Whosoever therefore resisteth the Power resisteth the Ordinance of God and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation Buchanan and his followers answer that this Command was but for a time whilst the Church was in it's Infancy weak and under the Cross incapable to resist their Prince but if Saint Paul had lived now and were to write a body of Common-wealth he would speak far otherwise and would leave Kings to be punished of their Subjects and this is that Buchanan assures us upon his word Likewise one of the best writers of the Covenanters affirms that Saint Paul spake to some particulars dispersed in the condition of the Primitive Church who had not means to provide for their safety if this License were lawful men might reject all the Doctrines of Saint Paul's Epistles as written to particulars and the Masters of the Covenant would make a way to exempt themselves from many duties commanded by Saint Paul which would very ill accord with their intentions So when the Apostle saith Rom. 12.9 10. Let Love be without dissimulation abhor that which is evil cleave to that which is good be kindly affectionate one to another with brotherly love preferring one another there is some appearance that they take this Command addressed to some particulars and not to them since they give themselves the liberty to do the quite contrary There is in these Epistles some Commands provisional moveable according to the times and persons as those which concern the outward Order others which are purely personal as the Command made to Timothy to come to him before Winter but the Moral Doctrines are immoveable and vary not according to the Times since that reason of Saint Paul given that the Powers that be are ordained of God is a Truth perpetual and universal and the Command not to resist the Powers ought also to be general for all Ages and all people so likewise this reason is perpetual That the Magistrate beareth not the sword in vain but to do justice and this other ye must needs be subject not only for wrath but also for Conscience sake Wherefore the Command grounded hereon to be subject to the higher Powers not resist them is of perpetual necessity and obligation And since to resist the powers is to resist the Ordinance of God may we not ask of our new Divines why the strong and not the weak are permitted to resist the Ordinance of God It 's enough to have a good sword to exempt a man from the Commands of the Gospel The Covenanters might defend this interpretation of the Text of Saint Paul by the authority of Cardinal Bellarmine who saith that if the Christians long since did not depose Dioclesian Julian the Apostate Valens the Arrian and others it was because they wanted temporal forces otherwise of right they might which is the language of our Covenanters but this opinion draws along with it three inconveniencies First That it blasts the primitive Church and deprives the Martyrs of their honour for it 's little worth praise to suffer for the Gospel when a man hath a will without means to rebel their obedience to their Soveraigns was then nothing worth since it was forced and all their protestations of subjection in the writings of the Fathers of which they are full ought to be imputed to weakness and hypocrisie This likewise is to accuse Saint Paul of want of sincerity as if he taught patience and obedience to Kings only to accomodate himself to the Times and not to obey God but he clears himself sufficiently of this accusation saying that we must not only be subject for wrath that is to say for fear of punishment but also for Conscience Moreover this Doctrine is pernicious to the Church for if it were embraced it would render Christians suspected and hateful to their Soveraigns as persons who would subject the Conscience of their Prince to theirs and submits to them only out of weakness and wait only an occasion to cast off their yoke which would oblige Kings ever to keep them weak and to impose heavy burdens upon them and so prevent their rising Also this Doctrine is pernicious to the profession of the Gospel for it would much hinder the conversion of Pagan Kings since that turning Christians according to the Mode they should lose their authority there being no Pagan Religion which teacheth Subjects to resist their Prince by Arms which would also indure Christian Kings of a diverse Religion to hinder with all their might the Conversion of their Subjects Blessed be God that there are none but the Jesuits and Covenanters that maintain so destructive an Opinion The Reformed Churches and the most part of the Roman Church give no jealousie to their Princes hereupon The holy prudence of the Apostles saw well that even besides Conscience the Counsell the most profitable for the conservation of the Church and the propagatiâ—â— of the
Empire and for such hath been known in the world governed by one Soveraign Head having the dignity and Royal greatness of the Emperial Crown to which there is a Body Politick joyned composed of all sorts and degrees of people as well Spiritual as Temporal who are bound next to God to render unto him Natural Obedience If the Body Politick be naturally subjected to him as to its Head it 's contrary to Nature that it should be subjected to the Body Politick and his maxime Râ—x est universis minor is condemned as false by the Parliament they knew not in those daies what it was to make the Body of the State march with its head downward and feet upward but they were careful to maintain the Head in that eminent place where God had set it and hither also tend the words following That the chief Soveraign is instituted and furnished by the goodness and permission of Almighty God with full and entire Power Preheminence Authority Prerogative and Jurisdiction to execute Justice and put a final determination in all Cases to all sorts of his Subjects within this Kingdome and that many Laws and Ordinances had been made in preceding Parliaments for the full and sure conserving of the prerogative and preheminence of this Crown These good Subjects could not find words enough nor consult of means sufficient according to their mind to defend the Authority of their King esteeming and well they might that the happiness and liberty of the Subjects lay in the inviolable power of their Soveraign that the greatness of the State consisted in that of the Prince and that there is no other way to crown the Body but to place the Crown upon the Head This stile is very far from that of the nineteen Propositions presented to the King by the Two Houses in the beginning of the War which required that all matters of State should be treated of only in Parliament or if the King would treat of any Affairs in his Councel this Councel should be limited to a certain number and the old Councellors cashiered unless such whom it pleased the Two Houses to retain and that none hereafter should be admitted without their approbation that the King should have no power in the Education and Marriage of his children without their advice that all great Officers of the Crown and the principal Judges should alwayes be chosen by the approbation of the Two Houses or by a Councel authorized by them the same also in Governours of places and in the Creation of Peers which hath since been denied to the King in effect And as for the Militia they would have the King wholly put it into their hands that is to say he should take his Sword from his side and give it them which he could not do without giving them the Crown for the Crown and the Royal Sword are both of one piece so also for the point of Religion these propositions take from him all Authority and liberty of judgement yea even the liberty of Conscience for they require that his Majesty consent to such a Reformation as the Two Houses should conclude upon without telling him what this Reformation is Let all the world here judge if these men speak like Subjects they had reason to present these Articles with their swords in their hands but the King had more reason to draw his to return them an answer All these propositions are founded upon one only proposition which passeth amongst them for a Fundamental Law That the King is bound to grant to the People all their Demands but this is a Fundamental in the Ayr and made void by the practise of all Ages since Eng. was a Monarchy and by that Authentical Judgement of the States assembled under Henry the Fift That it belongs to the Supremacy of the King to grant or refuse according to his pleasure the Demands that are made to him in Parliament And in stead of the House of Commons being as it is now the Soveraign Court a thing never heard of until this present Age The House supplicated Henry the Fourth not to employ himself in any Judgement in Parliament but in such cases as in effect appertained to him because it belonged to the King alone to judge except in cases specified by the Statutes The same House under Edward the Third acknowledged that it did not belong to them to take Cognisance of such matters as the keeping of the Seas or the Marshes of the Kingdome yea even during the sitting of Parliaments the Kings have alwayes disposed of the Militia and Admiralty of the Forts and Garrisons the Two Houses never interposing or pretending any right thereunto they declared ingeniously to Edw. the First that to him belonged to make express Command against all Force of Arms and to that end they were bound to assist him as their Soveraign Lord. They declared also to King Henry the Seventh that every Subject by the duty of his subjection was bound to serve and assist his Prince and Soveraign Lord upon all occasions by which they signified that it was not for them to meddle with the Militia but that their duty as Subjects bound them to be aiding and assisting to him The Learned in the Laws tell us that to raise Troops of Horse or Foot without Commission of the King or to lend Aid is esteemed and called by the Law of England to levy war against the King our Soveraign Lord his Crown and Dignity In this point all that is done without him is done against him and this is conformable to the general Right of all Nations As for the Royal Estate saith Bodin I believe there is no person that doubts that all the Power both of making Peace and War belongs to the King since none dare in the least manner do any thing in this matter without the Command of the King unless he will forfeit and endanger his Head If the Two Houses were priviledged to the contrary by any Statute we should have heard them speak it but for what they have done we see no other Authority then their practice Therefore none ought to wonder if this their new practice hath less Authority with persons of a sound judgement then these practises of all ages past and if we cannot perswade our selves that without the Authority of the King they cannot abolish those of Parliaments Authorized by the King let them not then make such a loud noise with the Authority of Parliament 'T is in obedience to that Supreme Court of Parliament that we so earnestly strive to preserve the Princes Rights those Acts of Parliament are in full force which have provided with great care to defend the Royal Prerogatives judging aright that the Soveraignty is the Pillar of the publick safety and that it cannot be divided without being weakned and without shaking the State that rests upon it But we leave the reasons of the form of this Estate to them who formed it contenting our selves
condition they would commit new ones But when the honest and most understanding of the City came in a good number to petition the two Houses to hearken to peace and satisfie the King they were severely rebuked as seditious and these Gentlemen let them know that they loved no noise but of their own making Behold here the waies whereby the Parliament of London obtained their absolute power Behold the Foundations they laid for a most holy Reformation Posterity will be ashamed of the Actions of their Fathers all Forreign Nations will abhor these proceedings remorse and sorrow may in the end enter into the hearts of the Londoners when they shall behold themselves the sole object of publick Execrations and curses Those of Gaunt and Paris have only reason to pardon them when they shall remember their Baracado's and the estate of the Nobles during the holy League CHAP. X. A Parallel of the Covenant with the holy League of France under Henry the 3d. WHo so shall compare the holy League of France with the English Covenant shall find that they are sisters daughters of the same Father and that the younger is to the life after the Image of the Elder in both you shall find an Oath of mutual assistance to extirpate Heresie without the Authority of the King and which at last is turned against the King himself A Jealousie without ground of the Religion of their Soveraign and a War of Religion against a King of the same Religion which they would make the world believe was a Heretick A League with strangers and Armies raised in the Kingdom against their natural Prince who gave them no other occasion of the War but his too much Gentleness A King submitting himself to reason offering himself to remedy all the grievances of his Subjects and a people refusing to admit him to bring a remedy and resolved to give order without him the King driven from his chief City which he had honoured by his ordinary presence The fire of civil war blown about by seditious preachers The superstitious people tributary to the ambition of some particulars weak Conscience instructed to cut the throat of their King for the love of God and to gain Paradise fastings frequent Devotions doubled Prophetical Inspirations Examples of Angelical Holiness and all this to perswade the superstitious people that God favoured their Seditions as his cause and that their Leaders took Counsel of none but the Holy Ghost and had no other aim but the setting up of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ Writers under pay to write scandalous libels against their King the people fed with lies to drain money out of their purses one while amazing them with fears where there was none another while flattering them with false hopes and with forged news A Parliament in the principal City but in it a smal number who wanting the Royal assistance support themselves by granting liberty to an inveagled people and by power of rich and foolish Citizens Nobility scorned Artificers and Banquerouts bearing the sway all Order Divine and Humane overturned the ancient Laws and Customes broken and new fundamental Laws never heard of before in their places In brief it appears at this day that the Devil marches abroad and walks in the same paths he did about fifty years since CHAP. XI The Doctrine of the English Covenanters parallel'd with the Doctrine of the Jesuits SInce the League of France and the English Covenant were both made upon pretence of Religion it 's not unworthy our paines to consider the conformity of the Doctrines they employed to maintain both the one and the other and how the Jesuits Maximes were the chief support of the Covenant Both in the League and Covenant the people were encouraged to take up Arms against their King by this opinion of Car. Bellar. who teacheth that in the Kingdoms of men the power of the K comes from the people because it 's the people that makes the King and that the people do never so transfer their power over to the King but they retain it in habitu and so that in certain cases they may in effect re-assume it again which was also the judgment of Navarrus whom the Cardinal highly extois And thus also the Author of the Observations upon the Kings Declarations who is the Master of the Sentences with the Covenanters teacheth us That originally the power is in the people who are the fountain and efficient cause and that the Authority is not in the Prince but secondarily and derivatively All these State Philosophers are full of School terms but little reason and he adds That this Authority founded by the people cannot be dissolved but by that power which gave it constitution Which is as much as to say That the people may take away the Kings power and authority when they please Another of the Sect but more antient tells us That Princes and Governours have their authority from the people who when they find it convenient may resume and take it from them again as every man may revoke when he please his own procuration or warrant but this reason shall by and by be examined and refuted The Cardinal explains himself more clearly in that which before he had written in covert Terms saying That a King such as he there describes may yea ought by the consent of all to be deprived of his Authority and Goodman is of his opinion That evil Princes ought to be deposed and that this alone belongs to the inferiour Magistrates to put in execution We learn from Doctor Charron that the French Leaguers eluded the strength of S. Pauls Texts which forbids the opposing of Soveraigns in saying That the commands had regard and respect only to the State of the Christians of those times because they were not then strong enough to make resistance I have before shewed how Bellarmine Buchanan and the Champions of Covenant make use of the same reason and exposition But to clear the way and make it smooth to come to deposing of Soveraign Princes These two parties are wont to absolve their Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance Emanuel Sa the Jesuite saith That the people may depose their Prince even after they have sworn perpetual obedience to him And Mr. Knox saith That if Princes prove Tyrants against God and his Truth their Subjects are free from their Oaths of Allegiance c. To the excommunication and deposing of the Prince ordinarily there follows execution according to the Authentick Bull That it s not Homicide to kill an excommunicated person The French League produced two examples in the persons of their Kings and this accords with the Doctrine of Buchanan That Ministers may excommunicate Princes and that a King after he is cast into Hell by Excommunication is unworthy to live or to enjoy life upon earth But observe in passing the Reformed Churches do not teach that the Excommunicatio Major do cast any person into Hell but onely excludes
