Plenty and Religion as all Nations either admir'd or envi'd For the Justice we had let the Counsel-Table Starr-Chamber High Commission speak the praise of it not forgetting the unprincely usage and as farr as might be the abolishing of Parlaments the displacing of honest Judges the sale of Offices Bribery and Exaction not found out to be punish'd but to be shar'd in with impunity for the time to come Who can number the extortions the oppressions the public robberies and rapines committed on the Subject both by Sea and Land under various pretences Thir possessions also tak'n from them one while as Forrest Land another while as Crown-Land nor were thir Goods exempted no not the Bullion in the Mint Piracy was become a project own'd and authoriz'd against the Subject For the peace we had what peace was that which drew out the English to a needless and disshonourable voyage against the Spaniard at Cales Or that which lent our shipping to a treacherous and Antichristian Warr against the poore Protestants of Rochell our suppliants What peace was that which fell to rob the French by Sea to the imbarring of all our Merchants in that Kingdom which brought forth that unblest expedition to the I le of Rhee doubtfull whether more calamitous in the success or in the designe betraying all the flowre of our military youth and best Commanders to a shamefull surprisal and execution This was the peace we had and the peace we gave whether to freinds or to foes abroad And if at home any peace were intended us what meant those Irish billeted Souldiers in all parts of the Kingdom and the designe of German Horse to fubdue us in our peacefull Houses For our Religion where was there a more ignorant profane and vitious Clergy learned in nothing but the antiquitie of thir pride thir covetousnes and superstition whose unsincere and levenous Doctrine corrupting the people first taught them loosness then bondage loosning them from all sound knowledge and strictness of life the more to fit them for the bondage of Tyranny and superstition So that what was left us for other Nations not to pitty rather then admire or envy all those seaventeen yeares no wise man could see For wealth and plenty in a land where Justice raignes not is no argument of a flourishing State but of a neerness rather to ruin or commotion These were not some miscariages onely of Goverment which might escape but a universal distemper and reducement of law to arbitrary power not through the evil counsels of some men but through the constant cours practise of al that were in highest favour whose worst actions frequently avowing he took upon himself and what faults did not yet seem in public to be originally his such care he took by professing and proclaiming op'nly as made them all at length his own adopted sins The persons also when he could no longer protect he esteem'd and favour'd to the end but never otherwise then by constraint yeilded any of them to due punishment thereby manifesting that what they did was by his own Autority and approbation Yet heer he asks whose innocent blood he hath shed What widdows or Orphans teares can witness against him After the suspected Poysoning of his Father not inquir'd into but smother'd up and him protected and advanc'd to the very half of his Kingdom who was accus'd in Parlament to be Author of the fact with much more evidence then Duke Dudley that fals Protector is accus'd upon record to have poison'd Edward the sixt after all his rage and persecution after so many Yeares of cruel Warr on his People in three Kingdoms Whence the Author of Truths manifest a Scotchman not unacquainted with affaires positively affirmes That there hath bin more Christian blood shed by the Commission approbation and connivance of King Charles and his Father James in the latter end of thir raigne then in the Ten Roman Persecutions Not to speake of those many whippings Pillories and other corporal inflictions wherwith his raign also before this Warr was not unbloodie some have dy'd in Prison under cruel restraint others in Banishment whose lives were shortn'd through the rigour of that persecution wherwith so many yeares he infested the true Church And those six Members all men judg'd to have escap'd no less then capital danger whom he so greedily pursuing into the House of Commons had not there the forbearance to conceal how much it troubl'd him That the Birds were flowne If som Vultur in the Mountains could have op'nd his beak intelligibly and spoke what fitter words could he have utter'd at the loss of his prey The Tyrant Nero though not yet deserving that name sett his hand so unwillingly to the execution of a condemned Person as to wish He had not known letters Certainly for a King himself to charge his Subjects with high treason and so vehemently to prosecute them in his own cause as to doe the Office of a Searcher argu'd in him no great aversation from shedding blood were it but to satisfie his anger and that revenge was no unpleasing morsel to him wherof he himself thought not much to be so diligently his own Caterer But we insist rather upon what was actual then what was probable He now falls to examin the causes of this Warr as a difficulty which he had long studied to find out It was not saith he my withdrawing from White Hall for no account in reason could be giv'n of those Tumults where an orderly Guard was granted But if it be a most certain truth that the Parlament could never yet obtain of him any Guard fit to be confided in then by his own confession some account of those pretended Tumults may in reason be giv'n and both concerning them and the Guards anough hath bin said alreadie Whom did he protect against the Justice of Parlament Whom did he not to his utmost power Endeavouring to have rescu'd Strafford from thir Justice though with the destruction of them and the City to that end expressly commanding the admittance of new Soldiers into the Tower rais'd by Suckling and other Conspirators under pretence for the Portugall though that Embassador beeing sent to utterly deny'd to know of any such Commission from his Maister And yet that listing continu'd Not to repeat his other Plot of bringing up the two Armies But what can be disputed with such a King in whose mouth and opinion the Parlament it self was never but a Faction and thir Justice no Justice but The dictates and overswaying insolence of Tumults and Rabbles and under that excuse avouches himself op'nly the generall Patron of most notorious Delinquents and approves their flight out of the Land whose crimes were such as that the justest and the fairest tryal would have soonest condemn'd them to death But did not Catiline plead in like manner against the Roman Senat and the injustice of thir trial and the justice of his flight from Rome Coesar also then hatching Tyranny injected
the same scrupulous demurrs to stop the sentence of death in full and free Senat decreed on Lentulus and Cethegus two of Catilines accomplices which were renew'd and urg'd for Strafford He voutsafes to the Reformation by both Kingdoms intended no better name then Innovation and ruine both in Church and State And what we would have learnt so gladly of him in other passages before to know wherin he tells us now of his own accord The expelling of Bishops cut of the House of Peers this was ruin to the State the removing them root and branch this was ruin to the Church How happy could this Nation be in such a Governour who counted that thir ruin which they thought thir deliverance the ruin both of Church and State which was the recovery and the saving of them both To the passing of those Bills against Bishops how is it likely that the House of Peers gave so hardly thir consent which they gave so easily before to the attaching them of High Treason 12. at once onely for protesting that the Parlament could not act without them Surely if thir rights and privileges were thought so undoubted in that House as is heer maintain'd then was that Protestation being meant and intended in the name of thir whole spiritual Order no Treason and so that House it self will becom liable to a just construction either of Injustice to appeach them for so consenting or of usurpation representing none but themselves to expect that their voting or not voting should obstruct the Commons Who not for five repulses of the Lords no not for fifty were to desist from what in name of the whole Kingdom they demanded so long as those Lords were none of our Lords And for the Bil against root and branch though it pass'd not in both Houses till many of the Lords and some few of the Commons either intic'd away by the King or overaw'd by the sense of thir own Malignācy not prevailing deserted the Parlament and made a fair riddance of themselves that was no warrant for them who remain'd faithfull beeing farr the greater number to lay aside that Bill of root and branch till the returne of thir fugitives a Bill so necessary and so much desir'd by them selves as well as by the People This was the partiality this degrading of the Bishops a thing so wholsom in the State and so Orthodoxal in the Church both ancient and reformed which the King rather then assent to will either hazard both his own and the Kingdomes ruin by our just defence against his force of armes or prostrat our consciences in a blind obedience to himself and those men whose superstition Zealous or unzealous would inforce upon us an Antichristian tyranny in the Church neither Primitive Apostolicall nor more anciently universal then som other manifest corruptions But he was bound besides his judgement by a most strict and undispensable Oath to preserve that Order and the rights of the Church If he mean the Oath of his Coronation and that the letter of that Oath admitt not to be interpreted either by equity reformation or better knowledge then was the King bound by that Oath to grant the clergie all those customs franchises and Canonical privileges granted to them by Edward the Confessor and so might one day under pretence of that Oath and his conscience have brought us all again to popery But had he so well rememberd as he ought the words to which he swore he might have found himself no otherwise oblig'd there then according to the Lawes of God and true profession of the Gospel For if those following words Establish'd in this Kingdome be set there to limit and lay prescription on the Laws of God and truth of the Gospel by mans establishment nothing can be more absurrd or more injurious to Religion So that however the German Emperors or other Kings have levied all those Warrs on thir Protestant Subjects under the colour of a blind and literal observance to an Oath yet this King had least pretence of all both sworn to the Laws of God and Evangelic truth and disclaiming as we heard him before to be bound by any Coronation Oath in a blind and brutish formality Nor is it to be imagin'd if what shall be establish'd come in question but that the Parlament should oversway the King and not he the Parlament And by all Law and Reason that which the Parlament will not is no more establish'd in this Kingdom neither is the King bound by Oath to uphold it as a thing establish'd And that the King who of his Princely grace as he professes hath so oft abolisht things that stood firm by Law as the Star-chamber High Commission ever thought himself bound by Oath to keep them up because establisht he who will beleiv must at the same time condemn him of as many perjuries as he is well known to have abolisht both Laws and Jurisdictions that wanted no establishment Had he gratifi'd he thinks their Antiepiscopal Faction with his consent and sacrific'd the Church government and Revennues to the fury of their covetousness c. an Army had not bin rais'd Whereas it was the