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A70973
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A declaration of the Commissioners for Visitation of Universities and for placing and displacing of ministers in Scotland, against praying or preaching for the pretended King of Scotland with some reasons given by some of the ministers of Edinburgh why they cannot in conscience omit to pray for him : together with an ansvver to the said reasons ... / by a friend to the Commonwealth.
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Scotland. Commissioners for Visitation of Universities and for Placing and Displacing of Ministers.; Friend of the Commonwealth. Answer to a paper intituled Some reasons why the ministers of Christ in Scotland ought not to be troubled for praying for the King.
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1653
(1653)
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Wing S1001; ESTC R14453
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13,157
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18
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pillars of this your practice of praying for the King whereby you offer to prove that it is your duty Which being not yet done we will put you into a way for the future by cutting out your work for you and laying open the true state of the controversie before you in a very few words If ever you wil prove therefore that it is your duty to pray for the King and no duty to pray for the Commonwealth you must prove these two things 1. That every subject ought not only to look at the visible existence but to be satisfied in his conscience about the title of the Magistrates that rule over him before he pray for them or yeeld subjection to them But contrary to this it hath been already proved from the Word of God that it is warrant enough to any mans conscience to pray for Authority and quietly to submit himself thereto if that he hath sensible assurance of his being in the hand thereof The Apostles word is {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} which signifies the powers that are in being But secondly when you have done this which in this Paper you do not once attempt which was a strange oversight you must also prove 2. That the King hath a just title to Authority here and that the Parliament hath no just title Now for this there are four allegations usuall 1. His birth-right 2. Acts of Parliament for him 3. The pretended injustice of the War against him 4. The Solemn League and Covenant These are the most usuall weapons of defence in this Cause But each of these must be maintained and made good by that un-erring rule of the written Word of God before they will overcome the understandings and convince the consciences of conscientious men Therefore if you have any thing to offer from the Word of God for the maintaining of them produce your cause saith the Lord bring forth your strong reasons saith the King of Jacob The Lord now calls you to bring it forth which till it be done we conceive 1. That birth gives no title to Magistracy That every beggars brat in the high-way upon that single consideration of his birth hath as much title to the Kingdom of Scotland as the children of Charles Stuart This conceit of a birth-right unto Magistracy unless that God confer a title upon such or such a family as he did upon David's is one of the blind principles of tyranny nourisht in mens consciences through Popish darkness and now that God is discovering the mystery of Antichrist and unravelling that whole web of Iniquity which is woven and made up of two threeds twisted together viz. civil and spirituall slavery he hath begun to discover this also If some families in the World had the faculty of begetting wise children and fit for government there were some colour of reason why their birth should give them a right viz. because it gives them a fitnesse to govern But we see that wise men beget fools But you will say Parliaments may intail the Crown and give a title to such or such a family though God by immediate designation do not But then you must prove this And then we add 2. That it may be proved both from the Scriptures and from common sense that it is both unlawful and impossible for any Parliament to make such an Act as shall bind the hands of their successors And the reason is this Because that no Humane wisdom is able to foresee all the future Inconveniences that may arise and therfore no Humane Constitution can be or ought to be unalterable The next Power may disannul it Therefore the King hath no title upon this accompt For the Commonwealth hath repealed those Acts. But if you say The Commonwealth doth not lawfully succeed your Parliaments then 3. You fall upon the business of the War which if you will undertake you have many difficult things to prove and that under the heavy disadvantage of a contrary testimony from Heaven whereof one is this that that man had some rights in England For this was part of the quarrell whereas we know that he had no Rights there neither by the Word of God nor by the Laws of our Land And therefore the War was just For the English Army did not march a step against you though there were other just provocations till your Commissioners had patcht up the businesse with him at the Hague asserting I know not what pretended Rights of his in England But 4. If you will needs be tryed by the Solemn League and Covenant a weapon at which you seem to be very expert we must then cut you out some more work viz. 1. To prove that your sense is the true sense of it 2. If you prove that then you must prove that the Covenant it self was a lawfull thing when you have justified your disobedience to Authority by the Covenant you must then justifie the Covenant it self by the Word of God We perceive that many who talk much of the Covenant understand it no better than those Highlanders who having summoned a Castle and being asked in whose name they summoned it they answered In the Name of the Solemn League and Covenant And truly they seem to us to understand it little better who say We are tied by the Covenant to resist the Power that ruleth over us to inforce your Presbyterian way upon the whole Nation of England to preserve from justice that grand Delinquent who slew with the edge of the sword so many thousand innocent persons For he shed innocent blood very much till he had filled the streets of Jerusalem from one end to another and the whole Land therewith in all the Cities and Coasts thereof besides his sin in building up again the high places in rearing up altars for Baalim But by this time you see your work and what you must prove if every you will justifie your present wayes before God or men And yet we must tell you once more That when you have proved all the rest you have proved nothing if you leave out the first as you have done in this your Paper And now to proceed to the rest of it That one passage only seems worthy of most particular Animadversion where you think fit to mention your peaceable and quiet deportment and that you have in no wise stirred up the people to tumults and seditions which if it be a true and sincere profession fame hath done you very much wrong But are not prayers for the King under that name and notion of King under such designations of him and in such expressions and petitions for him as may insinuate your respect towards him to the people for else why did you alleadge your Oaths and Covenants which you say bind you to him as your King if you put up only such modest and innocent petitions for him as may suit any wicked man in affliction And are not complaints of a strange power in your
