contrary to above 30 Acts of Parliameat The King himself protesting against it as far as Oxford by his publick Proclamation as engaging the takers in Acts of high Treason Doth our Leaguer think that when 290 Voices are taken away out of 600 that the remaining part hath as great a power as when they were all together Or doth he think that the Kings silence or his Protestation doth not adde or diminish the authority of the thing sworn But I must needs say indeed l See Croftons Berith-Anti-Baal p. 51 Suppositions are sufficient supports to a man of fancy who all along this Discourse plays at Bo-peep begging what must never be granted while his Nose is between his eyes which I leave him to see at large his ignorance and folly his seditious and treasonable Principles against His Gracious Sovereign § 37. Crofton citing out of his Analepsis p. 12. That the two Houses of Parliament are Co-ordinate and Sharers in the Legislation of England and the Bishop asking p. 148. What and can they legally exercise this power without yea against the Kings consent being out of his nonage and not out of his wits This furious offspring of Smec cries out p. â—9 That they may do it without the Kings consent none do or can deny it common practice with the peoples constant obedience doth plainly manifest it as also the Protestation of May 1641. never doubted as to the validity of Authority which you say was precarious but Resolves of the House declare to have been Authoritative The Votes Resolves Orders and Ordinances of one or both Houses do proclaim it And the Priviledges of Parliament That the King can take no notice of what is debated or voted ordered or acted by them until it be by themselves formally presented unto His Majesty And the very nature of Co-ordinate power if the Doctor understands it with their Actings in case of his absence by minority or otherwise doth determine it As to the exercise of it against the Kings consent I shall conclude nothing but commend Mr. Prynn's Sovereign Power of Parliaments to your serious study And the Legislative power of their Votes Debates Resolves Orders or Ordinances were never gainsaid by His Majesty O Lump of wickedness and sedition What do or can none deny that the Two Houses may exercise that Vtopian Fiction their fancied imaginary Legislative power without the Kings consent Why is your lawless Assertion so true think you that it is past all contradiction Alas poor Presbyter why do you hug up your self so in your own delusions It s pity you should go on uncontroul'd in your wild positions and therefore I le try for once what I can say against it Are the Two Houses any better then the Kings Subjects If you say otherwise the Law affixes the deserved name of Traytor upon your forehead Can they convene and assemble together in the House without the Regal Summons Are they any more then the Kings own creature Can they stay one minute there when met together to debate or consult of any thing without His Majesties free leave Can the creature do any thing what he please without the Creators consent Suppose they should as your Long-Parliamentidol did reproach their Sovereign maintain five trayterous Antimonarchists in their treason and villany hatch a Conspiracy and bring forth Rebellion cannot the Creator have so much power over his forlorn creatures as with the breath of his mouth immediately to command their speedy departure by a dissolution Oh Crofton Crofton beware of the perjurious consequence and stop your mouth left the Ax for your treason make no difference between your own and those heads of your fellow-rebels on London-bridge But this is a Scotized Assertion an opinion of m See Bish Garden 's Anti-Baal-Berith p. 151. Seminary Presbyters who have been the Protoplasticks of a rebellious generation both in Church and State agreeable to their all along rebellious practises by vertue of their legislative power which our profound Lawyer saith they have and which they may he averrs exercise without the Kings consent and so by consequence they may rebel against their Head kill and murther His loyal Subjects imprison and impoverish others take away His Imperial Dignities and Pre-eminences from Him seize upon His Forts Ports Magazines and Towns and plague and oppress their fellow-English-men by seizing on their goods and estates how and in what proportion and maner they please send armed men through perjury to fight against their lawful Sovereign leave out the defence of his person out of their Commissions impose what cursed Leagues and Covenants they please all actions of high treason by the known Laws of this Land without His Majesties consent sell and imprison Him until He agree to their imperious humors and demands and Christen their Actions too like a pack of dissembling false hypocrites with the title of Reformation Loyalty Advancing the Glory and promoting the kingdom of Jesus Christ yea play the devil for Gods sake and all this they claim a right and lawful authority to do by force and vertue of their Idoliz'd Diana their new Goddess lately come down from Jupiter their phanatick frenzical whimsie of Legislative power And because these things have been done and justified with impudence beyond example by n See Presbytery Popish not Episcopacy p. 6. a Tumultuary Rabble that pretended to be a Parliament and their graceless adherents therefore this Leaguer concludes the Lawfulness of the Act done and the Justifiableness of re-acting the same again But A facto ad jus non valet argumentum is an old and a true Position To argue from the Action done the lawfulness thereof becomes a subtile Sophister a Trappanner and Cheater more then a sound Scholar or a Disputant As for the Two Houses Legislative power so called or their Co-ordinacy therein with their by them sworn ONELY Supream Governour I have said so much already concerning that grand delusive Cheat and Fiction that a question will now be enough against it How can the two Houses be affirmed by any having regard to the Rules and Customes of the Realm to have the whole or a Co-ordinacy or share in that which the very Prologues to the Acts and Statutes denies them to have any right or claim to either in Possession or Reversion As for the Protestation I told you before Silence gives consent and his Majesties suffering such a thing to be done by them under his nose without a Prohibition argues plainly his Tacit fiat to it but yet proves not at all their supposed Legislative power or Coordinacy in the same with their Head nor the legality of their exercise of it without the Kings consent It 's true the Bishop tells you It was precarious and personal upon this just Ground and Foundation o P. 278. That the two Houses had not power to make or take or impose any Oath contrary to the Laws of England which they were trusted to observe