fury of his own hatred to the professors of true Religion which first incited him to persecute them with the Sword of Warr when Whipps Pillories Exiles and impris'nments were not thought sufficient To colour which he cannot finde wherwithall but that stale pretence of Charles the fifth and other Popish Kings that the Protestants had onely an intent to lay hands upon Church-revennues a thing never in the thoughts of this Parlament 'till exhausted by his endless Warrupon them thir necessity seis'd on that for the Common wealth which the luxury of Prelats had abus'd before to a common mischeif His consent to the unlording of Bishops for to that he himself consented and at Canterbury the cheif seat of thir pride so God would have it was from his firm perswasion of thir contentedness to suffer a present diminution of thir rights Can any man reading this not discern the pure mockery of a Royalconsent to delude us onely for the present meaning it seems when time should serve to revoke all By this reckning his consents and his denials come all to one pass and we may hence perceav the small wisdom and integrity of those Votes which Voted his Concessions at the I le of Wight for grounds of a lasting Peace This he alleges this controversie about Bishops to be the true state of that difference between him and the Parlament For he held Episcopacy both very Sacred and Divine With this judgement and for this cause he withdrew from the Parlament and confesses that some men knew he was like to bring againe the same judgement which he carried with him A fair and unexpected justification from his own mouth afforded to the Parlament who notwithstanding what they knew of his obstinat mind omitted not to use all those means and that patience to have gain'd him
What remaines then He appeales to God and is cast lik'ning his punishments to Jobs trials before he saw them to have Jobs ending But how could Charity her self beleive ther was at all in him any Religion so much as but to fear ther is a God when as by what is noted in the Declaration of no more addresses he vowd solemnly to the Parlament with imprecations upon himself and his Posterity if ever he consented to the abolishing of those Lawes which were in force against Papists and at the same time as appeard plainly by the very date of his own Letters to the Queen and Ormond consented to the abolishing of all Penal Lawes against them both in Ireland and England If these were acts of a Religious Prince what memory of man writt'nor unwritt'n can tell us newes of any Prince that ever was irreligious He cannot stand to make prolix Apologies Then surely those long Pamphlets set out for Declarations and Protestations in his Name were none of his and how they should be his indeed being so repugnant to the whole cours of his actions augments the difficulty But he usurps a common saying That it is Kingly to doe well and heare ill That may be sometimes true but farr more frequently to doe ill and heare well so great is the multitude of Flatterers and them that deifie the name of King Yet not content with these neighbours we have him still a perpetual preacher of his own vertues and of that especially which who knows not to bee Patience perforce He beleives it will at last appeare that they who first began to embroyle his other kingdoms are also guilty of the blood of Ireland And wee beleive so too for now the Cessation is become a Peace by publishd Articles and Commission to bring them over against England first only ten thousand by the Earl of Glamorgan next all of them if possible under Ormond which was the last of all his transactions don as a public Person And no wonder for he lookt upon the blood spilt whether of Subjects or of Rebels with an indifferent eye as exhausted out of his own veines without distinguishing as he ought which was good blood and which corrup the not letting-out wherof endangers the whole body And what the Doctrin is ye may perceave also by the Prayer which after a short ejaculation for the poore Protestants prayes at large for the Irish Rebels that God would not give them over or thir Children to the covetousness cruelty fierce and cursed anger of the Parlament He finishes with a deliberat and solemn curse upon himself and his Fathers House Which how farr God hath alreadie brought to pass is to the end that men by so eminent an example should learn to tremble at his judgements and not play with Imprecations XIII Upon the calling in of the Scots and thir comming IT must needs seem strange where Men accustom themselves to ponder and contemplat things in thir first original and institution that Kings who as all other Officers of the Public were at first chos'n and install'd onely by consent and suffrage of the People to govern them as Freemen by Laws of thir own framing and to be in consideration of that dignity and riches bestow'd upon them the entrusted Servants of the Common-wealth should notwithstanding grow up to that dishonest encroachment as to esteem themselves Maisters both of that great trust which they serve and of the People that betrusted them counting what they ought to doe both in discharge of thir public duty and for the great reward of honour and revennue which they receave as don all of meer grace and favour as if thir power over us were by nature and from themselves or that God had sould us into thir hands Indeed if the race of Kings were eminently the best of men as the breed at 〈◊〉 is of â—…orse it would in some reason then be their part onely to command ours always to obey But Kings by generation no way excelling others and most commonly not being the wisest or the worthiest by far of whom they claime to have the governing that we should yeild them subjection to our own ruin or hold of them the right of our common safety and our natural freedom by meer gift as when the Conduit pisses Wine at Coronations from the superfluity of thir royal grace and beneficence we may be sure was never the intent of God whose ways are just and equal never the intent of Nature whose works are also regular never of any People not wholly barbarous whom prudence or no more but human sense would have better guided when they first created Kings then so to nullifie and tread to durt the rest of mankind by exalting one person and his Linage without other merit lookt after but the meer contingencie of a begetting into an absolute and unaccountable dominion over them and thir posterity Yet this ignorant or wilfull mistake of the whole matter had tak'n so deep root in the imagination of this King that whether to the English or to the Scot mentioning what acts of his Regal Office though God knows how un willingly he had pass'd he calls them as in other places Acts of grace and bounty so heer special obligations favours to gratifie active spirits and the desires of that party Words not onely sounding pride and Lordly usurpation but Injustice Partiality and Corruption For to the Irish he so farr condiscended as first to tolerate in privat then to covnant op'nly the tolerating of Popery So farr to the Scot as to remove Bishops establish Presbytery and the Militia in thir own hands preferring as some thought the desires of Scotland before his own interest and Honour But being once on this side Tweed his reason his conscience and his honour became so streitn'd with a kind of fals Virginity that to the English neither one nor other of the same demands could be granted wherwith the Scots were gratifi'd as if our aire and climat on a sudden had chang'd the property and the nature both of Conscience Honour and Reason or that he found none so fit as English to be the subjects of his arbitrary power Ireland was as Ephraim the strength of his head Scotland as Iudah was his Law-giver but over England as over Edom he meant to cast his Shoo and yet so many sober Englishmen not sufficiently awake to consider this like men inchanted with the Circaean cup of servitude will not be held back from running thir own heads into the Yoke of Bondage The summ of his discours is against setling of Religion by violent meanes which whether it were the Scots designe upon England they are best able to cleare themselves But this of all may seem strangest that the King who while it was permitted him never did thing more eagerly then to molest and persecute the consciences of most Religious men he who had made a Warr and lost all rather then not uphold a Hierarchie of persecuting
Simonical praier annex'd Although the Praier it self strongly prays against them For never such holy things as he means were giv'n to more Swine nor the Churches Bread more to Dogs then when it fed ambitious irreligious and dumb Prelats XV. Upon the many Jealousies c. TO wipe off jealousies and scandals the best way had bin by clear Actions or till Actions could be clear'd by evident reasons but meer words we are too well acquainted with Had his honour and reputation bin dearer to him then the lust of Raigning how could the Parlament of either Nation have laid so oft'n at his dore the breach of words promises acts Oaths and execrations as they doe avowedly in many of thir Petitions and addresses to him thether I remitt the Reader And who can beleive that whole Parlaments elected by the People from all parts of the Land should meet in one mind and resolution not to advise him but to conspire against him in a wors powder plot then Catesbies to blow up as he termes it the peoples affection towards him and batter down thir loyalty by the Engins of foule aspersions Water works rather then Engines to batter with yet thosé aspersions were rais'd from the foulness of his own actions Whereof to purge himself he uses no other argument then a general and so oft'n iterated commendation of himself and thinks that Court holy water hath the vertue of expiation at least with the silly people To whom he familiarly imputes sin where none is to seem liberal of his forgiveness where none is ask'd or needed What wayes he hath tak'n toward the prosperitie of his people which he would seem so earnestly to desire if we doe but once call to mind it will be anough to teach us looking on the smooth insinuations heer that Tyrants are not more flatterd by thir Slaves then forc'd to flatter others whom they feare For the peoples tranquilitie he would willingly be the Jonah but least he should be tak'n at his word pretends to foresee within Kenn two imaginarie windes never heard of in the Compass which threaten if he be cast overboard to increase the storm but that controversy divine lot hath ended He had rather not rule then that his people should be ruin'd and yet above these twenty yeres hath bin ruining the people about the niceties of his ruling He is accurate to put a difference between the plague of malice the ague of mistakes the itch of noveltie and the leprosie of disloyaltie But had he as wel known how to distinguish between the venerable gray haires of ancient Religion and the old scurffe of Superstition between the wholsome heat of well Governing and the fevorous rage of Tyrannizing his judgement in Statephysic had bin of more autoritie Much he Prophesies that the credit of those men who have cast black scandals on him shal ere long be quite blasted by the same furnace of popular obloquie wherin they sought to cast his name and honour I beleive not that a Romish guilded Portrature gives better Oracle then a Babylonish gold'n Image could doe to tell us truely who heated that Furnace of obloquy or who deserves to be thrown in Nebuchadnezzar or the three Kingdoms It gave him great cause to suspect his own innocence that he was oppos'd by so many who profest singular pietie But this qualm was soon over and he concluded rather to suspect their Religion then his own innocence affirming that many with him