other inferior made without the knowledge of Father Husband or Superior should be at the pleasure of the Superior confirmed or made void Ergo this unsacred Covenant being taken without the consent or knowledge of our Regal Superior or as the Bishop alledges by the †See the 144 page of his book Subjects of England who were by Law and Oaths inferior to and dependents on the King obliged to duty and allegiance by his open Proclamation against it according to that Scripture is frustrate void and of none effect but ingenuons Arguings would have quite and clean spoiled the design of such a * Page 232 Sophistical Caviller and therefore he craftily forbore the pursuit of true Disputations not quarrellings and envious cavillings with his Reverend Adversary lest thereby his k 2 Tim. 3. 9. See p. 10. of Croftons book folly should have been made manifest to all men yea even to his Presbyterian proselytes who are pleased with a sound against the Bishops book and consider not the certainty of it and are ready jurare in verba Presbyteri be they never so groundless with whom the Say-so of a godly Presbyter is esteemed a sufficient reason of their Faith And yet the man thinking how bravely he had drawn the Bishops Arguings to serve the base ends of his own vain talking he presently begins to crow and vapour and cries out of a Syllogism Currens quatuor pedibus running of four feet and tells his Readers a Tale of a tub a story of his godly Brethren the Jesuits Conference at Ratisbone who just like his own Argument here against the Bishop set down thus their profound Determinations of the Articles of their Faith Qui negat articulum fidei est hereticus sed hereticus est qui negat Tobiam habuisse Canem Ergo just like our matchless Disputer sequitur articulum esse fidei quod Tobias canem habuerit He that denies an Article of Faith is an heretick But he is an heretick that denies Tobit had a dog Therefore it follows that it is an Article of Faith that Tobit had a dog Not considering that in his Parallel he fights with nothing but his own shadow that he utters his minde for the disgracing and vanquishing of no body but his own dear self not at all of the Bishop who hath no such rotten Arguments in all his Book And that we may perfectly see the mans design in Writing even to fill up his Book with cavilling he tells us in his Preface side 3. of the Bishops writing Mr. Grafton as if he should answer Dr. Gaudie when as one that could not reade he takes no notice of what the Bishop had set down at the latter end of his book to read Crofton for Grafton through the whole Discourse If his eyes were so dim he could not see it he should have said so and then I should have done my best to have got a clear pair of Spectacles for him that he might by that means have read what the Doctor had said for him to correct as well as others seeing he was one of his Readers but alas he wanted somewhat to say to fill up his Preface and therefore sets down this for a part of it to make appear his invincible ways of disputing His quotations of the Bishops words are such that besides those imperfect un-scholar-like ones I have already set down there are no less then fifteen or sixteen several other quotations which are either imperfect like the former or else absolute false ones as upon a true examination I have found them and such as leads his Readers into a wilderness for to see the truth of them but I consider his cavilling Discourse was made in a great deal of haste and his mad-brain'd tricks have made his Book good for nothing but to be the subject of some mens laughter and indignation for my part Mr. Crofton I * See the 8. page of his book will excuse you for your wrong imperfect false quotations though not for your Antimonarchical seditious Principles and Assertions up and down your Book if your very friends do not with blame to you say You are come a great deal too soon and have verified the old proverb upon your self The more haste the worst speed And truly I am afraid it had been better for your outward and inward safety both that your Book had been like the Bishops which you madly profess and say contrary to the judgements of many sober understanding men l Page 5. whosoever in his right mind doth but read will finde it a Rudis indigestaque moles a meer Chaos of Confusion where by the way whosoever is not of the same judgement therein with you is censured to be out of his wits like your self whose Wits run a wool-gathering rather then that which you are pleased to stile methodical exceptions which denies the onely Supremacy of the King It s but a sad merriment to play with edge-tools to laugh at your Adversary with Rebellion in your mouth and if the mercy of our most Gracious Sovereign prevent not which I know no reason in the world for you will finde it so to your cost before you are let loose from the reins of your Just deserved Imprisonment § 24. Again the Bishop said pag. 196. That he peremptorily determines that the King Lords and Commons have no prudent moral religious and lawful power to change an ancient universal and excellent Government by Bishops To any that is AS new and Schismatical SO far worse and unsutable to England every way Christian Kings and their Parliaments are obliged to the Laws of God and Rules of Christian Piety and Polity too of which the whole Church in its Primitive example and constant custom is the best interpreter As no Legislative power is impowered by Gods Laws to bring in Heresie and Error and Superstition so nor Schism Faction or Confusion by causelesly nuding or taking from the Essentials of sound Doctrine or Christian Communion ever owned and maintained in the Church of Christ Here 's the Docters whole sentence word for word as I took it out of his own Book and not as its mangled by our Presbyters paultry delusive false quotation where he makes the words run thus Doctor Gauden peremptorily determineth That Parliaments Kings Lords and Commons have no Prudent Moral Religious and lawful Authority to change the Ancient Universal and excellent Government by Bishops for Christian Kings and Parliaments are obliged c. leaving out those words of the Doctors which made his learned Assertion unanswerable and true beyond any sound contradiction which are these To any that is AS new and Schismatical SO far worse and unsutable to England every way that so his own arguings might thereby appear the better and sound more pleasingly to the ears of his factious brethren a practise somewhat like unto one that pictures a man with the greatest deformity of body he can for no other end but to make his