Parliament was to raise Credit for three purposes That those ends were ended take away the end and the means thereto are to no purpose and therefore the three ends of the Act being determined it agreeth with Law and Reason the Act should end the Law rejecting things unprofitable and useless That the Writ of Summons was the Basis and Foundation of the Parliament that those men would be called a Parliament having abated quashed and made nothing of the Writ whereby they were Summoned and Assembled that if the Writ be made void the Process is void also That that house must needs fall where the Foundation is overthrown that Sublato Fundamento opus cadit the Foundation being taken away the work falls is both a Maxime in Law and Reason And let him but seriously meditate on the Arguments used by the learned Author of the Royalists defence to prove that The persons at Westminster who call themselves the Parliament of England are not the two Houses nor so much as Members of the Parliament and then tell me whether he is of Drakes minde still That the Long-Oppressive Tyrants are yet in continuance and not legally dissolved by their cursed Regicide Nay Mr. Prynne himself whom he stiles by an Emphasis That Profound Lawyer is clearly against him and Drake too not onely holding with Judge Jenkins their Legal dissolution by the Kings Martyrdom but also tells us That the Kings Personal absence from his Parliament heretofore and of late was reputed very prejudicial to it and his calling away some Lords great Officers and other Members from it in his life time a high way to its present Dissolution which also gives a Bastinado and word of Correction to Croftons frantick denial of the Kings Presence or his absence to add or abstract to the Authority of Parliament Mr. Prynne Lawyer-like tells us also in another place That the Act for the continuance of the Long-Perjured Treasonable Plotters and Contrivers of Murther Sacriledge Treason and Rebellion was made by the King as their Sovereign Lord Declaring and Enacting mark that and the Lords and Commons as joyntly assenting thereunto which absolutely confounds Croftons other Whimsie of the two Houses Supream Legislative power See his True and perfect Narrative Page 27 37. Buzze Buzze Mr. Crofton Where are you Do you honour a person so far as to adorne him with the Epethite of Profound and yet not believe him but go on in your simplicity breathing forth deceit the folly of fools when he hath done you the honour of a Profound Confutation Surely you minde so much his Sovereign power of Parliaments which he wrote in the time that his Zeal without knowledge had overpowred him because pleasant and delectable reading for your Seditious minde that you care not for considering his subsequent Treatises which be sent forth into the world when the Puritanical zeal began to leave him And thus Mr. Crofton supposeth the two Houses into a Non-Entitie as to their damnable Treasons and Enormous Practises by the temper they were then in by their being Parliament men and having some certain Priviledges which were not time after time answered by the Royal Grant to learn them Absaloms Trepan of Rebellion against their King with a Sacred Covenant betwixt their teeth nor yet to teach them to be unparellel'd Seditious Corah's under a visard and masque of Sanctity And thus he supposeth the two Houses into an Entitie as to their yet Legal continuance by vertue of their being animated by an express Statute Law which one openly averring to continue them yet in being was immediately sought after and caught and by an Order of the whole Body of the two Houses was Voted Seditious and his openly averring to be burnt by the New-turn'd Presbyter Doctor Dunne But Crofton hath another dart to shoot at the Bishops but it s so pittiful blunt and dull that let him aim never so well at his mark yet there 's no great fear of hurt to be received by it and what should it be but this And thus he i. e. the Bishop profoundly supposeth a Parliament swearing qua Parliament in the fullest formality and profession of their National Capacity was a personal Covenanting Say ye so The Bishop did but as you say plainly suppose the former but you tell us he doth profoundly suppose this latter And why pray now is it such a profound supposition Because the Bishop affirmes the swearing of the Absolonian Tribe the factious part of the Two bloody Houses without and against the consent of Majesty to be but a personal Covenanting for that the true English of the Bishops undeniable assertion T is a profound cavil indeed of yours I must confess Certainly the Bishop might well suppose your black Cabale into a non-entity by that one Law The Petition of Right as to their legal swearing without his Majesties consent as easily and truly as assert this irrefrageable proposition that the Body cannot act without the Head But because the prattles of a Parliament swearing qua Parliament as if he would out face the Sun with his mistakes and juglings I shall bring this subsequent counter-poyson as an Antidote against the venom infused by an ungodly seditious pack of Puritanical knaves into the peoples minds to keep them fast to themselves against their Prince with Treasonable delusive principles and that is first The Two Houses when every one met together and assembled in the House much less your remaining half of them are not a Parliament but onely a part thereof without the Kings presence or concurrence And secondly That this Belials brat the Covenant was sworn and taken by but a part of them too when the rest were like Loyal Subjects gone out of their bloody denns to the service of their Master and so the meaning of his words bears but this diminutive conclusion That the Covenant was taken and sworn but by a sad part of a part of a Legal Parliament which verifies the words of the learned Judge Jenkins That by the abuse and misunderstanding of this word Parliament you and your cross grain party have miserably deceived the people That the Bishop supposeth the swearing of the rotten putrified members the stinking part of a part of a rightful Parliament who were tainted above measure with Treason and Rebellion without the consent and concurrence therein of the Onely Supream Legislator to be but a personal Covenanting and what can we term a Covenant sworn without and against authority but personal and with the due Epethite Rebellious annexed unto it I am ready enough to grant you k See p. 51. of Crofton Book But that the Bishop doth any where affirm a Parliament swearing qua Parlialiament that is the King and all the Lords and Commons to be but a personal Covenanting Is the Sophistical groundless inference of him who knoweth the Bishop doth not so much as mention it but give a Presbyter an inch and he will be sure to take an ell If the King gives
23. of Jan in the first year of her Majesties Reign the Lords and Commons assembled by force of the same Writ the 21. day the Queen fell sick and could not appear in her person in Parliament that day and therefore Prorogued it until the 25. of the same month of January Resolved by all the Judges of England That the Parliament began not the day of the Return of the Writ viz. the 23. of January when the Lords and Commons appeared but the 25. of the said moneth when the Queen came in person What think you now Sir Presbyter You see the Queens presence and the reason of her absence was so far looked upon and esteemed in those daies in relation to the Authority of a Parliament that her absence but for two daies by the resolution of all the English Judges was enough to degrade them of their Parliamentary title till her Personal appearance amongst them gave them the denomination of a Parliament And unless this man can make it out That the late blessed Carolian Martyr had not the same place and Authority over these Nations as that noble Queen had the same Conclusion will follow upon his Assertion That the place of his Royal retirement and reason of his absence did so far add and abstract to the Authority of that which our Presbyterian Jugglers so often miscal a Parliament that they were neither Titular nor Real neither Name nor Thing without him For c See Lex terrae p. 51 the