them from the outward communion of the visible Church and in this as in other things Buchanan hath shewed himself to be less skilled in Divinity then in Poetry The best excuse which can be alledged in his Defence is that which Mr. Du Moulin lends him which may also serve for Mr. Knox That if he hath written any thing which passeth moderation we must 〈◊〉 attribute it to his Religion but nature for its most certain both these were hot headed men and had a great Antipathy against Monarchy As for the doctrine of King killing which is a familiar doctrine amongst the Jesuits and is oft their shame and reproach they to render us as odious as themselves and by way of exchange alledge and quote in their writings the passages of Buchanan Knox and Goodman who together with them teach the same Doctrine That cunning Jesuite Petra Sancta is very curious in searching into their writings whom that excellent person Mr River answers and tels him that none amongst us approve or allow those wicked Maximes and imputes the cause to their supposed persecution which had exasperated their spirits and to the hot heads of the Nations of this Iland After this so wise and charitable a reprehension coming from a person of such eminency men of learning amongst them ought at least to have learned modesty since they refused to learn obedience of their Parliaments which condemned these Doctrines of Knox and Buchanan by their publike Acts or by the determinations of their principal Divines who have learnedly refuted them and also by considering what great pains Mr. Bloudil Mr. Valade and other judicious and learned men of Forraign Churches have taken to wash off the filth of their doctrines and behaviours which have exceedingly scandalized the Evangelical profession after so many Iterated saving advertisements one would have thought they should have preserved themselves from falling into the same offences and from giving new occasions of rejoycing to their enemies and of shame to their brethren but behold of late worse then ever their hot heads have produced such new effects of violence as gives a challenge of defiance to the very Jesuits themselves The Author of Sions Plea animates the people to war and to pull down the Bishops speaking thus Smite neither small nor great but the troublers of Israel wound that Hazael in the fifth Rib Yea if your father and mother stand in your way to prevent you dispatch them suddenly pull down the ensign of the Dragon set up the standard of Jesus Christ What If the father of the State stand in your way now when ye are busie in this holy cause must he be dispatched no doubt but they would tread upon him to make way and would serve the Son as they had done the Father 't is a point resolved on by the same Author They must strike the Basilike vein none but that can heal the Pluresie of State which is as much as to say in good English that they must cut the throat of the King for the publike good This Author were a good Scholler of the two Jesuites Guignard and Scribanius had he not too grossly borrowed their Terms for say they France was sick and they must cut the Basilike vein to heal her and Scribanius that they committed a great error on S. Bartholomews even that they cut not that vein That is that those of the Guisian Faction spared the lives of the King of Navar and the Prince of Condie Oh rare Flowers of Diabolical Rhetorick Oh the shame of Christian Religion Is this the simplicity and meekness of the Gospel Is this the way to guide Conscience into the way of peace and to set up the Kingdom of Jesus Christ or Christ on his Throne If S. Paul were alive doubtless these men would even maintain to his face that he understood not the nature of the spiritual Kingdome when he said Rom. 14.7 That the Kingdome of God is righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Ghost And when he read this lesson to the Christians Let the peace of God rule in your hearts to which peace ye are called in one body They would have taught him that the Kingdome of Jesus Christ ought to be set up by the murthering of Kings the destruction of the people and the oâ—erthrow of States and would have sent him to their Catechise to be instructed That the Parliament Souldiers at the present ought not to consider us as their Fellow-Citizens or their Parents or their companions in Religion but as Enemies of God upholders of Anti-Christ and therefore their eye should not pity us nor their sword spare us These are the words of that abominable Catechism published by Authority for the use of the Covenanters Army Oh behold the principles of Faith wherewith these dull souls are instructed Behold the Bread of Life wherewith their Divines feed the consciences of the poor people Jer. 23.4 I have seen in the Prophets of Hierusalem an horrible thing they commit adultery and walk in lies they strengthen also the hands of evil doers Israel the daies of thy visitation are come thy Prophets are fools and thy men of Revelations are mad To these prodigious Doctrines we will joyn that Aphorism in the book entituled Altare Damascenum That all Kings have a natural hatred against Christ If ye would believe this man every one that loves Christ must bear an irreconcileable hatred to all Kings was there ever a more seditious and execrable Maxime after such a Doctrine pronounced by an Author of such account should we ask who hath put weapons into the hands of this superstitious people against their Soveraign for these poor miserable people hate the King for the love of God yea many account him an Enemy of Jesus Christ even because he is a King That we may the better discover by what spirit this man is led observe how he deals with his natural Prince he calls King James of most happy and glorious memory Infestissimus Ecclesia Hostes the most mortal enemy of the Church without doubt these who read this will question what Religion this man is of who so qualifies the incomparable Defender of the Faith who hath so vigorously and sincerely maintained the truth that if there were a Christian in the world who knew not thar great Prince neither by his admirable writings nor by the Renown of his Piety and Wisdome and should hear him call'd the most spiteful and mortal Enemy of the Church he might well imagine that King James had turned Turk and changed the Churches of his Kingdome into Mosques and sold his Christian Subjects for slaves to the Moors It were to do wrong to the testimony that himself hath given by the Immortal Monuments of his Religious Wisdome and by his truly Christian and Fatherly Government to undertake here to defend him against so unequal an Adversary wherein the injuries spoken of this excellent King turns to the ruine and perdition of
him that spake them like unto the bitings of the weasel who consumes his teeth by gnawing of steel Certainly when the Divines of France defend in their writings the Confession of Faith of his Majesty against the Doctors of the contrary Religion they account not that King a most mortal enemy of the Church That most holy Confession confirmed by the practice of that great Prince will serve as a bright shining light in the Church in after Ages and cover the memory of them who injured and reproached him with perpetual shame But for the present thâ—se rare Adages which curse the best of Kings and Royalty in general are gather'd as choice and golden sentences Witnesse this other which comes from the Authority of his Companion as great a liar as himself who hath this passage He erres not much who saith that there is in all Kings a mortal hatred against the Gospel they will not suffer willingly the King of Kings to govern in their Kingdomes yet God hath some amongst the Kings who pertain to him but very few it may be one in an hundred But since he is upon the number instead of counting a hundred Kings one after another let him account only a hundred years without going out of England and we intreat this good man to consider what Kings have raigned over this Kingdome within this hundred years and let him in good earnest tell us which of them he would leave to God and which he would give to the Devil let them consider the piety of him whom God hath made a Saint and they a Martyr let them find if they can in all his Kingdome a man more just and meek more temperate and religious and let envy and rebellion who finding nothing to bite at in the life of this Monarch burst asunder at his feet and hide themselves in their own confusion Let us say the same to the Observator upon his Majesties Declarations who speaking of all Kings now raigning but with a particular application to his Soveraign saith That to be the delight of mankind as Titus Vespasian is now a sordid thing amongst Princes but to be tormentors and executioners of the Publique to plot and contrive the ruine of their subjects which they ought naturally to protect is now accounted a work worthy of Caesar If reviling and speaking reproachful words against the King were blasphemy according to the stile of the civil Laws of Israel 1 King 21 10. then this impious person is a Blasphemer in the highest degree against the sacred Majesty of Kings and moreover exceeding ridiculous as well as wicked to appropriate this description to his King whose known piety justice and clemency deserved rather the title of the delights of mankind then that Emperour upon whom the love of the people conferred it The like I may speak of the Kings of France within these fifty years all the Lists of the French Kings furnisheth not such excellent Princes wherefore Aphorismes of Rebellion could never have been pronounced in an age more proper to give the Authors the lye The Lord rebuke these black souls who curse God in the person of his Anointed their sentence is written and their qualities painted out to the life by St. Peter 2 Pet. 2.10 11 12. who despise Dominions presumptuous self-willed they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities whereas Angels which are greater in power bring not railing accusations against them before the Lord but these are natural bruit beasts made to be taken and destroy'd speak evil of things which they understand not and shall utterly perish in their own corruption I might heap up many more passages of our enemies which teach murther rebellion and hatred of Kings in which they seem to dispute with the very Jesuites themselves this description of their devotion A seditious piety a factious Religion which would be Judge of the consciences of Princes who abhor their Religion because they hate their Government who make good subjects and good Christians to be things incompatible Whosoever would weary his patience and behold how ingenious the Covenanters have been even to exercise the patience of God and insult over the persons and authority of Kings let them read their Sermons which were daily printed by authority after they had preached them before the House of Commons wherein the filthy Torrent of seditious Eloquence and the fantasticalness of a Bastard Devotion were imploy'd to tear apieces the King to disfigure him in odious colours and stir up the people to all cruel and bloody courses against him out of which books we might collect thousands of Modern Authorities in favour of the wickedness of these times which passed from them as Doctrines of Religion but we esteem our selves worthy of a better imployment then to be poring on Carrion and stirring in sinks and puddles That which we have cited out of known Authors shall suffice to let the world see with whom we have to do and that we are call'd to the condition of S. Paul to fight with beasts CHAP. XII How the Covenanters wrong the Reformed Churches in inviting them to joyn with them with an answer for the Churches of France AS 't is the vice of those who are strucken with the Leprosie to endeavour to infect others so the Covenanters like to them labour by all means possible to spread abroad the poyson of their impiety Those who have preached and published their most infamous Doctrines which renders Christianity hateful both to Turks and Pagans were so bold as to address their publike Declarations to the Reformed Churches of France the Low Countryes and Switzerland as if they made profession of the same Doctrines they had the impudence to invite these so pure Churches to have society with them and to pray them to esteem the Cause of the Covenant that of all the Churches In this the Assembly of Divines at London were imployed by their Masters That which makes this Temptation less dangerous is That the Letter they wrote upon this subject to their Neighbours could very hardly be understood This Venerable Company of Divines of Consummate Knowledge and the Flower of Eloquence of that Party writ a Latine Letter to the French Flemens and Switzers wherein there wants nothing in the Outward but Language and Common sense a most worthy Cover for the Inward for so evil a drogue there needed not a Better Box. This Epistle amongst a ridiculous affectation of Criticismes Greek and Poetical phrases and many Rhetorical Figures is here and there fill'd with Solecismes Barbarismes and the like Grammar Elegancies like a foundred horse that goes up and down and it 's pity to behold hâ—w their Eloquence stumbles in Capriolinge This piece of Latine was much admired and many praises heaped upon the Authors and publick thanks by special command given to them by the House of Commons so much is knowledge valued in this Reformed party It 's likely many hands contributed to the composing of it for
