holy Angels and Saints should rejoyce and sing Halelujahs to him that sits upon the Throne And this I told them should most certainly come to passe and that shortly so as they should live to see it And so being to goe to London that morning I took my leave thereupon saying Well what ever come on it I must to my work And this work proved to be that aforesaid Nov. 5. When having preached those Sermons I was not long after summoned by a Pursuivant into the English Inquisition Court the High Commission from which I presently appealed to the King And because I foresaw that this would prove a publick cause and putting no confidence either in my Appeale or in the equity and innocency of my cause or in the just lawes of the Kingdome being fallen into such times wherein nor law nor conscience nor innocency nor justice nor clemency nor humanity could take place but that some unjust odious censure must stigmatize both the cause and the person therefore I shut my selfe up in my house as in my prison and there did compile my two said Sermons with my Appeale in one Book to the end it might be published in print as it was sheet by sheet as I writ it the while the Prelates Pursuivants those barking Beagles ceased not night nor day to watch and rap and ring at my doores to have surprised me in that my Castle nor yet to search and hunt all the Printing houses about London to have prevented the comming forth of my Book which they heard to be at the Presse But God by his good providence so prevented them as neither they could touch my person before I had finished my Book nor yet prevent the publishing thereof for all their unwearied search And here I may not omit to magnifie the great Name of God especially for two things First for his admirable strengthning and supporting presence in so carrying up my spirit all the while of my writing that Book entituled For God and the King together with the Appeale c. that not all the incessant roarings and ballings of those beagles could either interrupt my work or distract my thoughts or discourage my resolution by any the least apprehension or feare of danger but that with all cheerfulnesse and invinciblenesse of spirit the work was finished Secondly the Lords wonderfull Providence is here to be admired in that the Pursuivants had no power either to apprehend my person or to prevent the publishing of my Book but just that night when I had received some dozens of Copies bound up and the Books for the King and Councell were a binding up and nor sooner nor later having also newly concluded the Family-duties for that night came the Serjeant at Armes with his Mace in the Bishop of Londons name accompanied with divers Pursuivants and other Officers yea with the Sheriffe of London with swords and halberds and with pick-axes fell a breaking up my doores which being strong and I making no resistance held them work till eleven of the Clock They break in surprise my person ransack my study carry away what Books they pleased and carry me away prisoner to a Constables house for that night and the next day at night being Febr. 2. they had got a new warrant from the Councell Board to carry me to prison in the Fleet where I was kept close prisoner from wife or friend and so remained for halfe a yeare till I was removed to another prison as you shall heare anon During my abode in the Fleet I was served with a Writ into the Starre Chamber to answer an information there against me drawn up by the Kings Atturney in the Name of the King notwithstanding my said Appeale not yet repealed But all is one for that With much difficulty being all along close prisoner I get my Answer drawne up by Counsell and the same by speciall Order of Starre-Chamber admitted in Court upon my Oath to be a true Answer Above a week after I heare that the two Chiefe Justices by appointment of the Court have quite expunged my Answer and defence contained in 80 sheets leaving only the negative part and that also of their owne patching together contained in some halfe a dozen lines Thus my Answer in Court is left no Answer of mine After this comes the Examiner for my Answer to his interrogatories which was to be reckoned part of my Answer in Court But I answered him that my Answer in Court being wholly expunged and so made no Answer of mine I was not bound to answer the interrogatories Hereupon I was brought into the Starre-Chamber to be censured by all those terrible ones pro confesso as having refused to put in my Answer when indeed themselves had put it our What I then spake for my selfe by leave of the Court which had already the day before set downe my Censure in black and white and what the Censure was and by whom I referre to the Relation of all the passages of our three sufferings set forth at large in Print 1641. Only thus much when I saw that they would proceed to censure notwithstanding they did not nor could object the least crime in all my Book For God and the King but that they said I was too sharp against the Prelates having obtained leave to speak I said My Lords I perceive I am brought into a great strait that of necessity I must either desert my cause and my conscience or undergoe the Censure of this Honourable Court and therefore I doe without any further deliberation choose rather to abide the Censure of this Honourable Court then to desert my Cause my conscience Here at the Audience gave a great humme But when they came to the censure it was so terrible especially the perpetuall close imprisonment in a desolate goale that lest my