King is the head of the Kingdom and Parliament How then can a body act without a head There hath one long since told us to whom for knowledge in the Laws and Customs of the Realm our Caviller is not worthy to be compared That d Pag. 156 157. the two Houses are no more a Parliament then a body without a head a man Two Houses and a Parliament are several things Cuncta fidem vera faciunt all circumstances agree to prove this truth Before the Norman Conquest and since to this day the King is holden Principium caput finis the Beginning Head and chief end of the Parliament as appeareth by the Treatise of the maner of holding Parliaments made before the Norman Conquest by the Writ of Summons of Parliament whereby the Treaty and Parier in Parliament is to be had with the King onely by the Common Law by the Statute Law by the Oath of Supremacy taken at this and every Parliament it doth manifestly appear that without the King there can be no colour of a Parliament e See the Royal Buck ler p. 62. The two Houses saith Mr. Duncomb frame the body the King giveth the soul for without him it is but a dead Carcase Nay further saith the learned Judge in the Table of his Book concerning Parliaments This became no Parliament when the King with whom they should parley was driven away By what hath been said and many more instances that I could produce for this purpose I leave it to every understanding person to consider whether His Presence or his Absence without whom there can be no colour of a Parliament doth add or detract the Authority of Parliament And leaving Crofton to the just deserved censure and punishment of Majesty for his Rebellious Malignant Principles I shall proceed on to his next Arrogant and yet Ignorant pratling for his Seditious Vow and Covenant which hath been the cause of so many direful plagues amongst us § 34. Whatever the Libeller i. e. Dr. Burges his sweet-tooth'd Sacrilegious Brother did Mr. Crofton he f Pag. 37. saith allowed the Doctor this Text i. e. Numb 30. before mentioned in its Latitude and referred him to be judged by it and now granteth That the inferior in things not sui juris may have the action vowed superseded by the declared pleasure of the superior and that whether it be son or servant Doth he so Doth Mr. Crofton grant then the truth of the Doctors Arguments What doth he keep a kackling for then What doth he make such a buzzing then in the peoples ears with his perjurious Covenant Doth he first confess his Antagonists Arguments to be good by granting what the Doctor wrote for and yet set out another vain glorious discourse against them so far as to run into seditious principles to keep his faithful Covenant on foot Ay but in our case he then affirmed he said The Parliament sitting had over us a Legislative power to which we owed subjection They were in their National capacity the Nation Collective and sui juris and to be obeyed during their session by those whom they represented The Parliament What is that It is the King the Lords and the Commons saith the Covenant at the trial of the Regicide Harrison That the world may not be abused by the insinuations of a man who acts as if he had a spirit and in truth is possessed I will say saith his Majesties Learned Councel That the Lords and Commons are not a Parliament That the King and Lords cannot do any thing without the Commons Nor the King and Commons without the Lords Nor the Lords and Commons without the King especially against the King if they do they must answer it with their heads g See judge Jenkins Lex Terrae p. 80. The Lords and Commons make no more a Parliament by the Law of the Land then a body without a head makes a man for a Parliament is a body composed of a King their Head the Lords and Commons the Members All three together saith Judge Jenkins make one body and that is the Parliament and no other The Two Houses are not the Parliament but onely part thereof and by the abuse and misunderstanding of this word Parliament they have miserably deceived the people So then we see what is become of our zealous Presbyters Parliament consisting of Two Houses without a King for its clear by the preceding words he meanes them and them onely when he prattles of the Parliaments having a Legislative power over us Here we finde the judgement of the Reverend Judges and learned Sages of the Law to be cleerly against him and his Titular Parliament and telling us how the faction miserably deluded the people with the name when they were destitute of the true nature of a Parliament by applying it to them to whom it no more belonged then the title of a man appertaines to him who wants the conveniency of a Head As for their Legislative power It s huge like their empty title of Parliament and both Phantasmes of their own braines and that it may apppear to be such I shall bring in Croftons profound Lawyer Mr. Prynn in the front to bear witness against him for he tells us That h See his plea'gainst illegal Taxes p. 5. the Parliament Rolls and the Printed Prologues to the statutes of c. and names a great many run all in this form At the Parliament holden c. By the advice and assent
not break nor yet to abrogate or change without his Majesties consent And that the House of Commons have not power to require an Oath of any except perhaps of their own Members And you in opposition to him affirm That the Resolves of the House declare it to have been Authoritative very good I pray answer me then Was not the detestable Rebellion against the Carolian Martyr Resolved to be Authoritative too and O strange parcel of non-sense to be Loyalty and Obedience and in the then blinde Conscience of your profound Lawyer to be lawful and necessary both in point of Law and Conscience Was not their Votes of Non-Addresses to be made or had to or from their Supream Lord and Governour with its immediate attendant unmatchable perjury Resolved to have been Authoritative too Did they not Resolve all the Villanies Murthers Blasphemies Sequestrations Imprisonments and utter Ruine of his Majesty and his Noble Adherents and in fine all their Actions from beginning to end to be Authoritative too Was not his execrable and perfidious Murder Declared to have been Authoritative when that Perjured perjured perjured Infamous Lower House next door to Hell Declared and Adjudged 10. January 1648 for a New-years-gift to the Nation That by the Fundamental Laws which was the creator of the two Houses fictious Legislative power it is Treason in the King of England for the time being to levy War against the Parliament and Kingdom Was not the lawfulness of their Perjuries and violent Murthers Oppressions and lawless Actings Justified and Declared to be Authoritative too when by a couple of Trayterous Votes three daies after they had the impudence to tell the Nation 1. That themselves being chosen by and representing the people had the Supream power in the Nation and 2. That whatsoever was Enacted or Declared for Law by the Commons in Parliament hath the force of a Law and the people concluded thereby though consent of King and Peers be not had thereunto Alas Mr. Crofton It s not the Resolve or Vote of a Party much less of that dismal black Faction in the long Parliament that can make their Treason and Rebellion their Perjuries and Blasphemies their unparellel'd Murthers Violence and Oppressions seem the less wicked and abominable or pretend to be more lawful and Authoritative either by the Divine or English Royal Laws It is not the Thieves justification of his action