content them without considering the salvation of their souls the safety of their persons make publick prayers in their Assemblies for the Covenanters Preach to the people that their War is lawful and holy and that after being questioned by the Magistrates of a contrary Religion constantly maintain that it is the cause of God whatsoever may happen to their Goods Lives and the profession of the Gospel But behold here that which is worse in the conclusion of the Oath of the Covenant which they sent with their Epistle to all the Neighbour Churches they invite them earnestly to take this Oath or the like And above all they invite those Churches who live under the power of a contrary Religion The Invitation is in form of a Prayer That it would please God to encline by their examples the other Churches that groan under the yoke of Antichrist's Tyranny to associate themselves with this Covenant or the like For to take then their Summons in their own sense that is to say That the Churches of France to please them would make a Covenant against their Soveraign expecting as a thing which they need not doubt that the English Covenanters would overcome their enemies in an instant and would be ready at the day appointed to succour their Confederates beyond the Seas with their victorious Armies before their King justly provoked should ruine them The Covenanters Declarations especially in the year 1642. flatter these poor Churches with this hope and through all their discourse clearly resolv'd to go forth and pull down Antichrist in all Countries and make a general conquest for Jesus Christ These are very like the Messages that John of Leyden sent to Munster to make all the Commons in Germany to rise and all the world if it were possible Not that the Leaders of the Covenant considering their strength and interest thought themselves capable of so vast a design but according to my opinion they had two ends in making this so open a profession The one to draw to their party the weak and passionate who in enterprises have regard to the lustre and promise of the design and not to the possibility of the execution Of such spirits the great Herd of the world is composed who in the great and publick Motions suffer their fancies to be bewitched with Poetical hopes incompatible with the nature of the affairs Such was the promise of another Declaration which lul'd the imaginations of the adherents That this War would bring them deliverance from all their sufferings and fears and be the beginning of a new world of joy and peace which God would create for their consolation For this new world of peace and joy which was but three skips and a stride off as they thought they found such besotted spirits who cast themselves headlong into a Gulph of evils without bottom or bounds The other apparent end was to gain credit to their party by the applause of Forreign Churches to fortifie themselves by the powerful association of the Low-Countries and to try whether the French of the Reformed Religion were so ill affectionate as to take up Arms against their King without ever caring what should come after when they were once engaged in a war wherein formerly they had ill success And these people were so void of charity and humanity that they were content to buy an unprofitable reputation to their party by the certain ruine of those they invite to alliance with them As he that cared not to cut down his Neighbours Oak were it but to make himself a pick-tooth For suppose that the French Churches should have suffered themselves to be gained by their perswasions In what condition were they in to succour them Could they have furnished Money Armes Men and Shipping Had they the means to put out the Fire when they had once kindled it All the Succours that these Gentlemen could give them would be to declare the Votes of the two Houses That the Armes of the Churches of France were Defensive and Just and those of their King Offensive and Unlawful Or have Declared his Majesty fallen from his Dignity and Crown of France as they declared those two Illustrious Princes Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice Sons of the late King of Bohemia excluded from Succession in the Palatinate which Vote shall take place when the Masters of the Covenant shall have Conquered the Palatinate by their Armes in spight of the Forces of France the Emperour and Spains and they become sole Arbiters of the Empire Before the Covenanters come to the end of this design a little too far off these brave Princes will have leasure to make their peace and many things may intervene which will induce their Judges to abate of their so great severity For to perswade these poor Churches to cast themselves headlong into ruine the Assembly at London in their Epistle labour to exasperate them by the remembrance of all that they had suffered and perswaded them that all Churches on this side as well as on the other side of the Seas were concluded to be ruined by the same Agents that after the Churches of England and Scotland should be devoured they would then fall upon their Neighbours and that it was not against the men but against the profession of the true Religion and against Godliness that their Enemies made War Whereby they would make the Neighbour Churches believe that King Charles confederated with the Pope to ruine the Reformed Religion and that after he had dispatched his own subjects he would do the like to his Neighbours of the same Religion There needs no great measure of the Gift of discerning Spirits to judge by what spirit these Grave Divines were led who take such pains to send their Brethren to the slaughter within and out of their Kingdome and to make the Doctrine of the Gospel a Trumpet of Sedition to arm subjects against their Princes and put all Christendome into a flame of bloody and unnatural wars And therefore they had reason to confess themselves thus to Forraign Churches they beseech them to excuse them that they had not writ sooner alledging according to the second Interpretation of their Friend That since they were assembled they found themselves so amazed with the Wine of Astonishment that God had given them to drink that they had wholly forgot their duty But in the Addition which they disperse amongst all the Churches they do not acknowledge themselves only Attonitos amazed but Ebrios drunken and both in the one and the other they had great reason Oh the force of Truth Oh the wonderful Providence and Justice of God to draw from these subtil and crafty souls their own condemnation How is it possible that so many choice and picked Divines whereof this Assembly was composed should be so blinded as to let pass from them so shameful a Confession in the name of all their Body and of all their Party to be divulged through all the Churches of
Europe And yet we are herein to praise God that in this their astonishment he hath given them a little interval that they came to their senses to make this acknowledgement They needed not to specifie to us in what they were forgetful of their Duty their comportments justifie their words that they had wholly forgotten it It appears also that they had forgot their duty to God their King their Countrey and to the Church from which they received their Ministry and to which they had sworn Obedience and towards them also to whom they write For if they had born any Brotherly affection they would not have been so forgetful as to write to them and in such a stile and by a publick Declaration They would have taken heed to render them odious and suspected without cause and to draw upon them persecution from which there could proceed no other fruit unlesse to make them Companions in their miseries for to render us Companions in their crimes we hope they shall never obtain But these Divines and their Masters who employ them shall find themselves deceived in their design to induce the Reformed Churches of France to shake off the yoke of their King under colour of shaking off the yoke of Antichrist The fidelity and peaceable conversation of these Churches doth take away even the shadow of such things from their Superiours whose justice is such that they will not condemn the Subjects of their King for the offences of strangers but will be more careful to protect the innocent then their ill neighbours are active to render them blame-worthy and unhappy The King and his Councel need not fear the French of the Reformed Religion will take the Oath of the Covenant to which they are invited with so much earnestness and craft For to speak of them in the terms of one of their beloved Pastors They take no Oaths to others but to their Soveraign Princes they cast not their eyes on a stranger they hold that it is not for a Subject to find occasion of disobedience in the Religion of his Prince making Religion a Match to give fire to Rebellion they are ready to expose their lives for the preservation of their King against whomsoever it be were it one of their own Religion whosoever should do otherwise should not defend Religion but serve his ambition and should draw a great scandal upon the truth of the Gospel This is the Doctrine wherein they are instructed this is the Profession in which all good Frenchmen of the Reformed Religion will live and die But if strangers whose heads run round with the wine of astonishment will force the Churches of France to drink of their Cup they will use the French freedome refuse to pledge them and behold their zeal to press them to do as they do with despite and compassion Let them not think it strange that they run not with them into the same excess of riot they do not offend them for whilst they have this strong wine in their heads they keep their sobriety and are filled beseeching God to shew mercy upon those who would seduce them Now as it is the custome of drunken persons who would draw others into the same excess with themselves and to drink according to their pleasure to make them believe that they have seen them themselves in that condition so the English Covenanters to defend their actions and augment their Party alledge very often to the French Churches their wars for Religion the remembrance whereof is very sad and to use this Argument to seduce them is no other thing then to counsel them to be miserable because they have been so and to go with their eyes shut and run the remains of their broken vessel against the rock where they were shipwrackt Moreover it s very unjust in them to impute to the whole body the actions of a party for in the late wars all the Churches on this side the River Loyre continued in their obedience and very neer the half of the other Churches The people were carefully preserved in their duties by their faithful Pastors This holy Doctrine which condemns the resisting of higher powers and commands to wait patiently deliverance from God and to suffer for righteousness sake was most pressed and urged in their Churches and whilst some of the Religion were in Arms during the minority of the King they preached at Paris Their strength was to sit still Isai 30.7 There fell lately into my hands an Epistle well penn'd which was sent to the State-Assembly of Rochel in the beginning of their sitting to encline them to peace and the obedience of his Majesty Behold here a passage of it I think it very profitable for you to be informed the truth what the opinions and dispositions of our Churches are by persons that have a particular knowledge of them You are now debating Gentlemen of the separation of your Assembly for to obey his Majesty or of its subsistence and to give order to your affairs I am bound to tell you that the general desire of our Churches is that it would please God to continue peace unto us under the obedience of his Majesty and that seeing the King is resolved to employ his Armies to make you obey they promise themselves so much of you that you will do what possibly you can to avoid this tempest and yield rather to necessity then enter into a war wherein the ruine of a great part of our Churches are certain and into a trouble wherein we may behold the entrance but cannot see the issue and that ye will take away the pretext from them who drive on the King to fall upon us Those that fear God desire that if we must be persecuted it should be in bearing the Cross of Christ and for the profession of the Gospel In brief I assure you that the greatest and best part of our people desire you to decline this unjust enterprise Here is not the Authority of a Single Person 't is the testimony of the greatest and best part of the Churches of France 't is a general Declaration of the Churches and of those amongst them who feared God that the duty of Christians persecuted is to bear the Crosse not Arms. It 's then very falsly and injuriously done that the example of the French Churches should be so often and importunately alledged by the Covenanters to justifie the Subjects resisting their Sovereign since that ever in the time of war the greatest and best part were against it A French Divine who loved both his Religion and King found himself so prick'd by this reproach made to the generality of his Party that he prayed us to insert here this expression of his judgement and of the soundest part of the Churches of France The war for Religion in this Kingdome is a wound yet fresh and ye can hardly touch it but ye will hurt it and make it smart and it s very sore against my will that I
take a reciprocal Oath and in a paction of such importance there should also pass some publick contract things which are not practised so that hereby it evidently appears that this imagination of the enemies of Monarchy have not any foundation neither in Law nor Custome Some persons think they speak very finely in saying that the Authority of the King is an Usurpation of the Sword confirmed by Custome that if they could gain their liberty by the sword and confirm it by custome their Right would be as good as his and upon this they Phylosophy upon the Resolutions of States which are in the hand of God and teach us to follow the course of his Providence But by speaking thus they commit a double errour against conscience and against prudence As for conscience the antient constitution of the State confirmed by so many ages Statutes Oaths of Allegiance do suffice to learn all Christians that live under this Monarchy that it was God that established it and that by the command of God they are bound to defend the State under which they are born and whom the Body of the Kingdome hath sworn to maintain These discourses of following the Providence of God in matters of Revolutions of States are then only seasonable when the Royal Blood is extinguished or when Usurpation hath gained prescription through length of years but not when they are neer to overthrow the Estate and ruine the King these considerations are good when the evil is done and out of remedy but not when they are acting ill and when the obedience and loyalty of the subjects may remedy all The providence of God will never serve for excuse of the wickedness of men let us do that which we ought to do and leave God to do what he pleaseth and above all these moralities of revolution of States are worst in their mouths who labour to make this revolution in the State for it 's their duty to prevent this revolution with all their power posterity may excuse themselves by the providence of God in following a new form of State whilst those that introduced it shall be condemned by his Justice Besides all this there is a great want of prudence in this reasoning for in quarrelling the Rights of the King as usurpations of violence and custome they teach the King to quarrel at their liberties and priviledges for the same reason yea and by one much greater for the Priviledges of Parliament are much newer then the Royal Authority and the King may say they were obtained by force after many long and bloody wars he might cast off all prescription gained upon the unlimited power of the first Norman Kings and put himself into all the rights of their Conquests by another Wise subjects who would keep their priviledges ought by all means to preserve peace for there is nothing renders Kings more absolute then war Under a Royal Estate the principal means to preserve the peoples liberty is to maintain the only authority of the King dividing it amongst many they do but multiply their Masters For it s better to have one evil Master then many good ones CHAP. XIV How the Covenanters have no reason to invite the Reformed Churches to their Allyance since they differ from them in many things of great importance WE wonder exceedingly how our Enemies dare solicite the Reformed Churches to Covenant with them From whence comes this great familiarity Is it because of their great resemblance one with another It s that we cannot find As for obedience due to the King which is the principal point of the Covenanters we have made it already appear that the Divines of the Reformed Religion are as contrary to the Covenanters as they are to the Jesuiâ—es their Brethren and Companions in blood and war This point being denied them they care not much for the society of any Church in other points of Doctrine This is the first and great Commandment of the Covenant to obey the people against their King maintain but this their fundamental maxime and they will give you leave to chuse your Religion but in many other things this faction differ from the Reformed Churches Concerning the Doctrine of the Lords Day they have a great quarrel against Calvin who is so far from constraining the Church to a Jewish observation of the Sabbath that he accounts that the Church is not subjected to the keeping of the seventh day a passage which Learned Rivet alledgeth and approâ—â—s and to both these doth Doctor Prideaux since Bishop of Worcester joyn who in a discourse of the Sabbath complains that the English Sabbatarians lean towards Judaisme and go against the common received Doctrine of Divines never considering into what captivity they cast themselves in establishing the observation of the seventh day under Christianity by the authority of a Mosaical Precept Master Primrose Minister of Rohan hath writ a very Learned Book full of profound knowledge upon this Subject wheâ—e amongst other things he proves at large how all the Reformed Churches are contrary to this opinion Although God hath no need of the errour of men to establish his service we so much love the reverence due to that holy day that we would not lightly quarrel at any thing thereupon Let every one enjoy his Opinion so that God may be served and the day which is dedicated to him be not violated neither by prophaneness nor superstition But since the Covenanteâ— in this point are so contrary to the Reformed Churches and have so often condemned it by their writings the Assembly at London did very ill to plead conformity with these Churches in this Article and complain to them of the Liberty the King gave to poor servants to sport on Sunday after Divine Service So also for the Festivals although Mr. Rivet declares his desire that those daies which carry the Names of Saints should be abolished in England because of the abuses of these Festivals in the Church of Rome nevertheless he acknowledgeth and commends the Protestation of the English Church hereupon that they observe them not for the Service of Saints but for to glorifie God in imitation of the Primitive Church by the memory of those whom God was pleased to serve himself by to build up his Church and exceedingly blames those who accuse them of Idolatry for this observation King James of happy and glorious memory speaks thus in his Confession of Faith As for the Saints departed I reverence their memory in honour of whom our Church hath established so many daies of Solemnity as there are Saints enrolled by the Authority of the Scripture The Festivals of Saints scarce exceed the number of the Apostles and Evangelists Monsieur du Moulin his Champion defends this Confession of his Majesty Indeed saith he we condemn not this celebration of the memory of Martyrs and Saints we find the custome good of the English Church who have daies set apart for the commemoration of the Apostles