were both learned and Religious above the ordinary size But if his great Seal without the Parlament were not sufficient to create Lords his Parole must needs be farr more unable to create learned and religious men and who shall authorize his unlerned judgement to point them out He guesses that many well minded men were by popular Preachers urg'd to oppose him But the opposition undoubtedly proceeded and continues from heads farr wiser and spirits of a nobler straine those Priest-led Herodians with thir blind guides are in the Ditch already travailing as they thought to Sion but moor'd in the I le of Wight He thanks God for his constancy to the Protestant Religion both abroad and at home Abroad his Letter to the Pope at home his Innovations in the Church will speak his constancy in Religion what it was without furder credit to this vain boast His using the assistance of some Papists as the cause might be could not hurt his Religion but in the setling of Protestantism thir aid was both unseemly suspicious inferr'd that the greatest part of Protestants were against him his obtruded settlement But this is strange indeed that he should appear now teaching the Parlament what no man till this was read thought ever he had lernt that difference of perswasion in religious matters may fall out where ther is the samenes of allegeance subjection If he thought so from the beginning wherfore was there such compulsion us'd to the puritans of England the whole realm of Scotl. about conforming to a liturgie Wherfore no Bishop no king Wherfore episcopacie more agreeable to monarchie if different perswasions in religion may agree in one duty allegeance Thus do court maxims like court Minions rise or fall as the king pleases Not to tax him for want of Elegance as a courtier in writing Oglio for Olla the Spanish word it might be wel affirm'd that there was a greater Medley disproportioning of religions to mix Papists with Protestants in a Religious cause then to entertaine all those diversifi'd Sects who yet were all Protestants one Religion though many Opinions Neither was it any shame to Protestants that he a declar'd Papist if his own letter to the Pope not yet renowne'd bely him not found so few protestants of his religion as enforc'd him to call in both the counsel the aid of papists to help establish protestancy who were led on not by the sense of thir Allegeance but by the hope of his Apostacy to Rome from disputing to warring his own voluntary and first appeale His hearkning to evil Counselers charg'd upon him so oft'n by the Parlament he puts off as a device of those men who were so eager to give him better counsell That those men were the Parlament that he ought to have us'd the counsel of none but those as a King is already known What their civility laid upon evil Counselers he himself most commonly own'd but the event of those evil counsels the enormities the confusions the miseries he transferrs from the guilt of his own civil broiles to the just resistance made by Parlament imputes what miscarriages of his they could not yet remove for his opposing as if they were some new misdemeanors of their bringing in and not the inveterat diseases of his own bad Goverment which with a disease as bad he falls again to magnifie and commend and may all those who would be govern'd by his Retractions and concessions rather then by Laws of
so but privatly in the Counsel Books inroull'd no Parlament that if accommodation had succeeded upon what termes soever such a devilish fraud was prepar'd that the King in his own esteem had bin absolv'd from all performance as having treated with Rebels and no Parlament and they on the other side in stead of an expected happines had bin brought under the Hatchet Then no doubt Warr had ended that Massacher and Tyranny might begin These jealousies however rais'd let all men see whether they be diminish'd or allay'd by the Letters of his own Cabinet open'd And yet the breach of this Treaty is lay'd all upon the Parlament and thir Commissioners with odious Names of Pertinacy hatred of Peace Faction and Covetousness nay his own Bratt Superstition is layd to their charge not withstanding his heer profess'd resolution to continue both the Order Maintenance and Authority of Prelats as a truth of God And who were most to blame in the unsuccessfullness of that Treaty his appeale is to Gods decision beleeving to be very excusable at that Tribunal But if ever man gloried in an unflexible stifness he came not behind any and that grand Maxim always to put somthing into his Treaties which might give colour to refuse all that was in other things granted and to make them signifie nothing was his own Principal Maxim and particular instructions to his Commissioners Yet all by his own verdit must be consterd Reason in the King and depraved temper in the Parlament That the highest Tide of success with these principles and designes set him not above a Treaty no great wonder And yet if that be spok'n to his praise the Parlament therin surpass'd him who when he was thir vanquish'd and thir captive his forces utterly brok'n and disbanded yet offerd him three several times no wors proposals or demands then when he stood fair to be thir Conqueror But that imprudent surmise that his lowest Ebb could not set him below a Fight was a presumption that ruin'd him He presag'd the future unsuccessfulness of Treaties by the unwillingness of som men to treat and could not see what was present that thir unwillingness had good cause to proceed from the continual experience of his own obstinacy and breach of word His prayer therfore of forgiveness to the guilty of that treaties breaking he had good reason to say heartily over as including no man in that guilt sooner then himself As for that Protestation following in his Prayer How oft have I entreated for peace but when I speak therof they make them ready to Warr unless he thought himself still in that perfidious mist between Colebrook and Houndslow and thought that mist could hide him from the eye of Heav'n as well as of Man after such a bloody recompence giv'n to our first offers of Peace how could this in the sight of Heav'n without horrours of conscience be utter'd XIX Vpon the various events of the Warr. IT is no new or unwonted thing for bad men to claim as much part in God as his best servants to usurp and imitate thir words and appropriate to themselves those properties which belong onely to the good and righteous This not onely in Scripis familiarly to be found but heer also in this Chapter of Apocrypha He tells us much why it pleas'd God to send him Victory or Loss although what in so doing was the intent of God he might be much mistak'n as to his own particular but we are yet to learn what real good use he made therof in his practice Those numbers which he grew to from small beginnings were not such as out of love came to protect him for none approv'd his actions as a King except Courtiers and Prelats but were such as fled to be protected by him from the fear of that Reformation which the pravity of thir lives would not bear Such a Snowball he might easily gather by rowling through those cold and dark provinces of ignorance and leudness where on a sudden he became so numerous He imputes that to Gods protection which to them who persist in a bad cause is either his long-suffering or his hard'ning and that to wholesom chastisement which were the gradual beginnings of a severe punishment For if neither God nor nature put civil power in the hands of any whomsoever but to a lawfull end and commands our obedience to the autority of Law onely not to the Tyrannical force of any person and if the Laws of our Land have plac'd the Sword in no mans single hand so much as to unsheath against a forren enemie much less upon the native people but have plac'd it in that elective body of the Parlament to whom the making repealing judging and interpreting of Law it self was also committed as was fittest so long as wee intended to bee a free Nation and not the Slaves of one mans will then was the King himself disobedient and rebellious to that Law by which he raign'd and by autority of Parlament to raise armes against him in defence of Law and Libertie we doe not onely think but beleeve and know was justifiable both by the Word of God the Laws of the Land and all lawfull Oaths and they who sided with him fought against all these The same Allegations which he uses for himself and his Party may as well fitt any Tyrant in the world for let the Parlament bee call'd a Faction when the King pleases and that no Law must bee made or chang'd either civil or religious because no Law will content all sides then must be made or chang'd no Law at all but what a Tyrant be he Protestant or Papist thinks fitt Which tyrannous assertion forc'd upon us by the Sword he who fights against and dyes fighting if his other sins overweigh not dyes a Martyr undoubtedly both of the Faith and of the Common-wealth and I hold it not as the opinion but as the full beleef and persuasion of farr holier and wiser men then Parasitie Preachers Who without their dinner-Doctrin know that neither King Law civil Oaths or Religion was ever establish'd without the Parlament and thir power is the same to abrogate as to establish neither is any thing to bee thought establish'd which that House declares to be abolisht Where the Parlament sitts there inseparably sitts the King there the Laws there our Oaths and whatsoever can be civil in Religion They who fought for the Parlament in the truest sense fought for all these who fought for the King divided from his Parlament fought for the shadow of a King against all these and for things that were not as if they were establisht It were a thing monstrously absurd and contradictory to give the Parlament a Legislative power and then to upbraid them for transgressing old Establishments But the King and his Party having lost in this Quarrel thir Heav'n upon Earth beginn to make great reckning of Eternal Life and at an easie rate in forma Pauperis Canonize one another