that will any whit the more extenuate the nature of his horrid crimes nor the Turbulent spirit 's applauding his Faction and Sedition speaking evil of Dignities and declaiming against the Legal Supremacy of his Prince and then cry out with his Brother Jehu See my zeal for the Lord of hosts and think that all this while he is beating down the enemies of the Lord Jesus that will make his Rebellion less odious or his blinde zeal without knowledge to be ever a whit the more rewardable but the Laws of God and man must be the Touchstone the Judge to justifie or condemn their respective actions according to their different waies of obedience or neglect and refusal to obey So that to conclude this particular I say It s not the Resolves of the two Houses that will make that to be lawful and Authoritative which neither the Laws of God nor of this Land declare to be justifiable and blameless their Votes and Resolves you speak of do proclaim nothing else but their matchless Treason and Rebellion You tell us further That the Priviledges of Parliament That the King can take no notice of what is debated or voted ordered or acted until it be by themselves Formally presented unto his Majesty And the very nature of Co-ordinate power if the Doctor understands it What do you think the Doctor to be such a learned Coxcomb such a Legislative dreamer as your self that you question his understanding of a Co-ordinate power with an If with their actings in case of his absence by Minority or otherwise doth determine it What It doth it determine Oh! you mean I suppose your so much adored Diana the Legislative Fiction placed in the two Houses You are an egregious Arguer but like all the rest of the Scotized party arguing from the momentary prosperity of an execrable Rebellion the Legality of the Traytors actions and because in the contriving and devising of a Statute the two Houses have a Priviledge excluding the Kings taking notice of them till such time as it is finished and presented for the Royal assent for without that it s no Law Therefore this wilful Sophisticator concludes or would have others believe that from thence it follows by good consequence That the Rebellious two Houses after they had taken the Oathes of Allegiance and Supremacy which bound them to assist and defend the King against all his enemies might by vertue of their Legislative whimsie take and impose a Negative Oath and stoutly swear with Perjury in their brazen brows not to assist the Forces raised by their Gracious Sovereign for his own defence against his Rebels against the Treasons and villanies of themselves who had the face without his presence or consent to call themselves A Parliament That they might by vertue of such Priviledges raise a Rebellion and swear to extirpate the Legal established Government of the Church justifie their Members in their Conspiracies and mischiefs send armed men against their Prince to fight with and shoot at him and his Loyal Subjects and other Abominations not to be parellelled like their Matchless Covenant and all this without and against the Kings consent because as I have said they have a Priviledge to be free in their debates and consultations about the devising of a New or repealing of an Old Law without the Kings taking notice of it until such time as they present it to him for his Fiat Truely Sir Presbyter you are fitter a great deal to dispute with Females with a rod of Correction in your hand then to prate with a Reverend Prelate with such shallow arguments as these which discovers nothing else but the Authors folly on the one side as well as his high imperious spirit on the other As for their Co-ordinacy in the Legislative power which our godly Rebel jabbers so much of and their actings in case of his Majesties absence by Minority or otherwise which he fondly supposeth doth determine the truth of his bold frantick assertion If the I say so of himself will be taken for a sufficient proof thereof the business then I must confess is clear beyond any contradiction but that they cannot Legally act any thing for I do not come here to contradict the prosperous Rebels actions when they hold the murthering sword of lawless Treasons and murthers in their hands instead of the sword of Justice but I say that they cannot Legally act any thing in the time of the Regal Minority without a Protector nor in the interim of his absence without Deputed Nobles under the great Seal both which are purposely
the personal consent of the King as they must certainly have if what Croftons dreaming fancy suggests to him be true That they have the Supream Legislative power is such a ridiculous Bull as never was heard or thought of until this frantick Parliament Therefore when either or both Houses without the King take upon them to make Laws they extend beyond the bounds of their Commission they thereby act of their own head not as Representatives And as he saith in another place * p. 109. These things are done by the Members not in their Politick but in their Natural capacities they are not Acts of Parliament but unlawful Facts of Parliament men Thus that Author If he be King of a kingdom saith g Mr. Duncomb then all the people joyntly or severally in his kingdom are under his command and if under his command then he onely hath power to give them Laws be they in one Collective body as in Parliament at the Kings House or Simple bodies at their private dwellings Le Roy fait les Leix avec le consent du Seigneurs et Communs et non pas les Seigneurs et Communs avec le consent du Roy Is the voice of the Common Law the King makes Laws in Parliament with the consent of the Lords and Commons and not the Lords and Commons with the consent of the King Virg. 7. Aeneid Hoc priami gestamen erat cum Jura vocatis More daret Populis And 5. Aeneid Gaudet Regno Trojanus Arestes Indicitque forum patribus dat Jura vocatis The Lords and Cowmons have power onely to propound and advise it is onely the Kings Le Roy le vieult which makes the Law their Propositions and advice signifie nothing if the King saith Le Roy se Avisera It would be strange if the Assembly of the Subjects together should make them Masters over their Sovereign who gave them power to assemble and hath power to turn them home again when he pleaseth Legum ac Edictorum probatio aut publicatio quae in Curia vel Senatu fieri solet non arguit imperii Majestatem in Senatu vel Curia inesse saith Bodin De Repub. lib. 1. cap. 8. The publishing and approbation of Laws and Edicts which is made ordinarily in the Court of Parliament proves not the Majesty of the State to be in the said Court or Parliament It is the Kings Scepter which giveth force to the Law and we have no Law but what is his will Thus far he That there is enough already cited to prove that all our Presbyters prating about the two Houses Co-ordinacy and share and yet their Supremacy too in the Legislative power * Observe this puddle of Treasonable Lawless contradictions but Sharers in a thing and yet Supream which admits of no Co-ordinacy are meer nullities as King James told Cardinal Perron h See his Defence of the Right of Kings p. 14. upon another account Chimerical projects matters of a floating imagination and built upon false pre-suppositions is evident enough to my shallow understanding whatever it may be to those of deeper reach and unless Mr. Crofton thought he should meet with none but Notorious blockheads * P. 195. more blunt witted then a Whetstone as King James tells the Presbyters Compeer the Cardinal