change made in the outward skin of Religion make not the substance distasted for the most part mens spirits penetrates not much further than the superficies as indeed no further did theirs who came to reform us with the sword It s a very dangerous thing to overthrow an Order wherein the Devotion of the people hath taken root For besides the disorder that follows commonly in the Church and State they shall find that in transplanting Devotion into a new soil they cause it to die some being prophane others desperate and atheistical For an exemplary conduct of Christian prudence in this great point of publick Reformation all after ages will admire the English Reformers under the Reign of Edward the Sixth who intrapt the people as Saint Paul beguiled the Corinthians who confessed that being subtile he caught them by guile for to establish the Doctrine so as it is contained in the Confession of Faith in English Church and agrees with that of other reformed Churches they kept themselves from going openly and suddenly against the inclination of the people above all in the exteriour which although it is of less importance hath notwithstanding a very strong influence upon the common people After the Reformation was concluded upon by the Prelates and Nobles Mattins were said in the Cathedral Churches at their accustomed hours with the same Garments they were wont to wear and the same ordinary singing but the Hymns and Psalms they read in English and their Scriptures were not read in pieces but by whole Chapters and Prayers were put to God only in the Name of Jesus Christ and in a known tongue a thing which did much content the people and much edifie them and being accustomed to these things they passed by the Mass Sermons became more frequent simply instructing the people in the Truth and Holiness without any bitterness or contest whereby they gained the spirits of the people by charity which is the only method for to decide controversies and in a short time that which Superstition had drawn over the Service of God was insensibly abolished and there was a general conversion of the Kingdom wrought without any noise This prudent way wrought better effects than all the combats of Religion whether fought by Armies or Letters which have been since above these hundred years Their enemies of the Church of Rome would much rather the Reformers had disputed concerning the Doctrine and Discipline and that they had set upon them with their utmost strength Our melancholy and peevish Zelots would have done no great good upon them by the waies they now take if this task had fallen into their hands for such a great work there was need of better notions of piety and prudence than the fundamental Maximes of the reformation at present That the purest Religion is that which hath least conformity with the Church of Rome That for to do well they must do quite contrary to that which the Church of Rome doth and hereby they make all that remains of the Institution of the Apostles to become Antichristian because the Papist hath practised them Maximes which are only proper for poor seditious Spirits whose nature is like the Crab-fishes who know not how to go but backward Religion consists not in negation the saving Truths are affirmative and it would be a dangerous rule to believe altogether contrary to that which the Devil believes which would oblige us to deny the Divinity For so high an enterprise which is equally as necessary as dangerous there is required clear seeing judgments firm stable ready charitable who are able to penetrate and dive into the inside of Religion and discern the meat from the shell who without bending the Truth to the times know how to accomodate their work to the nature of men and affairs and who have the discretion recommended by Saint Paul Prove all things hold fast that which is good wisely distinguishing betwixt the Apostolical Institution and the rust that is grown on it through length of time These excellent persons manifest to the world that they well understood this secret that the matter of Religion is a thing rather adored than known by the people but the Form and Ceremony is that their eyes are fixed upon and which fills their spirits and he that pleaseth them in the exteriour shall easily prevail with them for the inward of Doctrine Now it appears that Superstition is alwayes of the same Nature although she changeth her object for the Fanaticall zeal of the people of the Covenant being fleshed and egged on to destroy the exteriour Order perceived not in the mean while that they undermined the foundations of Faith For we find amongst our enemies many different Sects Some denying the Trinity the Incarnation of the Son of God and his Divinity who neverthelesse agree altogether to hate abolish our Lyturgie with the sword without contending amongst themselves for these essential differences neither are they moved for these monstrous errors which directly oppose the glory of God and salvation of men so much are men for the most part children yea brutish in matters of Piety fastening themselves upon appearances and not upon things considering more the garment then the body of Religion The vulgar being every where of this disposition God shewed great favour to the ignorant people in times of our Fathers to put them into so good hands who knew how to lead them mildly to the Truth without exasperating them for the Discipline For to provoke and irritate them was not the means to instruct them Let all the world judge if the Reformers at present follow this example and whether they search to instruct or to provoke the people for after we have made the best and soundest party amongst them to confess that the Doctrine of the Church of England was good and holy and they be demanded hereupon why they persecute the King and his people with such rage They pay us with this miserable reason that the people are affectionate to certain things as necessary which are not necessary and they would wean them from this opinion And must they for this drown three famous Kingdoms in bloud and snatch the Crown from off the Head and the Sword out of the hand of a good King We may well tell them that they undertake an impossible thing for there is no Religion no Nation nor almost person who is not lodged there but they themselves are they not more superstitious in this point than those whom they would correct For what greater superstition for to make a necessity to contradict and oppose things where there is no necessity yea to account the abolishing of things not necessary so necessary that for it they will massacre the King and bathe themselves in the blood of the Church and State Can there be in the world a more pernicious superstition No verily if they consider that this superstition kils the soul as well as the body For those
from Whom they take the use of their holy prayers have great cause to fear they will also take from them their Religion whereupon some have Fallen into a desperate Melancholy if they deal thus with us because they have a greater measure of light then we it is much to be desired that they had a little more that they fall not into the offence condemned by S. Paul and through thy knowledge shall thy weak brother perish for whom Christ died but when ye sin against the Brethren and wound their weak conscience ye sin against Christ 1 Cor. 8.11 12. Heretofore this faction would be spar'd in their disobedience to the Ecclesiastical Laws pretending tenderness and weakness of Conscience but now that they are become Masters of the Laws they regard not our weakness but force us to follow their fantasies without considering our doubts and scruples The King by the Articles of Uxbridge offered them liberty of Conscience but they will not give neither the King nor his subjects the like liberty Either take the Covenant or leave your Benefice was the choice they gave many Ministers Alledge to them the great and deep affliction of the people because they had taken from them their Common Prayers their Forms for the celebration of the Sacraments and of Marriage their customs of receiving the Sacrament at Christmas Easter and Pentecost and the decent manner of burying their dead with some Prayers and Texts of Scripture which put the living in mind of their mortality and raised up in them an assurance of their resurrection They will answer you that these observations are not necessary and mock at the affliction of the ignorant people But we hold that it is necessary to obey God who hath commanded us to do nothing whereby thy weak brother stumbleth is offended or made weak but be such as give none offence neither to the Jew nor to the Gentiles nor to the Church of God Rom. 14.21 Also the imaginary danger which they fear of things that may come to passe is a thousand times less then the present scandal and offence done to pious souls to behold all Ecclesiastical order overthrown and Liberty given to prophane and fanatique spirits to whom any thing is permitted unless to obey the King and the orders established by Lawfull Authority But let us pass to other offences There are many more besides the violation of Orders the very substance of Religion is endamaged What care do many people take to Baptize their children How do they reprove them that Baptize no more in the Name of the Father the Son and the holy Ghost Is it notpermitted to every one to Baptize or not Baptize their children and Baptism is it not refused to many Infants which are presented to be Baptized These new Reformers find so many difficulties in the capacity of their Parents that they are constrained many times to carry their children far from their dwellings to be received into the Christian Church for 't is one of the Errors of the Times that if the Father hath not Faith that is to say a Faith after their mode the Infant must not be Baptized In stead whereof the Reformed Churches in Baptizing Infants consider not the Faith of the Parents but of the Church in which they are born and the Doctrine not according as it is believed but according as it is taught Fidem non subjectivam sed objectivam For if they must be certain whether the Father hath Faith they should also be certain that he is the Father of the Infant which the Charity of the Church questioneth not Also it is an ordinary custom amongst them to rebaptize aged persons and to plunge women naked into the Water untill they say they feel faith The abuse of the blessed Sacrament of the Lords Supper is yet worse because it is more universal and maintained by the body of their Divines We beseech all lovers of the Christian Religion to enquire themselves of these Ministers how long time they have forborn to receive or administer this holy Sacrament when was it that the heads of the Covenanters received it when is it that their Souldiers were partakers of it those zealous murtherers whose assassinations and plunderings are steeped in piety Is it because they dare not receive the body and blood of our Lord with hands defiled with rapine and innocent blood But this reason cannot serve for the Churches where the Ministers are laid hold on and forbidden to administer the Sacrament where they are Ministers How many Churches are there where there hath been no speaking of a Sacrament these fifteen or sixteen years And is it not for them to mock God to make a Directory of the manner of receiving the Lords Supper and not to make use of it yea by force to hinder execution and performance of it Our Lord Jesus hath commanded us To do this in remembrance of him 1 Cor. 11.26 But behold here persons who impose a necessity not to do because they know not those who are worthy and therefore they hinder others to obey Jesus Christ taking by force the Bread and Wine from the people who were assembled to communicate and carried away the Minister out of the Church for fear he should administer the Sacrament These actions cry to heaven and will one day draw down a just vengeance These proceedings make us fear least they rank the Lords Supper amongst the superannuated ceremonies which must be abolished for in many Churches where the Covenanters are it 's not used which is a horrible thing to hear the Church of God since Christs time never before brought forth such examples Certainly since Jesus Christ would that we should do this in remembrance of him until his coming again if he should come now he would find it very strange that they had left before his coming this celebration of the memory of his death which he had so expresly commanded and it is to be presumed that he will receive no reason against his Command for the coming of Jesus Christ is the only reason which ought to make this holy Ordinance cease By this scruple that they dare not administer the holy Supper but to those alone whom they know to be worthy which is the general pretext of their party for their total abstinence they condemn not only the Reformed Churches who exclude none from the holy Communion unless they be ignorant and scandalous persons but also Jesus Christ who administred to the Disciple that betrayed him even then when he was plotting his treason in his heart By this also they even bind themselves not to celebrate the Supper of the Lord until they be inspectors and lookers into Conscience that is to say Gods For otherwise they cannot be fully satisfied of the worthiness of persons and all those who have a holy desire to partake of the Lords Table shall not be admitted until these principal Clerks of the Councel-Chamber of God have formed a Church which consists