spirits should faint within me I did there earnestly in my heart entreat the Lord that he would strengthen me and hold up my spirits that I might not any way dishonour the cause or give those terrible ones cause to triumph And at that very instant the Lord heard me he put such strength in me as neither my selfe nor my two Brethren did once change countenance before those terrible ones so as some of them afterwards said that they never saw three such men who instead of being daunted so stood before the Court as if they had sit in the Judges place And forasmuch as the night before a friend came to me in the Fleet and told me he saw my Censure set down in their Book as standing on the Pillory c. I did therefore that night * redouble my prayer to God that he would strengthen me at my Censure so as I might not dishonour him and his Cause the next day before that great Court And immediately upon my prayer I was filled with a mighty spirit of courage and resolution wherewith I was carried up farre above my selfe even as it were upon
back for my friend to follow the Bishop at that very instant changed his note and began to speak me as faire as possibly could be whereupon I came towards him againe saying withâ—n my selfe that if he spake reason I would heare him Nor was I at any time before him but methought I stood over him as a School-master over his School-boy So great was the goodnesse of God upon me Another time I being convented at a High-Commission Board at London-house about my fore-said Book Babel no Bethel Harsenet then Archbishop of Yorke having run himselfe out of breath with railing against me and my Book a speciall faculty wherein his Grace exceeded at length saying that I had dedicated my Book to the Parliament to incense them against the Higher Powers he meant the King then I answered No my Lord I am none of them that divide the King and Parliament but I pray God to unite them together At this he had never a word more to say For this was presently after that Parliament was broken up wherein the Petition of Right was signed so that he knew better who they were which at that time divided the King from the Parliament Well at the same time I must to prison and tendring bale London answered No for said he the King had given expresse charge that no baile should be taken for me Then my Lord said I I desire to know by what Law or Statute of the Land you doe imprison me if it be according to Law I humbly submit my selfe otherwise I doe here claime the right and priviledge of a subject according to the Petition of Right but nor Petition nor Right nor Law could keep me from prison To the Fleet I went where stepping in and saying to the Porter By your leave and he answering You are welcome Sir I thanked him saying that is some comfort yet But I found the comforts of my God there exceedingly it being the first time of my being a Prisoner saving that I was still and had beene a long time in the High Commission Bonds which restrained my liberty to the scantling of that tether But I hasten to the maine Battalion or pitcht battell with the Prelates and their prelaticall party For I more and more disliked their usurpations and tyrannicall Government with their attempts to set up Popery Therefore I purposely preached upon the second Chapter to the Colossians crying downe all will-worship and humane inventions in Gods service Hereupon I began in my practice as in my judgement to fall off from the ceremonies Only I watched for an occasion to try it out with them either by dint of Arguments or force of Law or by the King and his Counsell resolving of this that by this means I should either foile my adversaries though I had no great hope this way or at least which I was sure not to faile of discover the mystery of iniquity and the deceit of hypocrisie which like a white vaile they had cast over all their foule practices and false pretences being woven with the fine thread of solemne Protestations Declarations Proclamations and the like And this discovery I tooke to be of no small importance and consequence because I saw how every day they got ground in the hearts of simple and credulous people apt to beleeve their plausible pretences and pompous shewes of piety as if all they did were to maintain the Protestant Religion when under that specious colour the withered whore of Babylon came in maskd at the first till at length she began to shew her painted face in her Superstitions Altar-service and other garbs And as they laboured to undermine and overthrow the true Protestant Religion and in stead thereof to set up Popery so they did no lesse seeke to overthrow the Civill state with the good lawes thereof and just liberties of the subject and to introduce an arbitrary Government otherwise called Tyrany which taketh away every mans property in his owne goods and estate as plainly appeared by all their practices as in exacting of shipmoney which was to be perpetuall and sometimes twice imposed in one yeare upon some pretence of forraine enemies when we had cause to feare none but our home-bred traitours and other impositions with a thousand monopolies Of all which I being not a little sensible both as I was a poore servant of Christ and therefore bound to vindicate his cause against Antichristian men and also as a free borne subject of the kingdome as one who ever prized the just libertie of my birthright above this life it selfe I therefore thought how I might best acquit my duty both to God and to his Church and to my Country in defending the cause of both To this purpose on the fifth of Noxember 1636 being a day by Act of Parliament to be solemnized in an anniversary solemne thanksgiving for that great deliverance of King and Parliament from the Gunpowder-treason which Popish traytors conspired to have executed on that day 1625 I preached according to my custome two Sermons taking for my Text Prov. 24. 