upon the Common account for the Popes and Discipliniarians power over Kings he would never have endeavoured to draw people to believe by his perswasion that the two Houses are not onely Co-ordinate and sharers but also rightful owners of the Supream Legislative power But that I may hasten to a final period of my discourse I shall in order thereunto consider Mr. Croftons ready consent to that Seditious Book which the Dreaming Author entitused The long Parliament revived set forth by his Sacred Malignant Brother Drake under the disguised name of Thomas Phillips which first implies the Seditious and Treasonable nature of the subject matter of it and his being ashamed or at lest fearful to own or avow by setting his right name to it And then Secondly his carrying on his Factious ends and purposes with colourable pretences of Loyalty according to the constant practise of the Covenanting Party i See Pres. bytery Popish not Episcopacy P. 7. The credit of whose false Doctrine is well enough known from Dan to Beersheba was the very leaven wherewith the people were first moulded into a sour lump of armed malice against their Sovereign for he knew well enough nothing could be more destructive to his Majesties interest then that Pestiferous Pamphlet he then set forth which being Examined by the Lords and Commons in Parliament in the moneth of November 1660. was found as the Journal saith to be Scanda'ous and Seditious and a charge by them ordered to be drawn up against the Author and the Book to be burned by the hand of the Common Hangman So easie and usual is it for Presbyters to gainsay the truth of what upon serious consideration of the whole loyal body of the Lords and Commons in Parliament was voted Seditious and to be burnt by the hands of Sacred Doctor Dunne the only Phisician for a certain infallible cure of a Covenanters brainsick disease of Sedition and Rebellion and yet so ready to brand others with the black mark of Malignant Popish vipers Illiterate Ignorant Injudicious Court Doctors and Lawyers and Anti-Parliamental Momusses who should so far dare to be honest as to resist a Covenanter in standing up in the defence of the good old English Laws and rejecting and disalowing of the Legislative power so called of the Illegal Arbitrary Votes and Orders of that unparellel'd Rebellious Faction in the two Houses of that Long Parliament which is so Seditiously affirmed to be Revived to embrew the Nation again in Treason and Rebellion in Murther and King-killing for the enlargement of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. As for his disloyal fancy of the Long-Parliament-Rebels continuance nothwithstanding the Murder of their Onely Supream Head and Governour let him but read Judge Jenkins at large proving before the Regicide what I shall give now but the heads of in brief k That the two Houses did not then act by the Kings Writ but contrary unto it and so their Acts were null That the Act for continuing the Parliament so long as both houses please is void because it is First Against Common right for thereby Parliament men will not pay their debts and they may do wrong to others Impune besides the utter destruction of all mens actions who have to do with Parliament men by the Statute of Limitations 21. Jac. Secondly Against Common reason for Parliaments were made to redress publick grievances not to make them Thirdly Impossible the death of his Majesty * For the King was then alive whom God long preserve dissolving it necessarily Fourthly Repugnant to the Act for a Triennial Parliament and to the Act for holding a Parliament once a year That the end of continuing that
Richard Gourney then Lord Major of London from his Office and put in a fiery persecutor of the Loyal Clergy whose name as one saith should more properly Isaac Pennington have been Julian in his place as well as others who they knew or suspected to be affectionate to the King and his Legal Cause and placed others of the most factious and seditious Covenanting Extirpaters in their rooms How they wrote their Letters to the French Protestants abroad and sent their Agents into all parts of the Nation at home desiring the one and requiring the other to joyn with and assist them How they set up a Disciplinarian Inquisition among us that cast out more Ministers in three or four years then all the Bishops had done in fourscore years before How before and after all this they wrote their Letters and sent their printed demonstrating declaratory Knacks to the King to disguise their actions That they had no ill meaning against His Majesty but had been and still remained his dutiful and loyal Subjects How yet by their leaguing together and prospering in their wickedness they came at last to a peerless act of Regicide of murthering their Sovereign before His own Palace windows Shall quickly and easily perceive that they were sworn Leaguers together in one and the same Cause of Extirpating Reformation and Covenanted Rebellion and yet both hypocritically pretending their Loyalty and Allegiance which manifests the Serpents art in beguiling people into the snares of wickedness and into the ways of impiety and profaneness and then showing his servants the way to delude others to disguise their Villanies with the shew of Godliness and their seditious actions with the vizard of faithful Obedience and Subjection for there is no more difference between our Covenanters here and their Deer Leaguing Brethren of France as to the main end and scope of their Leaguing Designs then there is between Guy Faux with his Myne and dark Lanthorn and Bradshaw and his execrable Confederates in Westminster-Hall both whose intentions we know well enough was clearly the Murther of Kings though upon different grounds The first endeavoring to blow up the Father for being too much an Enemy to the Popish Ribaldry and Massing Trinckets The latter actually cutting off the Son because they thought him in their cauterized consciences to be a Popish Tyrant but murther we see was the aim of both The world saith a See his Survey of the pretended holy discipline p. 7. Archbishop Bancroft now adays is set all upon Liberty Everyman almost is of their humour which thought scorn that any should be lifted up above the Congregation Numb 16 1. Crofton at least hath wedded himself to their murmuring fancy for Ecclesiastical parlty and is very well pleased with his confused thoughts of it or else we should certainly have never found him affronting his Episcopal Antagonist with his Jangling Discourse of Falshood and Sedition more particularly asserting this palpable whimsie against the general current of Venerable Antiquity viz. That b See p. 25. of his book that which was charged upon Aerius by Epiphanius for Heresie was an undeniable universal truth Knowing man Excellent Disputant that can daub over his own errors with the untempered morter of confidence and falshood There 's no meddling with such kind of people who with the men of China conceit two eyes to themselves and that leave all the rest of the world in arrant blindness No hopes of ever prevailing with fanciful creatures who will for no other reason but because they wil be in the right order and way and have voted all their Antagonists to lie and stick fast in a muddy ditch of error It s very strange to me I must needs say that an Ecclesiastical Historian should not know what he wrote at the same time he wrote it better then one of his Juniors at many hundred years distance that should at that time point