seems superfluity in the eyes of envy and untill these hungry Harpies have caught that little which hath escaped the claws of Sacriledge they will never leave calling for the Reformation of the Clergy that is to say wholly to ruine them The devil who hates the Gospel labours to ruine iâ— by the poverty of those who preach it knowing well that the indigence of Ministers brings contempt upon the Ministry And that the Rewards being taken away the Study of Divinity will be neglected and then there will be none but the meanest of the people like to the Priests of Jeroboam Poverty abates the courage and clips the wings of conception and oft-times occasions evil designs and Councels in those whose means are too small for their Degree To do well in Pulpit and by Writing to build up indeed the Kingdom of Jesus Christ and to destroy the works of the devil they ought to have their spirits free and not oppressed through necessity Magnae mentis opus nec de Lodice paranda Attonitae They that require and would a man should do well and yet will not do well to him t is an unjust demand and many now in England pass the unjustice of Pharaoh requiring double the number of Bricks and yet give to them less straw If they alledge to us that Jesus Christ and his Apostles were poor we answer that so were their auditors and the condition of our Lord and his Disciples is a pattern as well for Layicks as the Clergy And if the Primitive Church of Hierusalem spoken of in the Acts ought to be proposed for an example of the Ecclesiastical and Civil Government of all Christendom the Clergy of England humbly beseech the Gentlemen our Reformers to imitate these pious souls who sold their possessions and brought the price and laid them down at the Apostles feet Let them sell their Lands and bring the mony to their Pastors to dispose of according to their discretion and the Ministers will part with their Tithes If we were now to speak to the Clergy of England we would exhort them to love their Office and their Benefice and now that God hath called them to the Cross and poverty to rejoyce in their conformity to Jesus Christ who made himself poor to enrich us expecting their reward in Heaven bearing patiently the spoyling of their goods accounting themselves rich enough if God be glorified and his Gospel purely Preached but these Exhortations have an evil grace in the mouth of them who come to plunder or Sequester them which is as if a thief in robbing a traveller should preach a Sermon to him of Christian patience and contempt of the world 't is the method of our enemies who driving their Ministers from their houses and Revenues read such Lectures of Divinity to them For the present some Ministers who have been the principall instruments of their party have means and honour and yet little enough considering the great service they have done them Peters their great and active agent had for a recompence given him but with great glory and ostentation two hundred pound 〈◊〉 Annum in Land But who so considers well the geniâ— of the Faction will judge that that little good they do now to their Ministers will not long continue It were a pleasant thing to consider if there were not greater cause of sorrow in it how of two Ambitions the simple serves the Ambition of the crafty for the Ministers who animated the people against their King are people impatient of subjection who would be every one of them Kings and Bishops in their Parishes and during these agitations they reign in the Pulpit a time bâ— they are set a work by those who manage the publique affairs who raise them up and flatter them to the people untill they have done their work with them for when these Gentlemen shal have done to destroy Church and State and built their Imaginary Throne of Jesus Christ upon the ruines of the Kingdom they will have so strict a hand of the Discipline that the power and the profit shall remain with them allowing their spiritual Fathers a portion purely spiritual and will discharge them of those cares which accompany the riches and honours of the world Before these Civil Warres the Bishops were profitable to all Ministers friends and enemies for those who submitted themselves freely to them enjoyeâ— their protection and those who opposed them were respected and secretly maintained by the adversaries of the Episcopal Order but now the Bishops are cut off there is neither protection nor opposition that can gain respect or support to the Clergy The stubborn and refractory Ministers have struck so violently at the root of that great tree which they have now made to fall after they had been a long time cover'd under the shadow of it but they may assure themselves that it will not be long before they themselves be crushed under the fall of it and draw upon themselves a just punishment They will then consider too late that they have been but Instruments to the covetousness and ambition of others and in the dissipation of the Goods of the Church they shall be dealt with as the Captain of Samaria to whom the King of Israel committed the keeping of the Gate where the Provision was to enter then when the people after a long Famine pressed to enter they shall behold the plenty but not taste of it but be trodden under foot CHAP. XX. Of the Corruptions of Religion objected to the English Clergy and the ways that the Covenanters took to Remedy them WEE will answer to the Objections against the King and his Party and will begin with the most ordinary Now they reproach us with corruption in Religion in such an accusation we must have regard to them that speak it it s those who turn the rising up of the people against their King into a Doctrine and Article of Faith it s those that have absented themselves from the Lords Supper for these many years those who summoned their King before them to give account of his actions those who have committed against his Sacred Person an execrable Paracide those who will employ the Body and Blood of our Lord to knit up a conspiracy against their King Those who neither teach the people in the Church nor their children at home the ten Commandments the Creed nor the Lords Prayer those who suffer and make use of all damnable Sects and punish none but those who â—each to suffer for righteousness and not to resist the Supream Powers to all these we might add many more hateful Truths but we will not without necessity publish the evil that may be hid for we love not to teach evil by representing it Whosoever shall consider their belief and practice will never wonder that such kind of People find something to say against our Religion God be praised that thus opposing us they make all the world to know that we are not guilty
of their evil opinions amongst men blame and praise take their force from him that gives them Those who accuse us of corruption in Religion should do well to tell us first amongst the scores of Religions that are what their Religion is for there are many Religions which are together with the Covenanters and live together as so many wilde beasts in the Ark who when they are gone out thence will devour one another or flee one from another but at present they all agree to tear us a pieces Now to these accusers of Corruption we present the thirty nine Articles of our Confession which they and we have sworn and subscribed and let their Consciences judge between them and us which of the two Parties have violated and falsified their Oath How have they observed the thirty sixt Article in which they acknowledged that the consecration of Arch-Bishops and Bishops used in England and confirmed by Act of Parliament contains nothing in it that is either Superstitious or Impious and yet now thunder out against this Order as a mark and branch of Antichrist Is this to want memory or conscience Can they upbraid us with any thing like unto this to have opposed in a Body and condemned an Article of our Confession The corruptions which they alledge against us are falsely so named or at the worst they are but faults of particulars But the Body of the Church hath kept and doth keep the Confession of their Faith inviolable If they produce any we would have brought in any new Doctrines or Customes who can produce others that have opposed them and that the Religion subsisted entire whilst they subsisted Let them not rob those Divines of their due praise who in the beginning of the Parliament laboured sincerely to confirm the Doctrine and to stifle the difference about Discipline We have before represented with what Wisdom Piety and Vigor many Bishops and Divines chosen by his Majesty had lead the two Parties to accord upon a certain number of Propositions which contained the Body of Religion and what great hope there was that the point of Discipline would be amiably composed and how a Faction enemies to the peace of the Church and jealous least any good should come by the means of the Bishops broke off that excellent accord which could never since be renewed persecuting the Prelates with all rigor never giving them rest until they had imprisoned them as Criminals although they were not guilty of any other crime then because they would have terminated the differences of Religion But this was to stifle the Covenant in the cradle and take away all pretext from this holy Rebellion It 's not then a wonder if this sin be not pardoned them it appears by the testimony of the Reverend Pastors of the Church of Geneva in what esteem our Religion was amongst our Neighbours for in their Epistle to the Assembly at London They beseech God that he would restore our Church and Kingdome to such a high degree of holiness and glory as it had shined in until that present By this they acquit us of the corruption which they impute to us and do obliquely accuse this Assembly and those that imploy them that by their means the Kingdom hath lost his glory and the Church her holiness Now put the case that the Corruption were as great amongst us as they make it yea put the case also that even in our Liturgie composed with so much piety and wisdome that there were something to mend as a Freckle in a fair Face and that the Discipline ought to be over-looked what could there be more expected of the King and the Clergy then to submit the Persons and things to be Reformed How often had the King offered to joyn his Authority to the Advice of Parliament and a National Synod to examine and punish the faulty and correct disorders yea and even the Laws themselves if there were need To these so reasonable commands behold here what obedience they yielded A part of the House of Commons having driven away the other by violence and popular tumults and put to flight nine parts of ten of the House of Lords besides the Bishops who represented the Body of the Clergy this small rest in lieu of a National Synod by lawful deputation of the Church chose some Ministers of their Faction for to make use of their Advice so far as it should please them These Ministers who had no Deputation nor Representation nor Authority from the Body of the English Church and having divers Lay persons joyned with them who wholly govern them mould a Religion all new defame the reputation of the Church and Confession to which they had sworn Obedience invite to their aid Forreign Churches as their brethren and ordain that which serves the intention of their Masters We know that amongst these Divines there were some men of Merit Persons which we know had it been in their power would have overcome evill with good but amongst pieces of gold there is many times a great deal of small money like unto our clipped half Testors they are the little heads without learning If the two Houses had assembled the body of the Clergy as was proposed to them by his Majesty they had found themselves filled with Orthodox Persons and they cannot complain if those persons whom they had most desire to received not the publike censure of the Clergy since they would not permit the Clergy to assemble themselves neither can they complain that any guilty hath gone unpunished for they have taken a sure course for by the universal ruine of the Deans and Chapiters they have involved the innocent with the guilty Hearken what the King said hereupon I was content to accord and render to the Presbyter that is to say to the Body of Pastors all the right which with reason and discretion they could pretend in their conjunction with the Episcopal degree but to suffer them wholly to invade the Ecclesiastical Power and to cut off altogether with the sword the Authority of this ancient Order for to invest themselves in it it was that which I accounted neither just in regard of the Bishops nor sure nor profitable in regard of the Presbyter himself neither any way convenient for the Church or State A right and good Reformation might have been easily produced by moderate Councils and I am perswaded such Councils would have given more contentment even to those very Divines who have been perswaded with much gravity and formality to serve the designs of others which without doubt many of them now acknowledge although they dare not make their discontent appear for finding themselves frustrated of their intentions I am very well assured that the true method to reform the Church cannot subsist with the perturbation of the Civil State and that Religion cannot justly be advanced in depressing Loyalty which is one of the principal ingredients and ornaments of true Religion for after the Precept
to fear God the next following is to honour the King I make no doubt but the Kingdome of Christ may be established without pulling down mine and in a time free from partialities its impossible any should pass for a good Christian who shews not himself a good Subject The Government of Christ serves to confirm mine and not to overthrow it for as I acknowledge I hold my power of him so I desire to exercise it for his glory and the good of his Church If any one had sincerely proposed the Government of Christ or understood in their heart what it required they would never have been so ill governed in their words and actions as well towards me as one towards another As the good ends cannot justifie the evil wayes so also the evil beginnings cannot produce good conclusions unless God by a miracle of mercy make Light to spring out of Darkness Order out of our Confusion and Peace from our unruly Passions This is spoken as a King as a Phylosopher and as a good Christian Our enemies to blind the eyes of their Neighbours made them believe a long time that they desired such a reformation as theirs but the hypocrisie of this profession appeared then when the King offered to assemble a National Synod and to invite the Neighbour Churches to it whom these people would seem to imitate And this the good King would never have named had he not an intention to defer much to their Judgement But of this his Majesty could never obtain an answer for it was that which the Independents feared above all and we see not that the Presbyterians did any way favour this proposition the actions both of the one and the other were such that it was the surest course for them to palliate them with Declarations sent a far off rather then to have them brought to light here at home in a Synod and they were very well content to receive their Neighbours to their Society but not to admit them to their Counsel They have hereby made it appear that it was not reformation but the revenues of the Church they pursued otherwise they would have imbraced the proposition of his Majesty and the request of the Clergy who desired nothing more then to be heard in a lawful Synod and to reform willingly that which was displeasing to some But this had untwisted the designs of their enemies who then should have had no pretext to ruine the Clergy and enrich themselves with their spoils and take from Monarchy the support of the Church if the Ecclesiasticks had been reformed Then let the rage and invective malice of our enemies greaten our faults in quality and number as much as they can let them make small spots imposthumes Let them paint us out in false colours and disfigure us like devils to the eyes of all the world All that the severest Justice can require of us is to amend and freely to submit our selves to the censure of a lawful Assembly and then when a great King who is subject to none but God shall come to them and offer to change that which hath been practised or tolerated and to lend his ear to receive better information O this was a grace capable to molifie hearts of stone and to turn the complaints of his subjects into acclamations of joy and praises But they will neither the grace of the King nor our amendment To these offers of the King so sincere and frequent they answered not but by complaints and blowes and they consulted not of means to correct us but to destroy us they will not take the pains to cleanse the Church they will cut it up by the root root and branch 'T is the Watch-word of the seditious whereby they pretend to know those that are of the godly party and they have also put an unnatural maxime in the mouth of the furious and blind people that the reformation must be made in blood This they call to renew or revive the Church but it 's as the Daughters of Pelias undertook