21 22. My sonne feare thou the Lord and the King and meddle not with them that are given to change For their calamity shall arise suddenly and who knoweth the ruine of them both But before I proceed to a further relation hereof let me tell you of a passage or two falling out but a little before my troubles The first was this A reverend godly Minister Mr Williamson of Kent having newly preached in my Church upon Acts 21. 13. and we having some private conference of his Text and Sermon I said to him in the close Well brother I must be an example hereof one day The other was of a strange dreame I had one night not many dayes before this day came I dreamed lodging then at a deare friends house in Stratford Bow neere London that I saw a most magnificent Pallace the like whereof I never saw upon the earth and therein a most glorious throne erected and in the throne Jesus Christ sitting in Majesty but all alone without any attendance of Angels or Saints about him only there lay all along before the throne a man dead with his feet towards Christ and his face upward the other way But after awhile the dead man was raised up and stood upon his feet looking towards the throne Whereupon immediately there appeared about the throne an innumerable company of glorious Angels and Saints exceedingly rejoycing and praising God for restoring life to that man This dreame I told in the morning to my wife and after that to my deare Christian friends in the house all yet surviving to whom I also made this interpretation that this dead man was the present Church of Christ which now lay for dead and none took the care of it but Christ alone but after awhile Christ would restore his Church to life and set her in a glorious estate as one raised from the dead to the state of glory and then all the
causing it to be kept in his Library at S. James After his much lamented decease I was continued in the same place and office to Prince Charles when God stirred up my heart to enter into the Ministry being then above thirty yeares of age but yet too soone as having not yet sufficiently learned to weigh that Text of the Apostle And who is sufficient for these things or yet the right way of a Ministers externall call which the ignorance and sloth of those times had not learned to walk in In that time I writ a Treatise against Simony entituled A Censure of Simony Also another Book entituled Truths triumph over Tront wherein I unfolded that mystery of iniquity packed up in the sixth session of that Councell encountring therein those two Champions of the Councell Andreas Vega and Dominicus Soto These two Books were published Cum Previlegio though with much adoe obtained of the Archbishops Chaplains in those not then full growne ripe evill times Yet they ripened so fast Abbot of Canterbury yet living that I could not obtaine of his Chaplaine the licensing of an answer of mine to a Jesuits Book entituled The converted Jew which he boldly had dedicated to both our Universities And I understood he durst not doe it for two causes first because in that Answer I had upon occasion confuted the Arminian Heresies secondly because therein I proved the Pope to be the Antichrist Which two things began in those dayes to be Noli me tangere and fewell for the Hâ—gh Commission furnace proving afterwards pillary-offences inexpiable never to be forgiven neither in this world nor in the world to come Which after times being hastened on by the immature death of King Iames have beene the only causes that have made his life desireable as Titus Livius said of Hieronymus of Syracusa Qui solus Patrem desiderabilem fecit Well King Iames being dead whether so or so or otherwise time hath not yet examined and King Charles succeeding I shall now acquaint you with a notable passage of divine Providence in parting the Court and me asunder For I understanding that the Bishop the old Clerk should still continue in that Office and that the King had designed me for some other inferiour Office and observing also that with Neale Lawd also should be continually about the King I saw there would be no abiding for me in Court any longer Yet before I went I thought I was bound in conscience by vertue of my place to informe the King of these men how popishly affected they were simply imagining that the King either did not so well know their qualities or that perhaps he might be put upon second thoughts by considering the dangerous consequences of entertaining such persons so neere about him as I presented to his Majesty in a large letter to that purpose Which letter he read a good part of I standing before him but perceiving the scope of it he gave it me againe and bade me forbeare any more attendance in my Office untill he should send for me Whereupon though for the present my spirits were somewhat appalled and dejected yet going home to my house in London and there entring into a serious meditation of Gods Providence herein how fairely he had now brought me off from the Court when I saw such Lords were like to domineere and how I might doe God and his Church better service in a more retired life as wherein I was in no danger of Court-Preferments