goes on therfore with vehemence to repeat the mischeifs don by these Tumults They first Petition'd then protected dictate next and lastly overaw the Parlament They remov'd obstructions they purg'd the Houses cast out rott'n members If there were a man of iron such as Talus by our Poet Spencer is fain'd to be the page of Justice who with his iron flaile could doe all this and expeditiously without those deceitfull formes and circumstances of Law worse then ceremonies in Religion I say God send it don whether by one Talus or by a thousand But they subdu'd the men of conscience in Parlament back'd and abetted all seditious and schismatical Proposals against government ecclesiastical and civil Now wee may perceave the root of his hatred whence it springs It was not the Kings grace or princely goodness but this iron flaile the People that drove the Bishops out of thir Baronies out of thir Cathedrals out of the Lords House out of thir Copes and Surplices and all those Papistical innovations threw down the High Commission and Star-chamber gave us a Triennial Parlament and what we most desir'd in revenge whereof he now so bitterly enveighs against them these are those seditious and scismatical Proposals then by him condescended to as acts of grace now of another name which declares him touching matters of Church and State to have bin no other man in the deepest of his solitude then he was before at the highest of his Sovrantie But this was not the worst of these Tumults they plaid the hasty midwives and would not stay the ripening but went streight to ripping up and forcibly cut out abortive Votes They would not stay perhaps the Spanish demurring and putting off such wholsome acts and counsels as the Politic Cabin at WhiteHall had no mind to But all this is complain'd heer as don to the Parlament and yet we heard not the Parlament at that time complaine of any violence from the people but from him Wherfore intrudes he to plead the cause of Parlament against the People while the Parlament was pleading thir own cause against him and against him were forc'd to seek refuge of the people 'T is plaine then that those confluxes and resorts interrupted not the Parlament nor by them were thought Tumultuous but by him onely and his Court Faction But what good Man had not rather want any thing he most desir'd for the public good then attain it by such unlawfull and irreligious meanes as much as to say Had not rather sit still and let his Country be Tyranniz'd then that the people finding no other remedie should stand up like Men and demand thir Rights and Liberties This is the artificialest peece of fineness to perswade men into slavery that the wit of Court could have invented But heare how much betterthe Moral of this Lesson would befitt the Teacher What good man had not rather want a boundless and arbitrary power and those fine Flowers of the Crown call'd Prerogatives then for them to use force and perpetual vexation to his faithfull Subjects nay to wade for them through blood and civil warr So that this and the whole bundle of those following sentences may be apply'd better to the convincement of his own violent courses then of those pretended Tumults Who were the chiefe Demagogues to send for those Tumults some alive are not ignorant Setting aside the affrightment of this Goblin word for the King by his leave cannot coine English as he could Money to be current and t is beleev'd this wording was above his known stile and Orthographie and accuses the whole composure to be conscious of som other Author yet if the people were sent for emboldn'd and directed by those Demagogues who saving his Greek were good Patriots and by his own confession Men of some repute for parts and pietie it helps well to assure us there was both urgent cause and the less danger of thir comming Complaints were made yet no redress could be obtain'd The Parlament also complain'd of what danger they sate in from another party and demanded of him a Guard but it was not granted What marvel then if it chear'd them to see some store of thir Friends and in the Roman not the pettifogging sense thir Clients so neer about them a defence due by nature both from whom it was offer'd and to whom as due as to thir Parents though the Court storm'd and fretted to see such honour giv'n to them who were then best Fathers of the Common-wealth And both the Parlament and people complain'd and demanded Justice for those assaults if not murders don at his own dores by that crew of Rufflers but he in stead of doing Justice on them justifi'd and abetted them in what they did as in his public Answer to a Petition from the City may be read Neither is it slightly to be pass'd over that in the very place where blood was first drawn in this cause as the beginning of all that follow'd there was his own blood shed by the Executioner According to that sentence of Divine justice In the place where Dogs lick'd the blood of Naboth shall Dogs lick thy blood eev'n thine From hence he takes occasion to excuse that improvident and fatal error of his absenting from the Parlament When he found that no Declaration of the Bishops could take place against those Tumults Was that worth his considering that foolish and self-undoing Declaration of twelve Cypher Bishops who were immediatly appeacht of Treason for that audacious Declaring The Bishops peradventure were now and then pulld by the Rochers and deserv'd another kind of pulling but what amounted this to the feare of his own person in the streets Did he not the very next day after his irruption into the House of Commons then which nothing had more exasperated the people goe in his Coach unguarded into the City did hee receave the least affront much less violence in any of the Streets but rather humble demeanours and supplications Hence may be gather'd that however in his own guiltiness hee might have justly fear'd yet that hee knew the people so full of aw and reverence to his Person as to dare commit himself single among the thickest of them at a time when he had most provok'd them Besides in Scot-Land they had handl'd the Bishops in a more robustious manner Edinburrow had bin full of Tumults two Armies from thence had enterd England against him yet after all this he was not fearfull but very forward to take so long a journey to Edinburrow which argues first as did also his rendition afterward to the Scotch Army that to England he continu'd still as he was indeed a stranger and full of diffidence to the Scots onely a native King in his confidence though not in his dealing towards them It shews us next beyond doubting that all this his feare of Tumults was but a meer colour and occasion tak'n of his resolved absence from the Parlament for some other end not
difficult to be guess'd And those instances wherein valour is not to be question'd for not scuffling with the Sea or an undisciplind Rabble are but subservient to carry on the solemn jest of his fearing Tumults if they discover not withall the true reason why he departed onely to turne his slashing at the Court Gate to slaughtering in the Field his disorderly bickering to an orderly invading which was nothing els but a more orderly disorder Some suspected and affirm'd that he meditated a Warr when he went first from White Hall And they were not the worst heads that did so nor did any of his former acts weak'n him to that as he alleges for himself or if they had they cleere him onely for the time of passing them not for what ever thoughts might come after into his mind Former actions of improvidence or fear not with him unusual cannot absolve him of all after meditations He goes on protesting his no intention to have left White Hall had these horrid Tumults giv'n him but Faire Quarter as if he himself his Wife and Children had bin in peril But to this anough hath bin answer'd Had this Parlament as it was in its first Election Namely with the Lord and Baron Bishops sate full and free he doubts not but all had gon well What warrant this of his to us Whose not doubting was all good mens greatest doubt He was resolv'd to heare reason and to consent so farr as he could comprehend A hopefull resolution what if his reason were found by oft experience to comprehend nothing beyond his own advantages was this a reason fit to be intrusted with the common good of three Nations But saith he as Swine are to gardens so are Tumults to Parlaments This the Parlament had they found it so could best have told us In the meane while who knows not that one great Hogg may doe as much mischief in a Garden as many little Swine He was sometimes prone to think that had he call'd this last Parlament to any other place in England the sad consequences might have bin prevented But change of ayr changes not the mind Was not his first Parlament at Oxford dissolv'd after two Subsidies giv'n him and no Justice receav'd Was not his last in the same place where they sat with as much freedom as much quiet from Tumults as they could desire a Parlament both in his account and thir own consisting of all his Friends that fled after him and suffer'd for him and yet by him nicknam'd and casheer'd for a Mungrill Parlament that vext his Queen with thir base and mutinous motions as his Cabinet letter tells us Wherby the World may see plainly that no shifting of place no sifting of members to his own mind no number no paucity no freedom from tumults could ever bring his arbitrary wilfulness and tyrannical Designes to brook the lest shape or similitude the lest counterfet of a Parlament Finally instead of praying for his people as a good King should doe hee prayes to be deliver'd from them as from wild Beasts Inundations and raging Seas that had overborn all Loyalty Modesty Laws Justice and Religion God save the people from such Intercessors V. Upon the Bill for Trienniall Parlaments And for setling this c. THe Bill for a Triennial Parlament was but the third part of one good step toward that which in times past was our annual right The other Bill for setling this Parlament was new indeed but at that time very necessary and in the Kings own Words no more then what the World was fully confirm'd hee might in Justice Reason Honour and Conscience grant them for to that end he affirms to have don it But wheras he attributes the passing of them to his own act of grace and willingness as his manner is to make vertues of his necessities and giving to himself all the praise heaps ingratitude upon the Parlament a little memory will sett the cleane contrary before us that for those Beneficial acts we ow what wee ow to the Parlament but to his granting them neither praise nor thanks The first Bill granted much less then two former Statutes yet in force by Edward the third that a Parlament should be call'd every yeare or ofter if need were nay from a farr ancienter Law Book call'd the Mirror it is affirm'd in a late Treatise call'd Rights of the Kingdom that Parlaments by our old Laws ought twice a year to be at London From twice in one year to once in three year it may be soon cast up how great a loss we fell into of our ancient liberty by that act which in the ignorant and Slavish mindes we then were was thought a great purchase Wisest men perhaps were contented for the present at least by this act to have recoverd Parlaments w ch were then upon the brink of danger to be forever lost And this is that which the King preaches heer for a special tok'n of his Princely favour to have abridg'd over reach'd the people five parts in six of what thir due was both by ancient Statute and originally And thus the taking from us all but a Triennial remnant of that English Freedom which our Fathers left us double in a fair annuity enrowl'd is set out and sould to us heer for the gracious and over liberal giving of a new enfranchisment How little may we think did he ever give us who in the Bill of his pretended givings writes down Imprimis that benefit or privilege once in three year giv'n us which by so giving he more then twice every year illegally took from us Such givers as give single to take away sixfold be to our Enemies For certainly this Common-wealth if the Statutes of our Ancestors be worth ought would have found it hard and hazardous to thrive under the dammage of such a guilefull liberatie The other act was so necessary that nothing in the power of Man more seem'd to be the stay support of all things from that steep ruin to which he had nigh brought them then that Act obtain'd He had by his ill Stewardship and to say no worse the needless raising of two Armies intended for a civil War begger'd both himself and the Public and besides had left us upon the score of his needy Enemies for what it cost them in thir own defence against him To disingage him and the Kingdom great sums were to be borrow'd which would never have bin lent nor could ever be repaid had the King chanc'd to dissolve this Parlament as heertofore The errors also of his Goverment had brought the Kingdom to such extremes as were incapable of all recovery without the absolute continuance of a Parlament It had bin els in vaine to goe about the setling of so great distempers if hee who first caus'd the malady might when he pleas'd reject the remedy Notwithstanding all which that he granted both these Acts unwillingly and as a meer passive Instrument was then