blanck affirm That what he said was false but when men are resolved once to have their wills no Truth nor History must dare to controul them for fear of being taxed of speaking untruths But seeing its an Affirmation without proof 't is but answering No to his Ay and then where is he He hath a wish behinde still a request to the Bishop to ease him of his unprofitable unlucky pains which is this that follows I would Dr. Gauden would own Dr. Saunderson as his Dictator in the nature of an Oath he should not then so much need the Dictates of little Master Crofton It s Page 45. no marvel indeed Mr. Croftons Dictates are of such profound depth that the Dr. should want them to enlighten his understanding It s the unhappiest man one of them that ever I met with to bring Dictators to overthrow his own dictates I wonder what he can get by his Citation of such a Reverend Prelates Works What profit or advantage is there in those learned Writings for the upholding of his Covenanting Spell The Reasons of the University of Oxford declares him to be a person of admirable parts and himself to be a grand Antagonist against their sacred Covenant The Reverend Prelate cited by that faithful Royalist Mr. Roger L'estrange in his Holy Cheat tell us That no man can binde himself Page 35. in things wherein he is subject without leave of his Superior And again The Oath of one who is under the power of another without the others consent is neither firm nor valid Now unless our Presbyter can prove that a son or servant can do any thing without the Father or Masters consent That a part of the Two Houses who themselves were but part of a Parliament can lawfully i. e. by the Laws of God or this Land order and change the Affairs of the Church and thrust out and put in what and whom they please without the Kings consent the learned Dictates of that excellent Bishop clearly proves the nullity of the Covenant and the rottenness and weakness of Mr. Crofton's Dictates how imperiously soever they are ushered in with his I deny and I averr and such like examples of his brother the Scotch Confuter of the Learned Cardinal Bellarmin Dr. Gauden having affirmed He took no Oathes but those appointed by Law Crofton tells him c Page 63. He might reckon the Covenant to be of this nature And why so Pray Reader do but observe his pitiful reason for the Authority of Parliament is by the Petition of Right the legal appointment of an Oath And what then I cannot but laugh methinks at his folly and wonder how he keeps his proselytes in his nose how he leads them by the nose to believe his fooleries to be unanswerable The Petition of Right desired no Oath might be imposed upon the people of this Land but by Act of Parliament Ergo The Covenant imposed by an illegal Ordinance made by a part of a part of a Parliament is appointed by Law What a Non sequitur is here
that they have not endeavored to receive Christ in their hearts and are they fit to be Reformers of Religion and setters up of the ways and worship of our blessed Lord when they have not so much as endeavored to receive him in their hearts Doth the devil begin to make a Reformation of Christian Religion Do Atheists go about to set up Christianity What may we then expect the fruits of it to be but a dismal cloud of darkness and confusion which indeed doth suit well with these extirpating Leaguers Reformation they have made amongst us g See A Vindication of king Charles p. 88. such a one as Nebuzaradan steward to Nebuchadnezar made at Jerusalem when he threw down the walls both of the City and Temple They make it matter of humiliation it 's true that they have not walked worthy of him in their lives and is this Baal-berith the way to do it What shall we think of that man that shall out-face the Sun with his Treason and seemingly repent for his wicked courses and yet at the same instant swear to carry on his rebellion still A serious man will give judgement that such a one hath nothing to do with God or Christianity but is wholly possessed by an evil spirit which haunts him to his everlasting destruction And yet this is directly the case of our English Baalims of the Covenant they first raise a war which the Law of the Land calls Rebellion against the Kings evil Councellors to remove them from him which is absolute high Treason then pretend to humble themselves that they have not endeavored to receive Christ in their hearts nor walked worthy of him in their lives and yet in the very act of this feigned humiliation swear too that they wil zealously continue in such their filthy courses all the days of their lives was there ever such grand hypocrites and mockers of God since the world began among those that pretended a fear of his name as these Leaguers are The Scribes and Pharisees were but pigmies to them in this matter First pretend a sorrow for their sins and yet in the very act of their temporary repentance bind themselves by an oath to proceed in them as long as ever they can Go about to perswade some credulous heady mortals that they are very sorry they have not walked worthy of Christ in their lives and at the same time with their right hands lift up to the most high God swear to break his Laws and Precepts even to Rebel against their King to whom he hath commanded all men to yeild a due subjection and obedience and if that be the way to walk worthy of him Libera me Domine the Lord deliver me from any walking with them If the way to walk worthy of Christ be to turn Rebels and Traitors to the Prince we live under and out of pure love to God profane his Sanctuaries break his Laws and run directly counter to his sacred Precepts I know none that walked more worthy of God and of his Christ then the blind Jews on the one hand that ignorantly crucified our blessed Lord for a Blasphemer and the hellish wilful Regicides on the other hand that knowingly murthered his Anointed for a Tyrant For my part I am in such disorder of spirit whilest I am thinking upon their deceipts and juglings that I shall hasten as much as confutation of rebellion will permit to ease my self of their puddle of contradictions and for that end and purpose I shall proceed to the next that follows where I finde them to let fall these goodly expressions And are true and unfeigned how shall any man beleeve the truth of it purpose say they in publique and private in all duties we owe to God and man is to amend our lives and each one to go before another in the example of a Real Reformation § 12. Here 's a fair Protestation we see Plausible language again as the former to delude the hearts and minds of those that take up all things upon trust without any examination but every whit as much jugling in it as was in that which went before which will easily appear by a few more Queries which I thus set down Was it not a duty they owed to God to observe his commands And did not he command by the mouth of St. Paul That h Rom. 13. 1. every Soul should be subject to the higher powers which the oath of Supremacy and what another Apostle hath * 1 Pet. 2. 