hath once read and reading well considered the Primates Fair Warning to beware and take heed of this Scottish Cockatrice he will find cause enough to perceive a vast contradiction between the Protestation and this Yea and as different a sound between them both as there is betwixt two bells in a steeple and so by good consequence see too the horrible impiety of their solemn League and Covenant The Protesters vow too according to the duty of their Allegiance to maintain and defend His Majesties Royal Person Honor and Estate without any cursed destructive Limmittation of that defence All which are diminished decreased and taken away by Sir Johns Holy League which therefore can admit of no accord between them The late Carolian Martyr in his discourse upon the covenant professes he could not c See Eikon Basilike See how they wil reconcile such an innovating observe that O Leaguer oath and Covenant with that former Protestation which was so lately taken to maintain the Religion established in the Church of England since they count discipline so great a part of Religion But if all that hath been said cannot which in my weak judgement hath sufficiently prove the opposition of the one to the other That there is a great deal of difference between them may be easily perceiv'd by his Majesties deep silence when the Protestation was taken under his nose as we use to say when they were hard by him at Whitehal as well as by his Publick Printed proclamation as far as Oxford against the taking of that Seditious and Traiterous Vow and Covenant as he called it in the day he heard thereof and his prohibition of all people upon their Allegiance not to swear it as ingaging the takers in Acts of high Treason yea and by the late order of the Lords and Commons for the Hangmans burning of it when they did not so much as mention the Protestation which if it had agreed with the Covenant sure enough those Loyal Houses would never have suffered it to have lain still but had sent them both one way together Upon consideration of all that hath now bin said by way of evidence to prove the great contradiction between the two Legal Sacred Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance the Protestation and this jugling League and Covenant for my own part I cannot but submit to the Primates truth d See his Fair Warning p. 31. That this Covenant is neither valid nor lawful nor consistent with our former oaths but deceitful invalid impious rebellious and contradictory to our former ingagements and consequently obligeth no man to performance but all men to repentance And therefore the difference being so great between them I appeal to any Casuist living whether the former must not be kept as well as the latter rejected the one stood to and maintained for fear of its true consequence Perjury as well as the other to be renounced and disclaimed for the very same cause by those that took any of the three former and so according to the exhorting Leaguers own words it calls for repentance and not pertinacy in it which makes also palpable and manifest the great necessity and justness of that memorable Vote of the two now most Honorable Houses when out of a noble disdain to all Religious Rebellion and Seditious Leaguing principles as well as out of a true fear of God and the King they ordered this Presbyterian Scotland whore to be burnt by the hands of Smectymnus the common hangman § 18. Having now gone through this peerless Covenant and proved as far as my poor understanding enables me to see the great sinfulness thereof both in the form and matter of it and also its jugling contradictions in it self as well as its absolute opposition to former Legal Oaths and so by consequence undeniable the great necessity of every takers sad and serious repentance renuntiation and abhorrence thereof I shall desist from saying any more now of it but shall from hence proceed to the consideration and examination of a certain seditious Paper-book entituled BERITH ANTI-BAAL set forth by one ZECHARY CROFTON a Presbyter of the Right stamp whose contradictions and shallow Arguings therein against the reverend Lord Bishop of Exeter made it so much the fitter task for me to set down my Animadversions on it I know indeed the man is looked upon as the Diana of the party amongst the Brethren and the ablest to deal with such unlearned Ceremonialists as the short-sighted proselites Judge the Profound Episcopalians how learned soever they be But certainly they are either deceived in their Judgements of his parts or else the man was so hampered with what the Bishop replyed to him that as he affirmes of the Bishop in this Rejoynder of his e See the fifth side of his preface Having loosed from the Haven of Reason true Religion and the fear of God he runs a drift wherever the wind of his own words can hurry him and leades his Reader into a Wilderness where he hears no sound but the shrieks of Satyrs barking and howling of beasts at best raging and rayling of men or wild and improper discourses that tend to no certain end For in my judgement which is none of the wisest I am sure but nevertheless what I write I commend to the censure of the impartially Judicious this book of his for a great part thereof contains nothing but sedition and justification of rebellion to the debasing of the Regal Supremacy power of making Laws or of giving his consent thereunto for Crof ton tell us the two Houses may exercise their Legislative power without the Royal consent and sneaking away from the question in hand like a meer shifter and acting in some places the part of a pitiful Caviller And by that time I have set down what I have to say of it I leave it to every Readers judgement to make answer whether it be not so in his And to that end and purpose I shall set down what in my short cursory perusal of the Book I found worth taking notice of to be answered He good man in a fit of piety cries out The Lord deliver me from rendring railing for railng And yet to Page 8. give the world a specimen of his breeding and manners and good words in the second side of his Preface he saith he fears nothing more then to be bound to his good behavior for misbehaving himself so much as to answer a fool according to his folly meaning the learned Prelate and to show his meekness humility and aversation to rayling for he tells us p. 8. he doth not delight to rake in that puddle In the very first side of his Preface he compares the Bishop to the Devil in the fifth and sixth to the Heretiques and Harding the Jesuit e Pag. 62. to an envious and cruel Vulture the book he stiles a f Pag. 3. swoln Toad the Bishop himself he calls g Pag. 42. a proud Pashur
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
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