thereby to bee cowardized from encountering such Giants as began already to threaten the Hoste of Israel and against whose power I thought Sauls armour would give me small defence but much hinder me rather I hereupon began to recollect my scattered spirits resolving now after almost twice seven yeares service quite to forsake the Court which I did signifie by another letter to a friend of mine of great place neere unto the King so as the King hath said that I put away him and not hee me However it pleased him to say so yet I had abundant cause to blesse God and daily to rejoyce with exceeding joy that I was now freed from the Court which joy hath now continually increased ever since to this very day without intermission Thus having bid the Court farewell I kept me close to the Ministery of the Word and besides my weekly preaching every Lords day twice I answered sundry erroneous and heterodox Bookes set forth by the Prelats and those of the Prelaticall party As 1. Montagues Book styled An Appeale to Caesar the first part whereof defended all the Arminian Heresies and the second was to maintain many grosse points of Popery And Dr. Francis White prefixed his Approbation to both My answer to the first part was published in print but that to the second was by the Aegyptian Task-masters strangled in the birth being upon the breaking up of the Parliament taken tardie in the Presse as it was a printing A second Book to which I made and published an Answer in time of Parliament was Cosens Private Devotions or Houres of Prayer to which his Popish Canonicall Houres I framed a fit Diall A third was a Book of Dr. Hall B. of Exceter wherein he affirmed the Church of Rome to be a true Church Which in a Treatise of mine upon the 7. Vials I occasionally confuting and Mr. Cholmley his Chaplen and Mr. Butterfield another Minister making each of them a severall reply I thereupon made one full answer to them both so as both sate down and replyed no more and Dr. Hall himselfe would salve or rather dawbe up the matter by begging the suffrages of two Bishops and two Doctors who so shuffled together each his own Cards that they easily made one pack And wel might they both shuffle pack cut and deale when no answer was permitted to be published But for all that my Babel no Bethel remains intire and unshaken by any of their breaths saving that some of their black mouths laboured to besmeare me with their proud scorne And for so writing against the Church of Rome as no true Church of Christ and because such kind of Bookes were printed without licence when none could be obtained I was brought the first and second time into the High Commission whence I had not escaped without cindging at least to make me smell of it ever after if not stigmatising either in my name or purse had I not come in time to procure a Prohibition in the Court of Justice before the doore was shut which was not long after the Bishop having a little before my Prohibition threatned in open Court that whosoever after that of Mr. Pryns then tendered should be the next which fell to my lot to dare to bring a Prohibition there he would set him fast by the heeles But instead of setting me by the heeles he hung me up by the head for the next morning after that my Prohibition was tendered in Court whereat the whole
kindnesse and thy truth from the great congregation this I could in the integrity of my conscience being not privy of baulking any truth in my ministry which was forbidden by the Prelates so farre apply to my selfe as that I could with the greater confidence take up the words immediately following v. 11. Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me O Lord let thy loving kindnesse and thy truth continually preserve me c. As I remember how a little before my last troubles Mr. Walker my reverend and learned brother being convented and admonished by Dr. Lambe to preach no more of the Sabbath and he being thereupon {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} halfe perswaded to it I told him Brother Walker if you yeild herein be assured they will some time or other get you in their snare and when they have you in prison what comfort will you find when your conscience shall check you that for feare of man you forbeare freely and fully to declare the truth of God and most of all then when it was most opposed and oppressed And not long after my going into banishment they catched him indeed and put him in prison where I doubt not but he found comfort from God according to my words which he had upon that occasion followed Againe I was mightily supported by those words Psal. 66. 10. 111. 12. For thou O God hast proved us thou hast tryed us as silver is tried Thou broughtest us into the net Thou laidst affliction upon our loines Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads we went through fire and through water but Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place Which wotds afforded me two great props to support me The one that God was the sole author of all those my troubles as wherein no miscariage of mine had given any the least just offence to those men who forcibly drove me yet witting and willing into their net where they rode upon my head The other was that as I saw the Lords hand leading me through the fire as on the pillary where the sun did extreamly beat upon my head and through the water passing through the seas as aforesaid so I did verily assure my selfe that the same hand would deliver and bring me into a wealthy place According also to that promise Isa. 43. â— Yea when in my close prison and exile I was as an owle in the desart or as asparrow that sits alone upon the house top yea as one free among the dead Psal. 88. 