the injunction of his all-ruling error He alleges the uprightness of his intentions to excuse his possible failings a position fals both in Law and Divinity Yea contrary to his own better principles who affirmes in the twelfth Chapter that The goodness of a mans intention will not excuse the scandall and contagion of his example His not knowing through the corruption of flattery and Court Principles what he ought to have known will not excuse his not doing what he ought to have don no more then the small skill of him who undertakes to be a Pilot will excuse him to be misledd by any wandring Starr mistak'n for the Pole But let his intentions be never so upright what is that to us What answer for the reason and the National Rights which God hath giv'n us if having Parlaments and Laws and the power of making more to avoid mischeif wee suffer one mans blind intentions to lead us all with our eyes op'n to manifest destruction And if Arguments prevaile not with such a one force is well us'd not to carry on the weakness of our Counsels or to convince his error as he surmises but to acquitt and rescue our own reason our own consciences from the force and prohibition laid by his usurping error upon our Liberties understandings Never thing pleas'd him more then when his judgement concurr'd with theirs That was to the applause of his own judgement and would as well have pleas'd any selfconceited man Yea in many things he chose rather to deny himself then them That is to say in trifles For of his own Interests and Personal Rights he conceavs himself Maister To part with if he please not to contest for against the Kingdom which is greater then he whose Rights are all subordinat to the Kingdoms good And in what concernes truth Justice the right of Church or his Crown no man shall gaine his consent against his mind What can be left then for a Parlament but to sit like Images while he still thus either with incomparable arrogance assumes to himself the best abilitie of judging for other men what is Truth Justice Goodness what his own or the Churches Right or with unsufferable Tyranny restraines all men from the enjoyment of any good which his judgement though erroneous thinks not fit to grant them notwithstanding that the Law and his Coronal Oath requires his undeniable assent to what Laws the Parlament agree upon He had rather wear a Crown of Thorns with our Saviour Many would be all one with our Saviour whom our Saviour will not know They who govern ill those Kingdoms which they had a right to have to our Saviours Crown of Thornes no right at all Thornes they may find anow of thir own gathering and thir own twisting for Thornes and Snares saith Solomon are in the way of the froward but to weare them as our Saviour wore them is not giv'n to them that suffer by thir own demerits Nor is a Crown of Gold his due who cannot first wear a Crown of Lead not onely for the weight of that great Office but for the compliance which it ought to have with them who are to counsel him which heer he termes in scorne An imbased flexibleness to the various and oft contrary dictates of any Factions meaning his Parlament for the question hath bin all this while between them two And to his Parlament though a numerous and chois Assembly of whom the Land thought wisest he imputes rather then to himself want of reason neglect of the Public interest of parties and particularitie of private will and passion but with what modesty or likelihood of truth it will be wearisom to repeat so oft'n He concludes with a sentence faire in seeming but fallacious For if the conscience be ill edifi'd the resolution may more befitt a foolish then a Christian King to preferr a self-will'd conscience before a Kingdoms good especially in the deniall of that which Law and his Regal Office by Oath bids him grant to his Parlament and whole Kingdom rightfully demanding For we may observe him throughout the discours to assert his Negative power against the whole Kingdom now under the specious Plea of his conscience and his reason but heertofore in a lowder note Without us or against our consent the Votes of either or of both Houses together must not cannot shall not Declar. May 4. 1642. With these and the like deceavable Doctrines he levens also his Prayer VII Vpon the Queens departure TO this Argument we shall soon have said for what concerns it us to hear a Husband divulâ—… his Houshold privacies extolling to others the verâ—…tues of his Wife an infirmity not seldom incident to those who have least cause But how good shee was a Wife was to himself and be it left to his own fancy how bad a Subject is not much disputed And being such it need be made no wonder though shee left a Protestant Kingdom with as little honour as her Mother left a Popish That this Is the first example of any Protestant Subjects that haue tak'n up Armes against thir King a Protestant can be to Protestants no dishonour when it shal be heard that he first levied Warr on them and to the interest of Papists more then of Protestants He might have giv'n yet the precedence of making warr upon him to the subjects of his own Nation who had twice oppos'd him in the op'n Feild long ere the English found it necessary to doe the like And how groundless how dissembl'd is that feare least shee who for so many yeares had bin averse from the Religion of her Husband and every yeare more and more before these disturbances broke out should for them be now the more alienated from that to which we never heard shee was inclin'd But if the feare of her Delinquency and that Justice which the Protestants demanded on her was any cause of heralienating the more to have gain'd her by indirect means had bin no advantage to Religion much less then was the detriment to loose her furder off It had bin happy if his own actions had not giv'n cause of more scandal to the Protestants then what they did against her could justly scandalize any Papist Them who accus'd her well anough known to be the Parlament he censures for Men yet to seeke thir Religion whether Doctrine Discipline or good manners the rest he soothes with the name of true English Protestants a meer scismatical name yet he so great an enemy of Scism He ascribes Rudeness and barbarity worse then Indian to the English Parlament and all vertue to his Wife in straines that come almost to Sonnetting How fitt to govern men undervaluing and aspersing the great Counsel of his Kingdom in comparison of one Woman Examples are not farr to seek how great mischeif and dishonour hath befall'n to Nations under the Government of effeminate and Uxorious Magistrates Who being themselves govern'd and overswaid at home under a Feminine usurpation
binds him to no less neither is he at all by his Office to interpose against a Parlament in the making or not making of any Law but to take that for just and good legally which is there decreed and to see it executed accordingly Nor was he set over us to vie wisdom with his Parlament but to be guided by them any of whome possibly may as farr excell him in the gift of wisdom as he them in place and dignitie But much neerer is it to impossibilitie that any King alone should be wiser then all his councel sure anough it was not he though no King ever before him so much contended to have it thought so And if the Parlament so thought not but desir'd him to follow their advice and deliberation in things of public concernment he accounts it the same proposition as if Sampson had bin mov'd to the putting out his eyes that the Philistims might abuse him And thus out of an unwise or pretended feare least others should make a scorn of him for yeilding to his Parlament he regards not to give cause of worse suspicion that he made a scorn of his regal Oath But to exclude him from all power of deniall seemes an arrogance in the Parlament he means what in him then to deny against the Parlament None at all by what he argues For by Petitioning they confess thir inferioritie and that obliges them to rest if not satisfi'd yet quieted with such an Answer as the will and reason of their Superior thinks sit to give First Petitioning in better English is no more then requesting or requiring and men require not favours onely but thir due and that not onely from Superiors but from Equals and Inferiors also The noblest Romans when they stood for that which was a kind of Regal honour the Consulship were wont in a submissive manner to goe about and begg that highest Dignity of the meanest Plebeians naming them man by man which in their tongue was call'd Petitio consulatus And the Parlament of England Petition'd the King not because all of them were inferior to him but because he was superior to any one of them which they did of civil custom and for fashions sake more then of duty for by plaine Law cited before the Parlament is his Superiour But what law in any trial or dispute enjoynes a free man to rest quieted though not satisfi'd with the will and reason of his Superior It were a mad law that would subject reason to superioritie of place And if our highest consultations and purpos'd lawes must be terminated by the Kings will then is the will of one man our Law and no suttletie of dispute can redeem the Parlament and Nation from being Slaves neither can any Tyrant require more then that his will or reason though not satisfying should yet be rested in and determin all things We may conclude therfore that when the Parlament petition'd the King it was but meerly forme let it be as foolish and absurd as he pleases It cannot certainly be so absurd as what he requires that the Parlament should confine thir own and all the Kingdoms reason to the will of one man because it was his hap to succeed his Father For neither God nor the Lawes have subjected us to his will nor sett his reason to be our sovran above Law which must needs be if he can strangle it in the birth but sett his person over us in the sovran execution of such Laws as the Parlament establish The Parlament therfore without any usurpation hath had it alwaies in thir power to limit and confine the exorbitancie of Kings whether they call it thir will thir reason or thir conscience But this above all was never expected nor is to be endur'd that a King who is bound by law and Oath to follow the advice of his Parlament should be permitted to except against them as young Statesmen and proudly to suspend his following thir advice untill his seven yeares experience had shewn him how well they could govern themselves Doubtless the Law never suppos'd so great an arrogance could be in one man that he whose seventeen yeares unexperience had almost ruin'd all should sit another seven yeares Schoolmaster to tutor those who were sent by the whole Realme to be his Counselers and teachers And with what modesty can he pretend to be a Statesman himself who with his Fathers Kingcraft and his own did never that of his own accord which was not directly opposit to his professed Interest both at home and abroad discontenting and alienating his Subjects at home weakning and deserting his Confederats abroad and with them the Common cause of Religion So that the whole course of his raign by an example of his own furnishing hath resembl'd Phaeton more then Phoebus and forc'd the Parlament to drive like Jehu which Omen tak'n from his own mouth God hath not diverted And he on the other side might have rememberd that the Parlament sit in that body not as his Subjects but as his Superiors call'd not by him but by the Law not onely twice every yeare but as oft as great affaires require to be his Counselers and Dictators though he stomac it nor to be dissolv'd at his pleasure but when all greevances be first remov'd all Petitions heard and answer'd This is not onely Reason but the known Law of the Land When he heard that Propositions would be sent him he satt conjecturing what they would propound and because they propounded what he expected not he takes that to be a warrant for his denying them But what did he expect he expected that the Parlament would reinforce some old Laws But if those Laws were not a sufficient remedy to all greevances nay were found to be greevances themselves when did we loose that other part of our freedom to establish new He thought some injuries done by himself and others to the Common wealth were to be repair'd But how could that be while he the chief offender took upon him to be sole Judge both of the injury and the reparation He staid till the advantages of his Crown consider'd might induce him to condiscend to the Peoples good Whenas the Crown it self with all those advantages were therfore giv'n him that the peoples good should be first consider'd not bargain'd for and bought by inches with the bribe of more offertures and advantages to his Crown He look'd for moderate desires of due Reformation as if any such desires could be immoderate He lookd for such a Reformation both in Church and State as might preserve the roots of every greevance and abuse in both still growing which he calls The foundation and essentials and would have onely the excrescencies of evil prun'd away for the present as was plotted before that they might grow fast anough between Triennial Parlaments to hinder them by worke anough besides from ever striking at the root He alleges They should have had regard to the Laws in force