to make their Father young again who to that end cut his throat to let his old blood pass out of his body but after it was not in their power to put in new God keep us from them who come to reform the Church their Mother with a Sword and that would cut our throats to make us young again Certainly beholding Chyrurgeons coming to let us blood with a Sword in both hands we have reason to withdraw into some safe quarter and to fear a healing which will not take away the evil but in taking away our life We dare say for our Clergy that if it should cost them their lives to redeem the peace of their King and State they would account them well imployed and willingly consent to be cast over-board with Jonas that their loss might appease the tempest This is of greatest anguish and affliction to see Murther pass for Piety then to suffer in their persons and they cheerfully wish that a potion of their blood could quench the heat of their bloody zeal This zeal appeared in the title of Sions Plea and in the book called Christ on his Throne The first pleads for the Presbyterian the other for the Independent Both of these books have this Text in the Frontispice Bring those mine enemies that would not that I should raign over them and slay them before me By enemies they understand those who will not imbrace their Discipline And their actions now have and do make a bloudy commentary upon the Text. That if our Lord Jesus Christ who poured forth his most precious bloud to spare ours put not a stop to this flux of bloud these Zealots will reform England as the Anabaptists reformed Munster and as the Spaniards converted the West-Indies Let all Christian Churches of the World then know that the English Church confesseth humbly before God her infirmities and acknowledgeth her self the defaults which peace and the length of time is wont to bring to the best established order and hath done her duty to reform submitting her self to a general Synod and the States of the Kingdome under the Authority and conduct of her good King and that a sacrilegious and murthering faction drunken with the bloud of their Soveraign and the goods of the Church Having oppressed the liberty of the Assembly of States snatched this holy work out of her hands and would hear of no other reformation but her total destruction introducing in the place of ancient and lawful order a Chaos of prophane and licentious Heresies destructive to Religion and State CHAP. XXI An Answer to the Objection That the King made War against the Parliament IT 'S the ordinary complaint of the Covenanters that the King made War against his Parliament a phrase which seems tacitly to imply that the King rebelled against his Superiours and indeed there are many that understood it so in good earnest conceiving the Parliament to be above the King And hereupon
directly nor indirectly assist the King in this war And thus behold in fine the mask taken off and the intention of their former oaths uncover'd There can be no greater symptome of a desperate sick State then the multiplication of oaths to form parties and factions and we may say after the Prophet Jeremy 23.10 The land mourns because of Oaths As for the principals who imposed the Oaths they made use of them to halter and intangle the consciences of the people for to serve their ambition practising the Doctrine of Lysander who taught that men ought to be amused with oaths as children with bables and as for the people upon whom the oaths were imposed for the most part they took them rather for imitation then knowledge or for fear or from a blind zeal or an implicit faith Moreover the multitude of Oaths do imbase the dignity and a people accustomed to them respect no more an oath then their old shoes Those also that swear often are often forsworn overthrowing one oath with another But the Oath of the Covenant hath this singular wherein it surpasseth all Chymera's Centaurs Hypogriffâ— in extravagance and contradiction for in taking it in the sense of the Covenanters they overthrow this Oath by the Oath it self and they forswear that which they had sworr for in sweaâ—ing that they would defend the Person and Authority of the King and make the world behold their fidelity according to their opinion they are bound to make war against him and by virtue of this Oath they persecuted rob'd and after all deposed him Oh supreme degree of perfidy and frantick blindness Have we not whereat to mourn and lament to behold these illuminated Reformers so plunged in the gall of bitterness and bonds of iniquity for to persecute their good King with all rage and violence because they had sworn to defend him and to be faithful to him This Oath was called Covenant that is to say Alliance or confederation because those that took it for at present its forbidden to be taken pretended to make an Alliance and Covenant with God This Oath is yet in vogue in Scotland It 's their New Covenant besides that of the New Testament and the modern Canonical Scripture which is Judge in all cases of conscience and from which there is no appeal Their ill faith is moreover evident in the composition of this Oath and certainly it 's the only thing evident in the third Article which is a discourse so twisted and interwoven composed expresly not to be understood There they swear to defend the Person and Authority of the King in defence of Religion and the publique Liberty It 's very hard to say what that signifies every good soul who suffer'd himself to be perswaded to take this Oath understood thereby that to defend the Person of the King was a necessary point both to preserve their Religion and Liberty and that they could not fear God as they ought without honouring the King and those that took the Oath in this sense were bound to fight against the Covenanters for the defence of their Religion and Soveraign But the unworthy companions of the Covenant interpreted it thus that they bind themselves to defend the Person and Authority of the King so far forth as it is compatible with the defence of Religion and Liberty Now say they we find that the defence of the Person and Authority of the King is incompatible with the defence of Religion and the Publique Liberty and therefore we are bound to oppose and ruine the King for the defence of Liberty and Religion And thus it appears that this malicious obscurity is a fold of the Serpent and a lurking hole of the evil spirit even the rather when we narrowly consider this construction to defend one thing in defence of another which signifies nothing and wants both true Logick and common sense The Oath being a profession before God and the strongest affirmation of all had need to have been clear and couched in such terms that every one might have understood it in the same sense they took it but to insert such equivocations was to abuse the Name of God whom they took to witness and the simplicity of the people He that takes a forked Oath and understands it not in the sense that he that gives it or understands it not at all swears not in Truth in Righteousness and Judgement which are the qualities required in an Oath for he calls God to witness his hypocrisie blindness and temerity The same Article makes profession of fidelity to the King and to diminish nothing of his just Authority and greatness It 's no new thing for Rebels to take the Oath of Allegiance to their Soveraign to combine a faction against him The Mutineers in the time of Richard the Second took an Oath to be faithful to the King and people and yet nevertheless made use of this Oath to stir up the people to ruine the King And these did the like and when hereupon we tax them with unfaithfulness and breach of their Oath they answer and pay us with a distinction betwixt the politick and personal capacity of the King and they tell us that it was against Charles they made the Warre and not against the King making the King a pure Idea an Accident without a Substance It 's very hard for them to say what became of the politick capacity of the King then when they beheaded him in his personal capacity for they so long honoured him in Idea that at last they massacred him in substance But they forget that in the same Article they had sworn to be faithful to the Person of the King and protested to defend his Person and Authority as things conjoyned and inseparable So strong is truth and respect due to Soveraignty so natural to Subjects that even in the Oath which they formed to confederate against him their duty is couched in express terms which will one day be produced in judgement against them But in good earnest have we not much to wonder at and to acknowledge the wrath of God in the blindness of these men that so many millions of men should think they were bound to persecute the King to all extremity and to take away his goods honour liberty safety and at last his life because they had sworn to defend the Person and Authority of the King and make the world behold their fidelity and that they would diminish nothing of his just Power and Authority Is it possible that their by-got zeal could so dislocate their brains and a-brutish their spirits as to make them commit so many crimes and enormities upon so unreasonable a consequence Oh Lord create in us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us In the fourth Article of this Oath they promise to endeavour with all their power to bring to condigne punishment all those who were the cause of separating the King from his people and according to this
it was they made the people believe a long time that the occasion of their taking up Arms was to bring the King to his Parliament but the hypocrisie of protestation is now clearly manifested for when the King offered to return to his Parliament they utterly refused to receive him telling him plainly if he came he should come at his peril Forbidding all persons whatsoever under pain of death to receive or entertain him in their houses Let all good subjects who have taken this Oath open now at last their eyes and acknowledge that the intentions of their Guides was quite contrary to their professions The Sixth Article required every person to swear That this cause touched the Glory of God the happiness of the three Kingdomes and the Dignity of the King Indeed this cause touched the Glory of God with such fowl hands as have defiled it as much as possible men could and it touched the happiness of the three Kingdomes with such malignant claws as have torn them to pieces But if they will that we take them in their sense namely that their cause defends and advanceth the Glory of God the happiness of the Kingdomes and the Dignity of the King we behold and feel the contrary But grant that this should be true 't is not a thing for which we must swear Oaths are of two sorts the one sort are to affirm the truth of a thing present or past the other for to promise and oblige our will for the future these two sorts of Oaths cannot be taken together The Oath of the Covenant is of the latter and therefore it is very ill done of them to confound it with the first which is altogether of another nature and usage and in a promise for the future to thrust in an affirmation of a thing present yea of a thing false or at least doubtful and whereof they of their party are not accorded But suppose that this Oath were of the first sort the things which we should affirm upon Oath are such as require the testimony of the person who swears Such are all questions of fact But as for questions of right they ought not neither can they be decided by Oath and it is to want common sense to make his neighbour judge to know which is the true Religion and to judge whether the Cause of the Parliament is better then the Kings There the Oath loseth his use for it s made to perswade and give Authority to the thing by the witness of the person If the Cause of the Covenant be the Cause of God there is no need to swear it but to justifie it by reason and practice And although we should even believe that it searcheth and advanceth the Glory of God the happiness of the Kingdome and dignity of the King it were unjust and ridiculous to press us to swear it for moral truths and even also Theological ought to be believed not sworn Civil things only and those amongst them which are matters of fact ought only to be affirmed by oath we have a very firm belief of the truth of many points of Religion and of the honesty of divers persons and yet nevertheless for all the world we would not swear to them all who have any ingenuity or good sense acknowledge that to force us to affirm the goodness of the Covenant by Oath is an extreme tyranny and full of ignorance and absurdities And also seeing we are very ill satisfied of the goodness thereof it s another tyranny to make us swear to defend it and a most barbarous cruelty to confiscate our possessions and sequester our Ministers of their benefices because they refuse to take so unreasonable an Oath and yet all this was practised during the Presbyterian Reign The Articles of the Covenant were assisted with a Religious Prologue and Epilogue full of protestations of zeal and repentance and therefore it was almost impossible but the most part of them that took it should be perjured considering the generality of the people are evil And this should have prevented the Gentlemen to impose the Covenant indifferently upon all under such great penalties For as they will not suffer the Sacrament of the Lords Supper to be administred to the people for fear to encrease their condemnation They should have by the same reason according to their principles have withheld to administer these protestations of zeal and repentance to their consciences whose disposition they were ignorant of Now a great evidence of their depraved and evil Faith consists in their protestations of sanctity and superlative expressions of zeal in which the Independent party who rejected the Covenant without comparison fly higher then their Predecessors All their Ordinances and Declarations yea even their Letters of News were sallies of zeal All their murthers and robberies were to establish the purity of the Gospel to conquer a Kingdome for Jesus Christ and that godliness might reign and flourish If they speak of the abominable parricide committed against their Soveraign they say that God made bare the Arm of his Holiness that the Lord is on their right hand that he hath smote Kings in the day of his wrath and that they may wash their feet in the blood of the ungodly Thus they made their horrible crimes march disguised in terms of Scripture and the devil borrowed the language of the Spirit of God Whosoever shall well consider the use they made of the Scripture and whereto they imployed their great shew of holiness shall find an Answer to the Question in the 50 Psal 16. But to the wicked God saith what hast thou to do to declare my Statutes or that thou shouldest take my Covenant in thy mouth Behold here the work of the Covenanters they declare the Statutes of God and take his Covenant into their mouths to put on rebellion the mask of Religion and to invest themselves without trouble of the Authority and Revenues of the Crown the goods of the Church and without suspition to grope the purses of the people for the outward shew of devotion doth much amuse the assistants and gain their belief for who can fear any evil from those who so piously invite them to repentance and the advancement of the Glory of God who would not confide and trust in them that declare the Statutes of God and take his Covenant in their mouth Satan in all forms is dangerous but he is never so pernicious as when he clothes himself as an Angel of Light and it is ill going Procession when the Devil carries the Cross Moreover by their fruits ye shall know them How often abused they the credulity of the people when they conjured them to help to fetch the King from his evil Councellors and to bring him gloriously to his great and faithful Councel that is to say to themselves but their faithfulness appeared then when he departed from them whom they called his evil Councellors to yeeld himself up to them for then their terrible