5. like the slaine that lye in the grave yet this was my comfort that I could say Thou O Lord hast layd me in the lowest pit in darknesse in the deeps v. 6. lover and friend hast thou put from me and mine acquaintance into darknesse All contented me well because the Lord had done all these things to me and that not in his wrath and displeasure against me as Dâ—vid there complaineth but in his loving kindnesse and favour in his free grace calling and enabling me to suffer soe great things for his name sake In a word I did now and then in my prison exercise my selfe with preaching to my selfe upon some text of Scripture both for my present strengthening and comfort and also to keep me from rust in case it might please God to call me forth to preach againe in the great congregation Hereunto if it be not tedious to the Reader I might adde a briefe narration of many other helps and supports which I found throughout all my sufferings as also throughout the whole course of my life As first Prayer This never failed me at any time and in greatest distresse it had most speedy and speeding answers What blessings hath it obtained for me What victories over strong and masterfull corruptions lusts temptations snares How often thereby Satan foiled and sinne prevented How my spirits supported in all my sufferings I could here tell of many wonderfull returnes of prayer in the many passages of my life and particularly concerning Gods Providence in disposing of me in marriage wherein his goodnesse marvelously appeared partly by preventing some and chiefely by providing successively two fit matches for me who proved notable helps to me both in my ministry and in my sufferings being both of them lovers and valiant for the truth And the second yet surviving can relate how miraculously Prayer brought us first together O the excellent use of Prayer to all the purposes of this life whether spirituall or temporall It is the most effectuall sollicitor of all our causes having such an Advocate at Gods right hand My second help in my sufferings was the testimony of my conscience which stood in these particulars First A sure beliefe that all my sins were forgiven and washed away in the blood of Iesus Christ Secondly An infallible knowledge that theÌ„ cause for which I thus suffered was a most noble holy righteous and innocent cause as being the cause of Christ of his Gospel of his Church yea and of the whole Land my native Countrey which cause I was not only as a Christian but much more as a professed witnesse of Christ bound to maintaine even to the losse of all things in the world Thirdly the testimony of my conscience sealed by my record from on high that my continuall opposition in the course of my ministry both by preaching and writing against the adversaries of the truth was out of no other respect as either of an humour of contradiction or ambition or vaine glory or affectation of singularity or of malice to any mans person or out of any discontentednesse with my present condition as some have faflly and causlesly slaundered me the Lord having beene so farre good unto me as to set me farre above all such base lusts though I wanted not my corruptions not to prevaile over me but meerely out of the conscience of my duty in zeale to Gods glory and love to his truth and service to Christ and to his Church There are sundry Ministers yet living in London who can witnesse that I was not ambitious to shew my self alone in the cause when my frequent sollicitations of them could not prevaile to have more fellowes to share with me And fourthly not to recount more particulars in that God hath given me these three comforts more First that before my last Censure as aforesaid I owed not a penny to any man it having ever beene hatefull unto me to owe any thing to any man but love which love I am daily paying while daily praying for all Secondly that in this respect I can say with the Apostle I am free from the blood of all men having kept nothing back that I knew necessary and profitable but delivered though in great weaknesse the whole Counsell of God even against all opposition of men in their expresse edicts armed with terrours and threatnings to the contrary Thirdly although from my youth up I have not beene free from many humanefrailties
my brother Bastwick being not yet returned from Sillie We presented our persons with our petitions to the House for the hearing of our cause It was granted a speciall Committe was appointed for the examination of our cause and in the same Order of the House to the same Committe a thing wherein the hand of divine Providence is not a little seene it was ordered that after the examination of our causes the Courts and proceedings both of the High Commission and starre chamber should be examined and the issue was our cause was declared and voted first by the Committee and after by the whole House to be innocent and all the proceedings of those Courts against us illegall against the lawes of the land and the liberties of the subject and on the other side both those Courts were alike voted to bee illegall and thereupon an Act was drawne up and passed and stands now in force for the utter abolishing of both those Courts So they are brought downe and fallen and we are risen and stand upright And blessed be the Lord that both those Courts fell under such a