so oft'n contrary to the commands of God He would perswade the Scots that thir chief Interest consists in thir fidelity to the Crown But true policy will teach them to find a safer interest in the common friendship of England then in the ruins of one ejected Family XIIII Upon the Covnant VPON this Theme his Discours is long his Matter little but repetition and therfore soon answerd First after an abusive and strange apprehension of Covnants as if Men pawn'd thir souls to them with whom they Covnant he digresses to plead for Bishops first from the antiquity of thir possession heer since the first plantation of Christianity in this Iland next from a universal prescription since the Apostles till this last Centurie But what availes the most Primitive Antiquity against the plain sense of Scripture which if the last Centurie have best follow'd it ought in our esteem to be the first And yet it hath bin oft'n prov'd by Learned Men from the Writings and Epistles of most ancient Christians that Episcopacy crept not up into an order above the Presbyters till many years after that the Apostles were deceas'd He next is unsatisfied with the Covnant not onely for some passages in it referring to himself as he supposes with very dubious and dangerous limitations but for binding men by Oath and Covnant to the Reformation of Church Discipline First those limitations were not more dangerous to him then he to our Libertie and Religion next that which was there vow'd to cast out of the Church an Antichristian Hierarchy which God had not planted but ambition and corruption had brought in and fosterd to the Churches great dammage and oppression was no point of controversie to be argu'd without end but a thing of cleer moral necessity to be forthwith don Neither was the Covnant superfluous though former engagements both religious and legal bound us before But was the practice of all Churches heertofore intending Reformation All Israel though bound anough before by the Law of Moses to all necessary duties yet with Asa thir King enter'd into a new Covnant at the beginning of a Reformation And the Jews after Captivity without consent demanded of that King who was thir Maister took solemn Oath to walk in the Command'ments of God All Protestant Churches have don the like notwithstanding former engagements to thir several duties And although his aime were to sow variance between the Protestation and the Covnant to reconcile them is not difficult The Protestation was but one step extending onely to the Doctrin of the Church of England as it was distinct from Church Discipline the Covnant went furder as it pleas'd God to dispense his light and our encouragement by degrees and comprehended Church Goverment Former with latter steps in the progress of well doing need not reconcilement Nevertheless he breaks through to his conclusion That all honest and wise men ever thought themselves sufficently bound by former ties of Religion leaving Asa Ezra and the whole Church of God in sundry Ages to shift for honestie and wisdom from som other then his testimony And although after-contracts absolve not till the former be made void yet he first having don that our duty returns back which to him was neither moral nor eternal but conditional Willing to perswade himself that many good men took the Covnant either unwarily or out of fear he seems to have bestow'd som thoughts how these good men following his advice may keep the the Covnant and not keep it The first evasion is presuming that the chief end of Covnanting in such mens intentions was to preserve Religion in purity and the Kingdoms peace But the Covnant will more truly inform them that purity of Religion and the Kingdoms peace was not then in state to be preservd but to be restor'd and therfore binds them not to a preservation of what was but to a Reformation of what was evil what was Traditional and dangerous whether novelty or antiquity in Church or State To doe this clashes with no former Oath lawfully sworn either to God or the King and rightly understood In general he brands all such confederations by League and Covnant as the common rode us'd in all Factious perturbations of State and Church This kinde of language reflects with the same ignominy upon all the Protestant Reformations that have bin since Luther and so indeed doth his whole Book replenish'd throughout with hardly other words or arguments then Papists and especially Popish Kings have us'd heertofore against thir Protestant Subjects whom he would perswade to be every man his own Pope and to absolve himfelf of those ties by the suggestion of fals or equivocal interpretations too oft repeated to be now answer'd The Parlament he saith made thir Covnant like Manna agreeable to every mans Palat. This is another of his glosses upon the Covnant he is content to let it be Manna but his drift is that men should loath it or at least expound it by thir own relish and latitude of sense wherin least any one of the simpler sort should faile to be his crafts maister he furnishes him with two or three laxative he termes them general clauses which may serve somwhat to releeve them against the Covnant tak'n intimating as if what were lawfull and according to the Word of God were no otherwise so then as every man fansi'd to himself From such learned explications and resolutions as these upon the Covnant what marvel if no Royalist or Malignant refuse to take it as having learnt from these Princely instructions his many Salvo's cautions and reservations how to be a Covnanter and Anticovnanter how at once to be a Scot and an Irish Rebel He returns again to disallow of that Reformation which the Covnant vows as being the partiall advice of a few Divines But matters of this moment as they were not to be decided there by those Divines so neither are they to be determin'd heer by Essays curtal Aphorisms but by solid proofs of Scripture The rest of his discourse he spends highly accusing the Parlament that the main Reformation by them intended was to robb the Church and much applauding himself both for his forwardness to all due Reformation and his aversness from all such kind of Sacrilege All which with his glorious title of the Churches Defender we leave him to make good by Pharaoh's Divinity if he please for to Josephs Pietie it will be a task unsutable As for the parity and poverty of Ministers which he takes to be so sad of consequence the Scripture reck'ns them for two special Legacies left by our Saviour to his Disciples under which two Primitive Nurses for such they were indeed the Church of God more truly flourisht then ever after since the time that imparitie and Church revennue rushing in corrupted and beleper'd all the Clergie with a worse infection then Gehezi's some one of whose Tribe rather then a King I should take to be compiler of that unsalted and
sacred History and times of Reformation that the Kings of this World have both ever hated and instinctively fear'd the Church of God Whether it be for that thir Doctrin seems much to favour two things to them so dreadful Liberty and Equality or because they are the Children of that Kingdom which as ancient Prophesies have foretold shall in the end break to peeces and dissolve all thir great power and Dominion And those Kings and Potentates who have strove most to ridd themselves of this feare by cutting off or suppressing the true Church have drawn upon themselves the occasion of thir own ruin while they thought with most policy to prevent it Thus Pharaoh when once he began to feare and wax jealous of the Israelites least they should multiply and fight against him and that his feare stirr'd him up to afflict and keep them under as the onely remedy of what he feard soon found that the evil which before slept came suddenly upon him by the preposterous way he took to shun it Passing by examples between not shutting wilfully our eyes we may see the like story brought to pass in our own Land This King more then any before him except perhapps his Father from his first entrance to the Crown harbouring in his mind a strange feare and suspicion of men most religious and thir Doctrin which in his own language he heer acknowledges terming it the seditious exorbitancie of Ministers tongues and doubting least they as he not Christianly expresses it should with the Keys of Heav'n let out Peace and Loyaltie from the peoples hearts though they never preacht or attempted aught that might justly raise in him such apprehensions he could not rest or think himself secure so long as they remain'd in any of his three Kingdoms unrooted out But outwardly professing the same Religion with them he could not presently use violence as Pharaoh did and that course had with others before but ill succeeded He chooses therfore a more mystical way a newer method of Antichristian fraud to the Church more dangerous and like to Balac the Son of Zippor against a Nation of Prophets thinks it best to hire other esteemed Prophets and to undermine and weare out the true Church by a fals Ecclesiastical policy To this drift he found the Goverment of Bishops most serviceable an order in the Church as by men first corrupted so mutually corrupting them who receave it both in judgement and manners He by conferring Bishoprics and great Livings on whom he thought most pliant to his will against the known Canons and universal practice of the ancient Church wherby those elections were the peoples right sought as he confesses to have greatest influence upon Church-men They on the other side finding themselves in a high Dignity neither founded by Scripture nor allow'd by Reformation nor supported by any spiritual gift or grace of thir own knew it thir best cours to have dependence onely upon him and wrought his fansie by degrees to that degenerat and unkingly perswasion of No Bishop no King When as on the contrary all Prelats in thir own suttle sense are of another mind according to that of Pius the fourth rememberd in the Trentine storie that Bishops then grow to be most vigorous and potent when Princes happ'n to be most weak and impotent Thus when both Interests of Tyrannie and Episcopacie were incorporat into each other the King whose principal safety and establishment consisted in the righteous execution of his civil power and not in Bishops and thir wicked counsels fatally driv'n on set himself to the extirpating of those men whose