suit or cause might come unto me and I would do him justice 2 Sam. 15.4 In publick grievances good Subjects are wont to cast the blame upon the Ministers of State and rest satisfied in seeing some of them punished accounting it their principal interest to preserve the honour of their Soveraign and good Princes when they are informed that the Ministers of State have abused their Authority to the damage of their Subjects which is theirs are wont to examine them and judge them according to the Laws And in this the King did as much as possible they could require of him having submitted the persons of those whom the Covenanters complained against to be judged and tried by lawful and ordinary waies But whilst they tread under foot the Royal Authority the Power of Parliament and the Majesty of the Laws and that they were in open war against him what reason had he to submit his Servants and Ministers to the judgment of his enemies Being certain that whilst the War continued they would aim most at them who served him best Then when the Parliament was whole and entire there passed a Vote worthy the gravity of that great Court That the King could do no wrong and that his Officers and not he were guilty of the evil which was done in the publick Government But since those who loved the King departed and withdrew themselves to him those which remained at Westminster followed a way quite contrary for they cast upon the King all the faults of his Servants and made use of them against him whom they ought should have punished for having ill served him Then when they took in hand to examine the Ministers of State in stead of punishing them which were guilty they received them into favour yea after their â—aults proved against them and turned all the discontent of the people upon the King What a great noise was there in the House of Commons against the forgers of Monopolies One would have thought that hardly any should have escaped with their lives but there happened altogether the contrary For because the Monopolists and other accused persons made a considerable number in Parliament they made use of their faults to make a strong faction against the King terrifying and making them understand there was no way left to preserve them from utter ruine but to joyn with the new party which was forming and hereupon they were promised impunity for what evils they had done on condition they should do greater Some of these were sent to the King to Newmarket in the behalf of their companions to whom his Majesty said these words capable to convert them or to make their Indiâ—emenâ— at the day of Judgment Gentlemen lay your hands upon your Consciences Who are they which invented those Taxes by which you have so provoked my people against me For whose advantage and profit were those Imposts â—â—â—ied Were my Revenues encreased by them It was you that induced and moved me 〈◊〉 them for your own particular profit and now you return me a worthy recompence Other Parliament men guilty of many crimes were kept in the Parliament in hope of impuâ—ity the holy Covenant 〈◊〉 a Garment which covered a multitude of sins even to the violating of a great Lady and abusing her by own of their Members almost in the sight of the Parliament Behold these the Reformers of Church and State Others which were not of the Parliament but under censure for having been Councellours or Instruments in the Imposts and Taxes of the people were released by them and employed for the same business as persons who well understood the Trade who pillaged then with a good Conscience for the advancement of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ Those whose infamous life was the shame of the Royal Court were the honour of the Court at Westminster and the Pillars of the Covenant Likewise the Judges accused of corruption and the Ministers of a scandalous life in taking the Covenant obtained a plenary indulgence of all their sins for after that there was no more to say to them for those who washed themselves in this water returned as white as if they had been washed with Ink or with the second Baptism the Anabaptists use at this day But now let us look upon the Armies Our enemies cry aloud that the King made use of those of the Church of Rome to serve him in his Wars Upon which an excellent Writer makes this gentle Question to them How many were in their Armies or how many they would have had For if the common report do not much wrong them they employed divers persons of that Religion there were persons of Honour and Quality who assured us that they Prisoners of the same Religion served the Covenanters We refer our selves to their own Consciences if they gave not a Commission to my Lord Aston to levy Forces The Relation in notable the King being at York this gallant man accounted the most experienced and best Commander of War of his time came to present his Service to his Majesty the King gave him thanks and withal told him he was resolved to employ none of his Religion in his Army Well saith he I will go then to those who will employ me and indeed went presently to Westminster where he was received with open Arms and a Commission given him written and signed which he carried to the King Ye cannot wonder then that the King made use of him and others of his Religion whom before he was resolv'd not to employ although he had to take away all shadow of occasion from his enemies who sought somthing whereat to quarrel with him made a Proclamation that none professing the Religion of the Church of Rome should come neer his Court. After this the Covenanters used all their power to make them draw to the Kings Party well considering their party being so small would bring more hatred than help to the King and for this effect they treated them with great inhumanity forcing them to forsake their Houses and Lands and run and hide themselves under the Kings Protection and this the King could not refuse them for as they owed him their Subjection the King owed them his Protection so long as they governed themselves according to the Laws and accomplished the Conditions whereby they were permitted by Act of Parliament to live in the Kingdom By this reason of Reciprocal duty the King protecting them as his Subjects they were bound to defend him as their King and ye shall not find in all the Statutes which concern them that they are exempted to serve the King in his Armies neither is it reasonable that they only should be free from the perils of war whilst thâ—ir fellow Subjects venture their lives and are shedding their bloud for the defence of their Country The Covenanters made it appear sufficiently to the world that they judged that Religion ought not to exclude any from bearing Arms in the publick danger for
to all the Reformed Churches how much our good King departed loved his Religion he would not grant peace to his Irish Subjects on the conditions they demanded advantagious to their Religion which if he had accorded he might have had Legions in stead of Regiments and not wanted neither the help of his Subjects nor their neighbours but rather then he would buy their assistance at that price he chose to sink and fall under the oppression of the Covenanters after this piety or humanity ought to have converted the enemies of the King if he had had to do with persons who had either the one or the other But if the Gentlemen at London lost their monies which they advanced upon the Irish affairs they have cause to complain of the Gentlemen at Westminster who made use of this money not to reconquer Ireland but to make war upon the King who had a great desire to terminate that business and would have gone in Person but not to serve the avaritious and barbarous intentions of these Merchants of blood but to recover his Rights and to restore a number of his exiled Subjects to their possessions Those ruined and remaining Families of the general Massacre cried aloud in the ears of the King and Parliament For to help them there was a generall Collection through the Kingdom and the Ministers by Order of Parliament were to excite the charity of the people to a liberal contribution which was done and great sums of money were raised for the Irish War But to what was the charity of many pious souls imployed to make War against the King The Armies which the cries of the poor exiled Irish had raised and were ready at their Port to be shipped were called back and conducted against his sacred Majesty and although many in those Troops had their Interests in Ireland they were constrained to forsake them for unknown Interests and an open Hostillity against their Soveraign 'T is no wonder then if part of those Troops at the battel of Keinton turned to the King and took a bloody revenge of so great injustice For what a most horrible tyranny was this to make them fight against their King in England whilest the throats of their wives and children were cutting in Ireland We earnestly beseech the Covenanters that whensoever they curse the Irish Rebellion they would remember these two things the one that the Scots shewed them the way having before made a Covenant for Religion and levied Arms to maintain it and obtained by this way all that they desired The Irish seeing this was the way to obtain the liberty of their Religion presently followed the example of their Neighbours and as a judicious Writer saith pleasantly That if the Scots had not piped the Irish had never danced Let them remember also that the Irish as wicked as they were had without comparison more reason for their rising then either the English or Scotch for it 's most certain that the Irish were held in with a bridle which had a ruder bit then the other Subjects of the King Many of the Irish for their former Rebellions were dispossessed of their Lands and although the sentence was just the loss nevertheless was sensible moreover they had not the free exercise nor liberty of their Religion the English nor Scotch cannot alledge any thing like these Hardly shall you find in any History a raign of fifteen years more flourishing peaceable and mild then the fifteen first years of the Reign of the late King notwithstanding all the grievances the Covenanters reckon up to his disadvantage There never shined more happy days upon England and Scotland In effect they were Nations sick of too much ease When Subjects undertake to criticise upon mysteries of State and come to quarrel amongst themselves for subtilties of Religion or points of Discipline it s a symptome of an easie yoke and of excess of ease and prosperity Moreover the Irish fought against men of another Religion and of another Nation they fought not against the Person of their King cut not the throats of their Brethren nor ruined those of their profession imposed not necessity of Conscience upon others but only demanded publick Liberty of Conscience for themselves although many amongst them contented themselves with lesse for by the Articles of peace in Septemb. 1646. the King gave them no Toleration for the publike exercise of their Religion Certainly therefore as those of Niniveh shall rise up in judgment against the Scribes and Pharisees so shall the Irish against the English and Scotch Covenanters Further our enemies are very unjust to complain that the King assailed to bring over Irish Armies into England since they in effect a year and half before had brought Armies of Scotch into England to serve them If they take the boldness to entertain the Armies of strangers within the Kingdome of their Soveraign shall it not be lawful for the King to defend his person and Kingdom with his own Subjects which in this quality are not strangers in respect of him but the Scotch are strangers in regard of the English Histories furnish nought parallel to this crime to have brought the Scots into England and to move them to come gave them part of the Kingdom of Ireland but its easie for them to give that which was none of theirs with the same right the Devil offered to Jesus Christ all the Kingdoms of the world for they can produce their Authority no other where This Nation abounding in men living in a barren Countrey will be easily induced to plant Colonies in a more fertile soil and who will believe that having their weapons in their hands and being in England backed with their forces from Scotland they will govern themselves at the devotion of those that sent for them and go no further then they are comanded there is danger least it happen as to the fountain of Lucian which a student in Magick with certain words he had learn'd of his Master sent to fetch water to which the fountain obeyed but the poor apprentise knew not the words to make it stay which in the mean while went and fetched water without ceasing till it filled the house up to the windows Certainly our Mutineers had the wit to make the Scotch come to their help and there needed no great charm to perswade a people which had nothing and had nothing to do to come and fish in troubled waters in their neighbours pond But I have great fear that those which caused them to enter upon their March were ignorant of the charm to stay them that they should go no further and that the Scotch will not have done when the English have done with them It was not then an action of judgment to cause the Scots to enter England without having power to make them return and to hinder their coming again much less an action of piety for God needs not the wickedness of men to advance his Kingdom it was an
action purely of spight and stomack a stroak of despair proceeding from persons resolved to destroy their Country with them rather than to suffer the insultation of a Conqueror or the reproach of their treachery But in doing this they have rather augmented their reproach and drawn upon themselves perpetual infamy For as long as there is a God in Heaven and Conscience in the world the memory of those who had but a finger in so base an action will be hateful to all good men their names will offend their ears and their posterity will be forced if any remain to change their Names for fear of being stoned by the publick But le ts return to Ireland and poure into the bosom of our enemies the Objection they have so often pressed against his Majesty that he invited Irish Papists over to his party and shew to the world that it was the Covenanters and not the King who really employed them For to unwind this intangled and intricate business we must take the thred of the affair higher ye must then know that there are two sorts of Irish Papists the one ancient Inhabitants of the Country who since the Conquest of Ireland bear an hereditary and irreconcilable hatred to the English the other the posterity of those English Colonies which were planted in Ireland about four hundred years since to preserve the Conquest for the English and are accounted as English by the ancient Inhabitants for they yet preserve the Language manners and inclination of the Country from whence they issued the English and Scotch Protestants in Ireland are new Colonies which during these forty years of peace have encreased in number almost equal to the others When the Rebellion brake out in Ireland soon after that in Scotland being encouraged by their example the old Irish and the old English Colonies joyned together in one common design to establish the Roman Religion whereupon the Gentlemen at Westminster instead of suppressing them speedily by Arms which his Majesty desired and offered to go in person made an Ordinance wholly to extirpate them to which the King would never consent alledging that it would be a means to cause the Colony of Protestants in Ireland who were without defence to be extirpated as it came to pass for the Irish being provoked by that bloody Ordinance did what they at Westminster had taught them and extirpated the most part of the Protestant Colonies killing man woman and child with most horrible barbarousness I leave to the just Judgment of God to decide against whom this Sea of innocent bloud cries In this Butchery the old Irish were the most active and cruel the others went along with them only for company and besides their interests were different for the intention of the old English Colonies went little further than the design of freeing themselves in matter of Religion but the native Irish would as well be freed of the Nation as have the freedom of their Religion and would shake off the yoke of the English Monarchy take possession in the name of the Pope of the Abbies which were all in the hands of Lay men recover all that they had lost by Confiscation for their former Rebellions and for this effect null all Titles which held of the Crown This Intention was contrary to the old English who held all their Estates of the Crown and possessed divers Abbies by Pattent Royal and besides this had an hereditary affection towards their King and ancient Country and therefore they had reason to fear that after the extirpation of the English Protestants their throats