23. said doth plainly evident to be the Kings most excellent Majesty and that too under pain of eternal Damnation And was that a Real Reformation in the duty they owed to God to walk in opposition to his Injunctions Again for their duty towards man Let them remember the Case of the Earl of Essex in the time of Queen Elizabeth who in comparison of Edge-hill Battel gathered together but a handful of men nor was that Queen fought with as our late renowned Sovereign was nor her person in danger as the Martyrs was The Earl upon his Arraignment protested his intentions were onely to remove from the Queen some evil Councellors about her yet notwithstanding he raising force to do this without the Queens warrant his plea was not available but his action was judged Treason and he and his Adherents executed as Traytors for it Now mind Was our Leaguers fighting against the King for their declaring to fight for King and Parliament at the very same time when they sent Armed men against those where he was in person serves onely for a record and to eternize the memory of their damnable jugling and hipocrisie but I say Was their fighting against the King a real Reformation of their duty towards man Was their walking in the direct steps of the Trayterous Essex who left an ungrateful son behind him to follow the same curses with himself which was judged high Treason the going before one another in the example of a Real Reformation Was their actual i See judge Jenkins's Lex Terra p. 12. incountring such as came to ayd the King in his wars which is Treason too a Reformation of their duty towards man Was swearing to commit Treason a Real Reformation Observe Reader They confess themselves faulty in duty towards God and man for what do they talk else of a Reformation and then lest it should be thought to be feigned their purpose is they say but we have but their bare word for it to make a Real Reformation and what trow we is this Real Reformation of their default but swearing together to break the Laws both of the Sacred Canon and this land in the wilful actual proceeding on to the commission of Treason and Rebellion Thus their Reformation of their lives is so like that of Religion that it must needs proceed from one and the same treacherous mouth and jugling lips that are altogether used in this League for the advancing of falshood and depressing
irreverence How now Mr. Zechary Whereabouts are you What will you never leave fighting with the Sun never leave striving and presenting the people of this Nation with * See p. 18 of his book the foggy fancies of your own giddy brain and run away with them by your fluid and gliding tongue or discourse as if the state of your question were granted by understanding persons for the truth you crake hugely methinks but I doubt I shall marr your sport with what follows and to that end let me intreat this favour of your Kirkifi'd Holiness as to speak the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth to these few questions I have subjoyned here for an answer either from your self or godly partakers Doth the Bishop go about to debase and dethrone his Sovereign as to follow your religious pattern so far as to say any where in his learned Writings which you so much snarl at that * See his Preface to the Considerator consider'd The Common-Prayer Book was expelled by a lawful Authority which if it be not Treason as the Noble L'estrange saith in his Holy Cheat Scot and Peters were no Traytors Doth the Bishop talk any where of a See p. 51. of his book The Two Houses Supream Legislative power without His Majesty and so give the lie to the Oath of Supremacy and Laws of the Land which ascertains it to be the peculiar Prerogative of the King Or doth he in any of his Writings like you b Page 31. averr That neither the place of His Majesties retirement nor reason of his absence doth adde or abstract to the authority of Parliament Or fourthly Doth the Bishop any where bid His Majesty keep that damnable traiterous and seditious Oath called The Solemn League and Covenant and tell him He shall be delivered from that distress which Page 42. may too late engage His Majesty to send to you for sooth his faithful Monitor to pray for him Oh Mr. Crofton you are a notable fellow at feminine scourges feminine do I say I am a little too short there for male and female are both alike to you nay and not every ordinary one neither for the King himself must not be exempted from the distress you threaten him with for not performing of a bloody treacherous Oath but the best on 't is Curst Cows have short horns and its very fit you should be so short kept lest being left to your self you should be apt to stray out of the pathes of loyalty and obedience and get into the by-pathes of religious Rebellion and playing the devil for Gods sake pushing and goring at every one nay at your own Sovereign himself if he will not fulfil your whimsical humours It s like you would be good enough if you were but once throughly cleansed from the Kirkish leaven of Hypocrisie and Treason Sedition and Rebellion but till then they that trust to you and your party for exact loyalty and obedience will soon finde upon any opportunity for Tumults and Sedition that they have trusted to a broken reed to their own fancies and chimaeraes The Bishop might well fear I must needs confess and that most justly too to be made less by the head as guilty both of Treason and Sedition should he so confront his Prince and his Supremacy as to set down such treasonable seditious Affirmations as you have done but you Presbyters have been so always constant as Mr. L'estrange saith in his Holy Cheat to the rule and method of doing your own business in the Kings Name that you can plead your being His Majesties true Subjects at that very time when you your selves are debasing and disallowing of His legal Supremacy and so setting a fair step for the dethroning of him when your desired opportunities of doing mischief shall unhappily fall out for the performance of your Antimonarchical Consultations And now to conclude this particular I shall put his own question to him and all the godly Generation of Scribes and Pharisees Hath a gracious and I wish he be not in the mean while too merciful a King out of His own Princely Goodness passed an Act of Indempnity by which He pardons the long continued Rebellion begun by a Club of Running Lecturers as Mr. L'estrange calls them and their Adherents in 1642. against His Royal Father for the doing whereof He might by the Statute have cut off the heads as well as seized on the estates of hundreds of those primary Rebels who yet by the mercy of a Princely Patron of Episcopacy enjoy both the one and t'other I say hath a Gracious King out of His own sweet Christian Nature done this for you and your party to debase nay and dethrone him by your denial of His Supremacy and setting on foot the doctrine of the devil who was a Rebel and a Murtherer from the beginning § 30. Ay but saith Crofton * Page 29 30. Dr. Gauden being well considered will be found to be no less erronious in his Politicks then in his Ecclesiasticks So then who ever concludes for the truth of the Doctors Assertions in his Book he is by your heady suppositions adjudged to be one that hath not well considered them But we 'l see your reason for 't first before we believe you good Mr. Zechary and that is I perceive the Bishops true saying that The Hierarchy or Episcopacy is established by the Laws of England which you you say have in your Analepsis Analephthe denied At this rate its in vain to meddle with you That a mans expressions shall be true or false according to what they seem to be in your giddy brains That your Ipse dixit onely shall be proof enough to overthrow the arguments of your Reverend Antagonist But such things as these Mr. Zechary must not be allowed of and therefore the examination of your Denial will in this case be somewhat needful You say You deny that Episcopacy is established by the Law The more shameless man you to deny that which is so apparent For what think you of the very first Article of the Great Charter which is not onely declared to be the Common Law of the Land as I have already said but is confirmed by 32 Acts of Parliament which runs thus Salvae sint Episcopis omnes Libertates suae Let the Bishops have all their whole Rights inviolable What think you now Mr. Presbyter Is the Great Charter no Law or are Bishops and their Liberties expresly named in the very first Article and yet Episcopacy not established by the Laws of England What a grand Cheater is this high-flown Presbyter that shall have the face to condemn his Superiors and give them the Lie for speaking such a notorious truth as this That Episcopacy is established by the Laws of England § 31. But he 'l Print Errors and give a Reason for it when he hath done I do averr saith he like an arch Presbyter That the English laws finding Episcopacy conversant