Doctrin and desire of Church Discipline he so fear'd would bee the undoing of his Monarchie And because no temporal Law could touch the innocence of thir lives he begins with the persecution of thir consciences laying scandals before them and makes that the argument to inflict his unjust penalties both on thir bodies and Estates In this Warr against the Church if he hath sped so as other haughty Monarchs whom God heertofore hath hard'nd to the like enterprize we ought to look up with praises and thanksgiving to the Author of our deliverance to whom victorie and power Majestie Honour and Dominion belongs for ever In the mean while from his own words we may perceave easily that the special motives which he had to endeere and deprave his judgement to the favouring and utmost defending of Episcopacie are such as heer wee represent them and how unwillingly and with what mental reservation he condescended against his interest to remove it out of the Peers house hath bin shown alreadie The reasons which he affirmes wrought so much upon his judgement shall be so farr answerd as they be urg'd Scripture he reports but distinctly produces none and next the constant practice of all Christian Churches till of late yeares tumult faction pride and covetousness invented new models under the Title of Christs Goverment Could any Papist have spoke more scandalously against all Reformation Well may the Parlament and best-affected People not now be troubl'd at his calumnies and reproaches since he binds them in the same bundle with all other the reformed Churches who also may now furder see besides thir own bitter experience what a Cordial and well meaning helper they had of him abroad and how true to the Protestant cause As for Histories to prove Bishops the Bible if we mean not to run into errors vanities and uncertainties must be our onely Historie Which informs us that the Apostles were not properly Bishops next that Bishops were not successors of Apostles in the function of Apostleship And that if they were Apostles they could not be preciselie Bishops if Bishops they could not be Apostles this being Universal extraordinarie and immediat from God that being an ordinarie fixt particular charge the continual inspection over a certain Flock And although an ignorance and deviation of the ancient Churches afterward may with as much reason and charity be suppos'd as sudden in point of Prelatie as in other manifest corruptions yet that no example since the first age for 1500 yeares can be produc'd of any setled Church wherin were many Ministers and Congregations which had not some Bishops above them the Ecclesiastical storie to which he appeals for want of Scripture proves cleerly to be a fals and over-confident assertion Sczomenus who wrote above Twelve hundred years agoe in his seventh Book relates from his own knowledge that in the Churches of Cyprus and Arabia places neer to Jerusalem and with the first frequented by Apostles they had Bishops in every Village and what could those be more then Presbyters The like he tells of other Nations and that Episcopal Churches in those daies did not condemn them I add that many Western Churches eminent for thir Faith and good Works and settl'd above four hundred years agoe in France in Piemont and Bohemia have both taught and practis'd the same Doctrin and not admitted of
Episcopacie among them And if we may beleeve what the Papists themselves have writt'n of these Churches which they call Waldenses I find it in a Book writt'n almost four hundred years since and set forth in the Bohemian Historie that those Churches in Piemont have held the same Doctrin and Goverment since the time that Constantine with his mischeivous donations poyson'd Silvester and the whole Church Others affirme they have so continu'd there since the Apostles and Theodorus Belvederensis in his relation of them confesseth that those Heresies as he names them were from the first times of Christianity in that place For the rest I referr me to that famous testimonie of Jerom who upon this very place which he onely roaves at heer the Epistle to Titus declares op'nly that Bishop and Presbyter were one and the same thing till by the instigation of Satan partialities grew up in the Church and that Bishops rather by custom then any ordainment of Christ were exalted above Presbyters whose interpretation we trust shall be receav'd before this intricate stuffe tattl'd heer of Timothy and Titus and I know not whom thir Successors farr beyond Court Element and as farr beneath true edification These are his fair grounds both from Scripture-Canons and Ecclesiastical examples how undivinelike writt'n and how like a worldly Gospeller that understands nothing of these matters posteritie no doubt will be able to judge and will but little regard what he calls Apostolical who in his Letter to the Pope calls Apostolical the Roman Religion Nor let him think to plead that therfore it was not policy of State or obstinacie in him which upheld Episcopacie because the injuries and losses which he sustain'd by so doing were to him more considerable then Episcopacie it self for all this might Pharaoh have had to say in his excuse of detaining the Israelites that his own and his Kingdoms safety so much endanger'd by his denial was to him more deer then all thir building labours could be worth to Aegypt But whom God hard'ns them also he blinds He endeavours to make good Episcopacie not only in Religion but from the nature of all civil Government where parity breeds confusion and faction But of faction and confusion to take no other then his own testimony where hath more bin ever bred then under the imparitie of his own Monarchical Goverment Of which to make at this time longer dispute and from civil constitutions and human conceits to debate and question the convenience of Divine Ordinations is neither wisdom nor sobrietie and to confound Mosaic Preisthood with Evangelic Presbyterie against express institution is as far from warrantable As little to purpose is it that we should stand powling the Reformed Churches whether they equalize in number those of his three Kingdoms of whom so lately the far greater part what they have long desir'd to doe have now quite thrown off Episcopacie Neither may we count it the language or Religion of a Protestant so to vilifie the best Reformed Churches for none of them but Lutherans retain Bishops as to feare more the scandalizing of Papists because more numerous then of our Protestant Brethren because a handful It will not be worth the while to say what Scismatics or Heretics have had no Bishops yet least he should be tak'n for a great Reader he who prompted him if he were a Doctor might have rememberd the foremention'd place in Sozomenus which affirmes that besides the Cyprians and Arabians who were counted Orthodoxal the Novatians also and Montanists in Phrygia had no other Bishops then such as were in every Village and what Presbyter hath a narrower Diocess As for the Aërians we know of no Heretical opinion justly father'd upon them but that they held Bishops Presbyters to be the same Which he in this place not obscurely seems to hold a Heresie in all the Reformed Churches with whom why the Church of England desir'd conformitie he can find no reason with all his charity but the comming in of the Scots Army Such a high esteem he had of the English He tempts the Clergie to return back again to Bishops from the feare of tenuity and contempt and the assurance of better thriving under the favour of Princes against which temptations if the Clergie cannot arm themselves with thir own spiritual armour they are indeed as poor a Carkass as he terms them Of Secular honours and great Revenues added to the dignitie of Prelats since the subject of that question is now remov'd we need not spend time But this perhaps will never bee unseasonable to beare in minde out of Chrysostome that when Ministers came to have Lands Houses Farmes Coaches Horses and the like Lumber then Religion brought forth riches in the Church and the Daughter devour'd the Mother But if his judgement in Episcopacie may be judg'd by the goodly chois he made of Bishops we need not much amuse our selves with the consideration of those evils which by his foretelling will necessarily follow thir pulling down untill he prove that the Apostles having no certain Diocess or appointed place of residence were properly Bishops over those Presbyters whom they ordain'd or Churches they planted wherein ofttimes thir labours were both joint and promiscuous Or that the Apostolic power must necessarily descend to Bishops the use and end of either function being so different And how the Church hath flourisht under Episcopacie let the multitude of thir ancient and gross errors testifie and the words of some learnedest and most zealous Bishops among them Nazianzen in a devout passion wishing Prelaty had never bin Basil terming them the Slaves of Slaves Saint Martin the enemies of Saints and confessing that after he was made a Bishop he found much of that grace decay in him which he had before Concerning his Coronation Oath what it was and how farr it bound him already hath bin spok'n This we may take for certain that he was never sworn to his own particular conscience and reason but to our conditions as a free people which requir'd him to give us such Laws as our selves shall choose This the Scots could bring him to and would not be baffl'd with the pretence of a Coronation Oath after that Episcopacy had for many years bin settl'd there Which concession of his to them and not to us he seeks heer to put off with evasions that are ridiculous And to omit no shifts he alleges that the Presbyterian manners gave him no encouragement to like thir modes of Government If that were so yet certainly those men are in most likelihood neerer to amendment who seek a stricter Church Discipline then that of Episcopacy under which the most of them learnt thir manners If estimation were to be made of Gods Law by their manners who leaving Aegypt receav'd it in the Wilderness it could reap from such an inference as this nothing but rejection and disesteem For the Prayer wherwith he closes it had bin good som safe Liturgie which he so