casus confessionis Then to adhere to the Authority of Divine Precepts is a necessary testimony to the truth and doth oblige them more than ever unless we would obey men rather than God Fourthly Ministers of the Gospel are the Ambassadors and Servants of Jesus Christ from whom they have their Commission which may not be lâ—mited nor altered by any power on earth For if in one duty earthly powers can alter or limit they may aswel do it in moe And if they may prohibit a duty they may also command that which is no duty and so render us the servants of men in matters of God An ANSWER to a PAPER Intituled Some REASONS why the Ministers of Christ in Scotland ought not to be troubled for praying for the King and wherefore we cannot in conscience omit that duty THat Concession in the beginning of your Paper That the Almighty hath put you under the hand of another Power is remarkable But how well this acknowledgment doth accord with that practice of adhering to the Power which the same Almighty hand hath removed is not apparent The Question is not Whether you may pray concerning him either for or against him in a Christian way as that GOD would shew mercy to his Soul and give him pardon of sin and repentance under that stupendious guilt of innocent blood which lyes both upon him and upon his Fathers house and that in the judgment of your very selves and that GOD would humble him under those dreadfull appearances of God against him in rejecting him from reigning over his people But whether you may pray for him as King of Scotland and put up those favourable requests on his behalf which tend to preserve a precious and religious remembrance and observance of Him in the Peoples minds This is the manifest scope and sense of the Declaration which he that runs may read Now for this you say We shall first offer to wipe away that aspersion of pertinacy and next shew the grounds which do fix us to this necessary duty For answer whereto we shal first remove the grounds whereby you labour to prove that this is your duty and then leave you to wipe off that aspersion of pertinacy if any lay it on you as well as you can For if the course be warrantable to persist therein is constancy but if it be not warrantable it must needs be called by some other name Now for the grounds and warrants of Conscience whereupon you walk in this practice you offer four whereof indeed only the two first are arguments to prove the conclusion that you ought to pray for the man whom you call King but the two last seem rather to be inferences from it if they be any thing The two first are these which we joyn together because the same answer fits them both 1. We look upon this performance as a duty not onely injoyned in the Word of GOD and established by the Law of the Land in the Directory for Worship confirmed by Acts of Parliament but also as bound upon our own consciences with our own consent both in the Nationall and Solemn League and Covenant wherein he also hath entred with us and therein not onely our own consciences but also the whole world are called on to witnesse with GOD to whom the Oath is made to our reality sincerity and constancy in performing our duty 2. This obligation hath a new tie on our consciences to this individual person by the oath sworn by the representative of the land in our name when the civil securities unto Religion and the Interests of Christ in his Ordinances were confirmed to us by his Oath as well as by Law To these in four words 1. Whereas you alledge the Word of God we are most intirely willing to submit this whole Controversie to the alone determination thereof judging it most unmeet that things of mans making should stand cheek by jowl with the Word of God But because you point us to no place thereof we wil point you to one or two wherein that word commandeth subjection to and prayers for the powers that are in being Rom. 13 1. Let every soul be subject to the higher powers for there is no power but of God 1. Tim. 2. 2. Let prayers be made for Kings and for all that are in authority Wherein he seems directly to obviate prevent any scruple that might arise about the justnesse of their Titie by pointing them so plainly to the actuall existence of powers For they all knew that the power which then ruled the world was set up by a world of blood and Nero the present Emperour as wicked a Tyrant as ever lived but yet to submit to him and to pray for him being under his power was not in the Apostles judgement any justification of the unwarrantable acquisition of his power And the Jewes are commanded to pray for the peace of Babylon when they were in the hand of the Babylonians Jer. 29 7. But you are in the hand and under the power of the Parliament and therefore you ought to pray for them for in their peace you shall have peace But he whom you call King is not King He never exercised any kingly power on this side the water and now he exerciseth none in the other part of Scotland therefore he is not King If it be said that by the Word of God he ought to be King let it be shewed where the Word of God hath intayled the Kingdom of England or Scotland upon the Family of the Stuarts 2. For the Law of the Land and Acts of Parliament for him we wonder you should speak of these having been long since annulled by the Authority of the Commonwealth And how an Act of any authority can bind and be in force when there is no authority that wil maintain it is to us a riddle Your Countreyman Mr. Knox who was as zealous against Tyrants as you are for them and did help the Grandmothers head to the same block upon which the late King lost his He tels Queen Elizabeth that she had no warrant of conscience to rule the Nation of England neither from her birth nor from any consuetude Laws and Ordinances of men and that if she stood upon that the Almighty would cut her off but from the providence of GOD calling her to that place of power who ruleth in the Kingdoms of the Earth and giveth them to whomsoever he will 3. For your Oaths and Covenants to him or to his fathers house for there is the same reason of both they were either absolute that he should be King whether GOD would continue him or no or else conditionall that you would submit to him unlesse and untill the over-ruling wisdom of God should pul him down and set up another power in his place If they were conditionall the obligation is void because the providence of God hath actually dispossessed him But if they were absolute what warrant is there in the