of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and at the special instance and request of the Commons of the Realm our Lord the King hath caused to be ordained or ordained certain Statutes where the advising assenting to Laws is appropriated to the Lords the ordaining of them to the King and nothing but the requesting of and petitioning for them to the Commons Thus he Other Statutes saith i See his impartial inquiry into the nature of sin p. 211. See his Lex Terrae p. 26. the Reverend Doctor Peirce which have the force of Acts of Parliament are known to be directed as private Writs with a Teste Meipso And the Common stile of most others is found to run in this form The King with the advice of the Lords at the Humble Petition of the Commons Wills this or that where by the way take notice of the saying of Judge Jenkins That Consilium non preceptum Confiliarii non preceptores Counsel is not a command nor to be Counsellors is not to be Commanders So the form of passing Bills is still observed to be this Le Roy le vieult The King will have it And Soit fait il comme est desire Let it be done as t is desired plainly speaking by way of grant to something sought or petitioned for from whence saith he by some it hath bin gathered That Rogation of Laws doth rightly belong to the two Houses but the Legislation to the King that their Act is preparative his only jussive The Acts of Parliament saith the learned Mr Duncomb are called the King Laws And why not the Kings Laws Doth not he make See his Royal Buckler p. 306. 307 308. them The whole body and volumes of the Statutes proclaim the King the sole Legislator What is Magna Charta but the Kings Will and gift The very beginning of it will tell you t is no more viz. Henry by the grace of God c. Know yee that we of our meer and free will have given these Liberties In the self same stile runs Charta de forresta But wherefore evidences to prove that which no man can deny The stiles of the Statutes and Acts printed to the 1 of Henry VII are either the King willeth the King ordaineth the King provideth the King grants the King ordains at his Parliament or the King ordaineth by the advice of his Prelates and Barons and at the humble petition of the Commons c. But in Henry VII his time the stile altered and hath sithence continued thus It is ordained by the Kings Majesty and the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons in this present Parliament assembled And why do the Lords and Commons ordain Is it not onely because the King doth It is so they do because the King doth which onely denotateth their assent for the Kings Majesty giveth life to all as the Soul to the body For did ever the Lords and Commons make an Act without the King Never They cannot The Lords advise the Commons consent but the King makes the Law Their Bills are but Inanimate scriblings until the King breaths into their Nostrils the breath of life and so that which was mould before becometh a Law which ruleth living souls And as Sir Edward Cook observeth In ancient times all Acts of Parliaments were in form of petitions which the King answered at his pleasure Now if it be the duty of the Parliament to petition and in the power of the King to receive or reject their petitions at their will Judge you who hath the supream power Thus far he § 35. By what hath been said I leave it to any understanding person to judge where the Legislative power lies whether in the Two Houses who most humbly beseech His Majesty under the notion of dutiful and loyal Subjects for making new Laws Or in the King who grants their petitions makes the Law and ordains it to be observed who both by the Law and a Sacred Oath is declared and sworn to be the onely Supream Governor of the Land That there is no difference between a Son and Servant to his Father and Master and the Two Houses to the King is clear by one oath they took wherein they swear To bear true faith and allegiance to our Sovereign Lord the King and by the other they acknowledge cutting off all pretences of Co-ordination His Majesty to be the onely Supream Governor of the Land which implies His Lordship and Dominion over them And they in all their Addresses and Declarations stile themselves His dutiful and loyal subjects and so servants and in relation to the Kings stile of Pater Patriae may be very well called sons too And seeing the Two Houses imaginary Legislative power by the Laws of this Land is not able to impower and authorize them either to make new Laws or to repeal old ones without the Royal Consent of Majesty it clearly follows That their vowing to extirpate Bishops established by Magna Charta confirmed by 32 Acts of Parliament and irrepealable was not sui Juris it lay not in their power nor had no right to do it without His Majesties consent and so having not that according to Croftons own grant the Action vowed was superseded and might very well be so by His Majesties publick Proclamation his declared pleasure against the taking or imposing of it in regard it was a traiterous and seditious Vow and Covenant and therefore null and void to all intents and purposes But further our Leaguer affirms That § 36. Their power in this Covenant was no less Legislative then in the Protestation of May 1641. What doth he Jabber thus for of non entities of things that never had a being of a Legislative power in the Two Houses which they never had which neither Divine nor English Lawes ever gave them If I should for once allow of his non-sense and lawless Assertions yet I should spoil his sport there too for their power in the Covenant was not so Legislative I speak according to the Presbyters canting tone upon these grounds The Protestation was made and taken in the presence of all the Members of both Houses and giving their free consent it was confined to established Laws had a Parliamentary authority as it were by His Majesties deep silence though nigh at hand and thereby implying His tacit consent to the doing of it many thousands took it who yet utterly damned the wretched Covenant detesting it as the venome of hell and not without just cause But when by the Midwifery of Tumults and Armies this devouring Brat of Abiram was brought forth k See Iudge Jenkins Lex Terrae p. 126. All men know That of 120 Peers of the kingdom who were Temporal Peers before the Troubles there were not above thirty left in the Lords House and in the House of Commons about 200 of the principal Gentlemen of the kingdom left the Houses and adhered to His Majesty The Covenant it self destructive to the former directly