him nor condemn'd themselves But he will needs have vengeance to pursue and overtake them though to bring it in it cost him an inconvenient and obnoxious comparison As the Mice and Ratts overtook a German Bishop I would our Mice and Ratts had bin as Orthodoxal heer and had so pursu'd all his Bishops out of England then vermin had ridd away vermin which now hath lost the lives of too many thousand honest men to doe He cannot but observe this Divine Justice yet with sorrow and pitty But sorrow and pitty in a weak and over-maister'd enemy is lookt upon no otherwise then as the ashes of his revenge burnt out upon it self or as the damp of a coold fury when we say it gives But in this manner to sit spelling and observing divine justice upon every accident slight disturbance that may happ'n humanly to the affaires of men is but another fragment of his brok'n revenge yet the shrewdest the cunningest obloquy that can be thrown upon thir actions For if he can perswade men that the Parlament and thir cause is pursu'd with Divine vengeance he hath attain'd his end to make all men forsake them and think the worst that can be thought of them Nor is he onely content to suborn Divine Justice in his censure of what is past but he assumes the person of Christ himself to prognosticate over us what he wishes would come So little is any thing or person sacred from him no not in Heav'n which he will not use and put on if it may serve him plausibly to wreck his spleen or ease his mind upon the Parlament Although if ever fatal blindness did both attend and punish wilfulness if ever any enjoy'd not comforts for neglecting counsel belonging to thir peace it was in none more conspicuously brought to pass then in himself and his predictions against the Parlament and thir adherents have for the most part bin verify'd upon his own head and upon his chief Counselors He concludes with high praises of the Army But praises in an enemy are superfluous or smell of craft and the Army shall not need his praises nor the Parlament fare worse for his accusing prayers that follow Wherin as his Charity can be no way comparable to that of Christ so neither can his assurance that they whom he seems to pray for in doing what they did against him knew not what they did It was but arrogance therfore and not charity to lay such ignorance to others in the sight of God till he himself had bin infallible like him whose peculiar words he overweeningly assumes XXVII Intitil'd to the Prince of Wales VVHat the King wrote to his Son as a Father concerns not us what he wrote to him as a King of England concerns not him God and the Parlament having now otherwise dispos'd of England But because I see it don with some artifice and labour to possess the people that they might amend thir present condition by his or by his Sons restorement I shall shew point by point that although the King had bin reinstall'd to his desire or that his Son admitted should observe exactly all his Fathers precepts yet that this would be so farr from conducing to our happiness either as a remedy to the present distempers or a prevention of the like to come that it would inevitably throw us back again into all our past and fulfill'd miseries would force us to fight over again all our tedious Warrs and put us to another fatal struggling for Libertie and life more dubious then the former In which as our success hath bin no other then our cause so it will be evident to all posteritie that his misfortunes were the meer consequence of his perverse judgement First he argues from the experience of those troubles which both he and his Son have had to the improvement of thir pietie and patience and by the way beares witness in his own words that the corrupt education of his youth which was but glanc'd at onely in some former passages of this answer was a thing neither of mean consideration nor untruly charg'd upon him or his Son himself confessing heer that Court delights are prone either to root up all true vertue and honour or to be contented only with some leaves and withering formalities of them without any reall fruits tending to the public good Which presents him still in his own words another Rehoboam soft'nd by a farr wors Court then Salomons and so corrupted by flatteries which he affirmes to be unseparable to the overturning of all peace and the loss of his own honour and Kingdoms That he came therfore thus bredd up and nurtur'd to the Throne farr wors then Rehoboam unless he be of those who equaliz'd his Father to King Salomon we have heer his own confession And how voluptuously how idlely raigning in the hands of other men he either tyranniz'd or trifl'd away those seventeen yeares of peace without care or thought as if to be a King had bin nothing els in his apprehension but to eat and drink and have his will and take his pleasure though there be who can relate his domestic life to the exactness of a diary there shall be heer no mention made This yet we might have then foreseen that he who spent his leisure so remissly and so corruptly to his own pleasing would one day or other be wors busied and imployd to our sorrow And that he acted in good earnest what Rehoboam did but threat'n to make his little finger heavier then his Fathers loynes and to whip us with his two twisted Scorpions both temporal and spiritual Tyranny all his Kingdoms have felt What good use he made afterward of his adversitie both his impenitence and obstinacy to the end for he was no Manasseh and the sequel of these his meditated resolutions abundantly express retaining commending teaching to his Son all those putrid and pernicious documents both of State and of Religion instill'd by wicked Doctors and receav'd by him as in a Vessel nothing better seasond which were the first occasion both of his own and all our miseries And if he in the best maturity of his yeares and understanding made no better use to himself or others of his so long and manifold afflictions either looking up to God or looking down upon the reason of his own affaires there can be no probability that his son bred up not in the soft effeminacies of Court onely but in the rugged and more boistrous licence of undisciplin'd Camps and Garrisons for yeares unable to reflect with judgement upon his own condition and thus ill instructed by his Father should give his mind to walk by any other rules then these bequeath'd him as on his Fathers death-bed as the choisest of all that experience w ch his most serious observation and retirement in good or evil dayes had taught him David indeed by suffering without just cause learnt that meekness and that wisdom by adversity
but complain'd of Thus these two heads wherein the utmost of his allowance heer will give our Liberties leave to consist the one of them shall be so farr onely made good to us as may support his own interest and Crown from ruin or debilitation and so farr Turkish Vassals enjoy as much liberty under Mahomet and the Grand Signor the other we neither yet have enjoyd under him nor were ever like to doe under the Tyranny of a negative voice which he claimes above the unanimous consent and power of a whole Nation virtually in the Parlament In which negative voice to have bin cast by the doom of Warr and put to death by those who vanquisht him in thir own defence he reck'ns to himself more then a negative Martyrdom But Martyrs bear witness to the truth not to themselves If I beare witness of my self saith Christ my witness is not true He who writes himself Martyr by his own inscription is like an ill Painter who by writing on the shapeless Picture which he hath drawn is fain to tell passengers what shape it is which els no man could imagin no more then how a Martyrdom can belong to him who therfore dyes for his Religion because it is establisht Certainly if Agrippa had turn'd Christian as he was once turning and had put to death Scribes and Pharisees for observing the Law of Moses and refusing Christianitie they had di'd a truer Martyrdom For those Laws were establisht by God and Moses these by no warrantable authors of Religion whose Laws in all other best reformed Churches are rejected And if to die for an establshment of Religion be Martyrdom then Romish Priests executed for that which had so many hundred yeares bin establisht in this Land are no wors Martyrs then he Lastly if to die for the testimony of his own conscience be anough to make him Martyr what Heretic dying for direct blasphemie as som have don constantly may not boast a Martyrdom As for the constitution or repeale of civil Laws that power lying onely in the Parlament which he by the verry law of his coronation was to grant them not to debarr them nor to preserve a lesser Law with the contempt and violation of a greater it will conclude him not so much as in a civil and metaphoricall sense to have di'd a Martyr of our Laws but a plaine transgressor of them And should the Parlament endu'd with Legislative power make our Laws and be after to dispute them peece meale with the reson conscience humour passion fansie folly obstinacy or other ends of one man whose sole word and will shall baffle and unmake what all the wisdom of a Parlament hath bin deliberatly framing what a ridiculous and contemptible thing a Parlament would soon be and what a base unworthy Nation we who boast our freedom and send them with the manifest peril of thir lives to preserve it they who are not mark'd by destiny for Slaves may apprehend In this servil condition to have kept us still under hatches he both resolves heer to the last and so instructs his Son As to those offerd condescensions of Charitable connivence or toleration if we consider what went before and what follows they moulder into nothing For what with not suffering ever so little to seem a despicable scism without effectual suppression as he warn'd him before and what with no opposition of Law Goverment or establisht Religion to be permitted which is his following proviso and wholly within his own construction what a miserable and suspected toleration under Spies and haunting Promooters we should enjoy is apparent Besides that it is so farr beneath the honour of a Parlament and free Nation to begg and supplicat the Godship of one fraile Man for the bare and simple toleration of what they all consent to be both just pious and best pleasing to God while that which is erroneous unjust and mischeivous in the church or State shall by him alone against them all be kept up and establisht and they censur'd the while for a covetous ambitious sacrilegious faction Another bait to allure the people is the charge he laies upon his Son to be tender of them Which if we should beleeve in part because they are his Heard his Cattell the Stock upon his ground as he accounts them whom to wast and destroy would undoe himself yet the inducement which he brings to move him renders the motion it self somthing suspicious For if Princes need no Palliations as he tells his Son wherfore is it that he himself hath so oft'n us'd them Princes of all other men have not more change of Rayment in thir Wardrobes then variety of Shifts and palliations in thir solemn actingsand pretences to the People To try next if he can insnare the prime Men of those who have oppos'd him whom more truly then his meaning was he calls the Patrons and Vindicators of the People he gives out Indemnity and offers Acts of Oblivion But they who with a good conscience and upright heart did thir civil duties in the sight of God and in thir several places to resist Tyranny and the violence of Superstition banded both against them he may be sure will never seek to be forgiv'n that which may be justly attributed to thir immortal praise nor will assent ever to the guilty blotting out of those actions before men by which thir Faith assures them they chiefly stand approv'd and are had in remembrance before the throne of God He exhorts his son not tostudy revenge But how far he or at least they about him intend to follow that exhortation was seen lately at the Hague now lateliest at Madrid where to execute in the basest manner though but the smallest part of that savage barbarous revenge which they doe no thing elsbut study contemplate they car'd not to let the world know them for profess'd Traitors assassinatersof all Law both Divine and human eev'n of that last and most extensive Law kept inviolable to public persons among all fair enemies in the midst of uttermost defiance and hostility How implacable therefore they would be after any termes of closure or admittance for the future or any like opportunity giv'n them heerafter it will be wisdom our safety to beleeve rather and prevent then to make triall And it will concerne the multitude though courted heer to take heed how they seek to hide or colour thir own fickleness and instability with a bad repentance of thir well-doing and thir fidelity to the better cause to which at first so cherfully and conscientiously they joyn'd themselves He returnes againe to extoll the Church of England and againe requires his Son by the joynt autority of a Father and a King not to let his heart receive the least check or disaffection against it And not without cause for by that meanes having sole influence upon the Clergy and they upon the people after long search and many disputes he could not