should be cut and upon this consideration they listned to the overtures of an accord the King made to them in the year 1643. And although they brake not off suddenly with the old Irish yet they loosed themselves by little and little and in the end declared themselves for the King but it was not until a long while after they did him any Service having been amused and abused a long time by the subtilties of Rome who upheld and instructed the old Irish for to pass into England and serve the King if ever they had promised it the same subtilties and their dissentions would never permit them to do No man of understanding or sense can blame the King to receive from them the service they owed him neither did he ever make any profession to the contrary as they at Westminster who passed a Vote of extirpation against them and stirred up the people against the King by this pretext that he made use of persons of the Roman Religion now after this if they themselves shall make use of them they are inexcusable before God and man But now let us see how their actions agree with their words and looks The Royal party being greatly encreased in Ireland especially by the conversion of the Protestant Forces which before served the Parliament The Gentlemen of the Covenant finding themselves very low in that Kingdom found no better expedient to repair their languishing affairs there than to joyn their interest with the Popes and the old Irishes for it 's most notoriously known that before the death of the King these Irish Papists took pay of the Parliament and served them in the warre and have since rendred many good Services to the holy Covenant above all before Derry which the Covenanters held but was besieged by the Scotch Royalists and had been taken without the coming of the Irish conducted by Owen Row O Neal who forced the Scotch to raise the siege with a signal loss when the besieged were in great distress and ready to yield up the Town And this conjunction endured near a year for it was not till after October 1649. that these Irish returned to the obedience of their King And indeed we have not here any thing to wonder at and be astonished if two sorts of Rebels who agreed together to cast off their King joyn themselves together in one party and if their temporal interest which binds them be preferred before the spiritual which both in the one and the other League served but as a pretext to their covetousness and ambition the Gentlemen at Westminster judged right that the advancement of the Pope in Ireland was less disadvantagious to them than the whole reduction of that Kingdom under the obedience of his Majesty This scandalous conjunction having much exasperated the spirits of the by-got people whom they had taught to hate the King because he had made peace with the Papists and murderers of Ireland the Gentlemen at Westminster after they had a long time denied it and seeing they could not any longer dissemble this infamous action publickly called before them in examination Colonel Monk who was employed in this agreement and demanded of him who caused him to make it he being instructed beforehand answered that he had done it of himself of his proper motion then being enquired why he durst make such an accord without a Commission he
disobedient Ministers and to put those in their places who condemned their vocation these are the terms of the instruction given the Committee this horrible menace should give to all faithful Pastors cause rather of hope then fear for he that said to his Disciples He that refuseth you refuseth me finds himself refused and rejected in the persons of his servants and yet more in their Ministry without doubt he is provoked to jealousie and will take upon him the cause of the Ministry of his Word Whosoever shall seriously consider all that hideous spectacle of devastation of the Church the abolition of Government the ruine of the Pastors the corruption of Religion the profanation of the service of God and shall compare this persecution with that the Greek Churches suffer at this day shall find that all the ravages of the Turks since the taking of Constantinople have not so disfigured the Church in two hundred years as these Reformers did in six or seven years in their own country and amongst their brethren in the faith But pass we from the Ecclesiastical to the Civil the new Courts erected to hear complaints and to receive the compositions of Delinquents were as so many Butchers Shambles and Flaying-houses where they tore off the skin and pulled out the bowels and where they dismembred and cut in pieces many antient and good houses our miserable party had to do with worser Judges then he spoken of in the eighteenth of S. Luke which feared not God neither regarded man and yet he suffered himself to be overcome by the importunity of the afflicted Widdow and said I will avenge her or I will do her Justice We propose him for an example to these cruel souls and say after our Saviour Hear what the unjust Judge saith And shall not God avenge his own Elect which cry day and night unto him though he bear long with them I tell you that he will avenge them speedily There could be expected no juster sequel of iniquity from their beginnings then when it was commanded for every person through the Kingdom to bring in their Plate and Jewels which the seditious Zealots contributed as freely as the idolatrous Israelites to make a Golden Calf but those who did not bring their Plate they plundred their houses and took it away by force at the same time they commanded the people to take up arms under the penalty of being hanged and this sentence was executed in the Counties of Essex Suffolk and Cambridge the principal actor of this tyranny was the Earl of Manchester who caused some to be hanged who not being well learned in the Catechisme of sedition refused openly to take up arms against the King others for the same reason were tyed neck and heels unreasonably misused and cast into prisons until they had learned Rebellion and the rest of the people affrighted hereby went peaceably to commit treason against his Majesty Therefore the greatest cruelty of the Covenanters was not in rendring their country miserable but in having rendred it wicked and forced so many simple people to be instruments of their ambition and partakers of their crimes How will they answer for the blood and the consciences of their Souldiers killed in the act of paracide then when they discharged their Muskets against the Squadron where the person of the King was How will they answer for them who were actually imployed in the massacre of the King and who have since felt a hell in their consciences we must confess that they have been more cruel towards their own party then towards ours since they have only made us to suffer evil but they have forced their adherents both to suffer and do evil which are the two principal things wherein all the work of the devil consists After this execrable murther of their excellent Soveraign how many murthers did they heap upon this Duke Hamilton the Earl of Holland the truly Noble and loyal Lord Capel many others killed in their armies in divers places many in every County condemned to death by partial Judges who received all accusations against those who had served their King and many thousands good subjects murthered in Ireland by these Sanguinary Zealots It would be infinite to reckon up all their crimes against God their Religion their Church their King and their Country and all that can be spoken is nothing in comparison to that prodigious mass of iniquity which stricks heaven with its height and makes even the earth to sink with the weight which draws from the bottom of our wounded souls these ardent sighs Oh our good God art thou so wrathfully displeased against these Nations as to give them over to a rebrobate sense and abandoned to do the will of the devil and establish his Kingdome Oh Religion Conscience King Church State Order Peace Justice Laws all are violated defaced disfigured and melted into a horrible Chaos of obscurity and confusion Alas how can it be that this people enlightened with the knowledge of God abounding with the riches of heaven and earth should fall into such a diabolical frenzy as to trample under their feet their Religion cut off the head of their King pluck out the throat of their Mother the Church and deal with their Fellow-countrymen and Brethren in Jesus Christ more cruelly then the Mahumetans deal with the Christians who drives them not from their houses and patrimonies in Turky nor reduce them to the fift part of their Revenues How is the faithful City become an Harlot it was full of Judgement righteousness lodged in it but now murtherers Isa 1.21 Certainly although the evil they do unto us should not force us to go out of our Country and leave it yet the evil that we behold in it is capable to make us forsake it and to imbrace the Prophet Jeremies choice Jer. 9.2 3. Oâ— that I had in the wilderness a lodging place for way-faring men that I might leave my people and go from them for they be adulterers an assembly of treacherous men and they bend their tongues like their bow for lies but are not valiant for the truth for they proceed from evil to evil and they know not me saith the Lord. Ha people frantick whose eyes the God of this world have darkned and exasperated your passions with a seditious rage cruelly and bloodily to persecute your Church and Soveraign Miserable people who do the work of their enemies and execute upon themselves the malediction pronounced to Hierusalem in Rebellion Sion shall tear her self with her own hands ridding and casting their crown and glory upon the ground cutting their own sinews and breaking their bones and by their weakness and disunion invite the enemy to come and make an end of them Blind Zealots who stirred you up so disorderly to pull down Antichrist you will find in doing thus you have contributed to raise him up and having drawn an horrible scandal upon our most Holy Religion by your impious actions and infamous
very great weight Who can stretch forth his hand against the Lords Anointed and be guiltless And this other of him Touch not mine Anointed and do my Prophets no harm Psal 109.19 But the Covenanters have violently and cruelly proceeded against both God speaking under the name of Soveraign Wisdom saith By me Kings reign and Princes decree Justice By me Princes rule and Nobles even all the Judges of the earth Prov. 8.15 16. If it be by him that Kings reign they should be respected for love of him and he that resists them makes against God To this purpose also tends that excellent scripture Prov. 24.21 22. My Son fear thou the Lord and the King and meddle not with them that are given to change For their calamity shall rise suddenly and who knoweth the ruine of them both A Scripture which shews that the fear of the King is a part of the fear of God and that those that rise up against him are reserved of God for a sudden calamity And this is also of him Eccles 8.2 I counsel you to keep the Kings Commandment and that in regard of the Oath of God A passage that binds us to keep the Commandment of the King for the Love of God and the Oath of Allegiance under which all Subjects are born and many have actually taken for every Oath is a contract made with God And a little after Eccles 8.14 Where the word of the King is there is power and who may say unto him what dost thou But we have to do with those who make this Question to their King and care neither for his word nor power The Law speaks expresly Exod. 22.28 Thou shalt not revile the Judges nor curse the Ruler of thy people Yea it restrains the thoughts as well as actions Eccles 10.20 Curse not the King no not in thy thoughts If we are not to speak nor think ill of the King much less should do ill to him the violation of these Commands by the Covenanters are too enormous and cry aloud to Heaven for vengeance Our Lord Jesus Christ himself commands us to render to Cesar the things which are Cesars and to God the things that are Gods Mat. 22. â—1 He himself would pay Tribute to Cesar although of right he should have made Cesar Tributary to him and not having money he caused it to be brought to him by a Miracle rather than he would be wanting in this duty this is far from taking the Kings Revenues from him and employing the Tribute due to him to raise a war against him When the Officers of Justice came to take him he rebuked his Disciple who had drawn his sword against them and healed the wound that he had made Mat. 26. He suffered himself peaceably to be led before Herod and Pilate whom he might have as easily destroyed as make them fall down backward who came to apprehend him but he submitted to the Divine Authority that shined in the Person of the Governour yea even to death openly professing that the power which he had was from above John 19.11 If the power of Kings depended upon the gift of their Subjects as the Covenanters held Jesus Christ should have said that the power that he had was from below but this Divinity proceeds from another Doctor than the Son of God Saint Paul is marvellous express and full upon this point Rom. 13.1 c. Let every soul be subject unto the higher Powers for there is no Power but of God The Powers that be are ordained of God Whosoever therefore resisteth the Power resisteth the Ordinance of God and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation For Rulers are not a terrour to good works but to the evil Wilt thou then not be afraid of the Power Do that which is good and thou shalt have praise of the same For he is the Minister of God to thee for good but if thou do that which is evil be afraid for he beareth not the sword in vain for he is the Minister of God a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil Wherefore ye must needs be subject not only for wrath but also for Conscience sake For for this cause pâ—y you tribute also for they are Gods Ministers attending continually upon this very thing Render therefore to all their dues Tribute to whom Tribute is due Custome to whom Custome Fear to whom Fear Honour to whom Honour Oh! behold with what vigour of spirit and power the Apostle presseth Obedience and condemns resistance of Soveraign Powers Is there any thing in the world so strong and pressing as this Divine Lesson the authority alone had been sufficient but over and above he adds threatnings promises reason upon reason they who shall well consider the Text will learn That it is impossible to be a good Christian without being a good Subject and that they cannot resist the King without resisting God also that terrible threatning of damnation should retain men in their duty Let every one in the fear of God that have born Arms against their King think well of this and repent Oh! it is a dangerous thing to resist God he must be very imprudent that will hazard the damnation of his soul so formally denounced against Rebels upon distinctions and good intentions at the great day of account they will find these very light things The Divines of the Covenant labour with might and main to elude the force of this Scripture which plucks them by the throat they change themselves into many contrary forms to escape it as we shall see hereafter Saint Paul recommends this Doctrine to Titus Tit. 3.1 2. Put them in mind to be subject to Principalities and Powers to obey Magistrates to be ready to every good work to speak evil of no man to be in brawlers shewing all meekness to all men A dangerous Scripture to teach subjection and meekness is to strike the Covenanter at the heart Saint Peter speaks in the same stile 1 Pet. 2.13 c. Submit your selves to every Ordinance of man for the Lords sake whether it be to the King as supream or unto Governours as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers and the praise of them that do well for so is the will of God that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men As free and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousnesse but as the Servants of God Honour all men Love the Brotherhood Fear God Honour the King The rest of the Chapter is employed in teaching Christians to submit to their Superiours and to suffer for righteousness Behold truly the Doctrine of Christ it 's thus that the Apostles plaâ—ted the Church it 's thus that they fought the good fight not in killing Kings but in bearing the Cross for the Gospel One of ours having requested a Learned Divine that followed the party of the Covenanters that he would give him a precept of