Cause as gives them no just cause to complaine But for our cause although the honourable House of Commons have voted it so farre for the clearing of us as it can yet goe yet the Transmission thereof to the House of Lords is not hitherto passed for a recompence of our wrongs sustained But herein we are patients with the whole land which lyes a bleeding while the cause of innocent blood cannot find redresse Yet blessed be God that by vertue of that vote I have liberty to preach although I have suffered not a little for that first Sermon I preached after my liberty obtained as my first-fruits paid to the Parliament at Westminster Clamors were raised by some malignant spirits and received too credulously by some of the better minded who had not heard the Sermon which the more grieved me But how justly fame did censure me the Sermon it selfe if once it may obtaine licence to be printed which it hath a long time waited for will clearly show Many other wrongs have I suffered both by false reports and by bookes published under the name of Mr. Burton in generall which the simple hearted people took to be mine being only counterfeited to get away their farthings But the righteous judge will one day cleare all When the next day after that Sermon I was taken with a fit of the stone the first sensible fruit of my long close imprisonment fame gave it out that it was for griefe and shame of my said Sermon Though after this I have had sundry fits of the stone I might mention many other reproaches cast upon me since my enlargement which I have learned the more easily to digest and contemne saving only that I take them as messengers of Satan sent to buffet me by my experience in my greater sufferings He that hath stood an innocent upon the pillary and theâ—e had his eares cut off which he endured with not only patience but alacrity and triumph cannot he trow you brook to be unjustly branded for an Infamous person and that by such as were the prime authors of such bloody and barbarous cruelty but he must needs be sick for sorrow of that which he accounts his glory and crowne Or shall such a one be ashamed to beare in his body such glorio is marks of the Lord Jesus Or he that chose rather to be deprived of all liberty livelyhood eares credit with the malignant world degrees in schooles yea his sweet native country wife children friends all outward comforts rather then betray the cause of Christ and basely yeild to unreasonable and absurd men after the suffering of all these is it so easie a matter thinke you to overthrow such a one with the impotent breath of a man that shall dye or of the son of man that shall be made as grasse should I now at last so forget the Lord my maker as to feare continnually every day because of the fury of the oppressor as if he were ready to destroy of whom the Prophet saith And where is the fury of the Oppressor Behold my witnesse is in Heaven and my Record is on high And certainly if witnessing the Truth against Falshood and openly detecting the machinations of Apostats if ever they were other then dissembling Hypocrites before their vizards were pulld off deserve the brand of An infamous disturber of the peace of this Church and State I will weare it as a badge of the greatest honour of my service to Christ in this World And I blesse my Lord who accounted me faithfull and put me in this service and enabled me so therein as to deserve to be reproached no otherwise then the Prophet Eliah was by the grand disturber and troubler of Israel to whom the Prophet replyed I have not troubled Israel but thou and thy fathers house in that ye have forsaken the Commandements of the Lord and have followed Baalim And if by This Church be understood the Prelaticall or Hierarchicall and by State a Tyrannicall and lawlesse Government I heartily thank God that I have bin a disturber of these so as never since that time they could peacably go on as before they did in their rebuilding of Babel the end wherof wil be confusion or in reedifying of Jerico the curse wherof was the rooting out of the whole race and posterity of the Rebuilder What should I speake of the many reproaches and infamies which I have undergone since the cleering of my Cause in the honorable House of Commons ever to be honoured of all posterity But this was my comfort all along even the clearnesse of my Conscience being not guilty to my selfe of any just cause by me given why any unlesse Prelaticall and Iesuiticall spirits or such as are through ignorance seduced by them should fall so fowle upon me saving that the more any man endeavors to come neerest to Christ and so to shake off the shackles of sinne and yoake of Antichristian usurpation over the soules of men the more necessarily and unavoidably he must passe the pikes of all those whose conversation in the world cannot find elbow-room enough to walke in Christs narrow way which leadeth unto life Nor need this be made a wonder in our dayes which hath bin the perpetuall practise of the world in all ages since Christ had a Church upon earth since the Lord himselfe put that enmity between the Serpent and the Woman and between her seed and his yea in this Age of ours wherein Satans wrath is so great because he knoweth that he hath but a short time and wherein the ten horned Beast and his limmes are fighting their last battell in Harmageddon whither the Almighty himself brings them that he might shew himselfe to be the Almighty in giving the last and most terrible defeat to all their power and plots not to see such