the Reformed Religion at Spires in Germany A. D. 1529. but rather from the Protestations made by the Covenanting Rebels of Scotland against Gods and the Kings Authority A. D. Hist of Iâ—dep Part 2. Sect. 100. 1 1. 1638. and 1639. First against the Function of Episcopacy as Antichristian and not long after against the King and Kingship it self which they first voted down and then abjur'd And still their Impenitent Off-spring who are Nurs'd up too fondly amongst us fear any thing but God and the King being grown so over-familiar with both as to contemn them Nimia superbia nihil timent The Haughty Spirits of our Modern Seditious Dissenters the last but worst Edition of Protestants and that which needs much Correction and Amendment scorn to stoop to Authority and therefore they speak evil of Dignities and Libel the Government and do as much as in them lies to scare all the Princes in Christendom from turning Protestants by reason of whom the Way of Truth and of the best Religion under Heaven comes to be evil spoken of from whence our Calamities do arise and Solomon says theirs shall suddenly arise 3ly He who calls himself a Royalist and yet disgraces so Good a Cause by his Bad Life does also disjoyn God and the King He pretends as much to Honour the King as the other two do to fear God He will Talk Drink and Fight for him but whilst he makes no Conscience of his duty to God but lives in all manner of Lewdness and Prophaneness he is not so good a Servant to the King as he would be thought to be for he does him more hurt by his Sins than he can do him good by his Sword and pulls down more Judgments by his Iniquities than he can ever prevent or remove by his utmost Endeavors And therefore though you are ready to open your Veins and Purses for him as becomes you upon all Occasions and as your Loyal Ancestors of Yorkshire did before you for his Father of Blessed Memory yet unless you who have rebell'd against him by your evil Lives do reconcile your selves to the King of Heaven and make your peace with him you are but Traytors to his Crown and Dignity nor can you ever be truly devoted Servants to him unless you are devout Servants to the Almighty from whom comes his help No Man can serve his Prince without Courage and Honesty and 't is the Fear of God which is the right Parent of both and therefore as no true Christian can ever be a Rebel so neither is any vicious Man a truly Loyal Subject for how serviceable soever he may be to the King in other Instances the Iniquities which he cherishes are such for which 1 Sam. 12. 25. God will destroy both him and the King So that all National Sins have High Treason in them and every Combination in such publick Enormities is a Conspiracy and Rebellion against our King and Country Now as great Sinners as the worst of you are I hope you are all more Men than to prove your selves such Beasts as to become Paracides to please a destructive Lust and to imbrue your Hands in your Princes Blood to whom you pretend so much Duty rather than to wash them in Innocency for his good and your own If there be any true Love and Loyalty in you to our Gracious Sovereign Lord and his Royal Family Any Affection to your Native Country Any Compassion to your own Souls amend your Lives speedily and do not like blind Sampson pull down the goodly Fabrick of Church and State upon their Heads and your own by your continued Rebellion against Heaven but live so in the fear of God as if you did in earnest desire and hope for better times Be faithful to the King in your Persons and Purses but let not your evil Lives conspire against him If our Enmity against the King of Heaven do not shake his Throne the Gates of Hell cannot prevail against it If you agree that God and the King are to be fear'd why do you not agree to do it If either you are Solomons Sons or Gods Servants if your Wisdom be from above or of this World 't is more than time that you shewed it by putting his Paternal Precept in practice and taking also the just notice which becomes you of his secondly Peremptory Prohibition Meddle not with them that are given to change with Men of Levity and Humour for it argues a great Disease and Sickness as well in the Soul as in the Body whether Natural Politick or Ecclesiastical to be continually tossing from one side to the other Sound Religion like the Author of it being yesterday to day and the same for ever and that Form of Government best both in Church and State into which the Real Interest and Manners of the People have run longest and with the strongest Current Let not Inconveniences prevail with you to break Oaths or to overturn Laws and Antient Boundaries for nothing hath so great an Inconvenience in it as that those are but partial but this would be a total one Now all Publick Changes are full of difficulty but those in State or Religion are so full of danger too that it hath always been thought fit by Wise Men to bear with some tolerable Defects and Evils in either rather than by endeavouring to reform them to hazard the marring of all the rest And though Interest in such as desire a change do often make them apprehend more Advantages than really there are and cover those very Doubts and Dangers they are privy to for fear of disheartning those short-sighted Men who are unadvisedly Imbark'd in their designed Innovations yet the sharpest eye-sight is not able to reach the sad Consequences and fatal End of such Attempts For either their Counsels must be back'd with Arms or they will prove dangerous to the Undertakers and so they who have ingag'd themselves and others in such a desperate design are reduc'd before they are aware to the Vicious Necessity of more desperate Remedies and do often make choice of those which are much more mischievous than the Diseases which they pretend to cure There are few Men Ingag'd in any Faction who are so wise as to see their own Mistakes or so ingenuous as to confess them when they see them Besides the fear and jealousie of being call'd to a future account for the breach of the known Laws of the Kingdom does naturally beget more rebellious Attempts in those Incroaching Subjects who being conscious to themselves of their having exceeded the limits of Duty and Obedience to their lawful Sovereign will do what in them lies to debase the King below the condition of any free-born Subject and by factious and seditious Reflections on the Government will keep the Wounds of the Kingdom open that they may suck its Blood and save their own which has been the unwarrantable practice of some Brokers of Sedition in these days for whom the Kings
Reason and Religion on their side to renounce the Authority of the one as of the other and if there were any case in which it might be lawful for us to cast off the Yoak of their Authority who should be judge of the Fact Neither the King nor his Subjects for both are Parties but Polybius his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Law of Hands the longest Sword must be the Arbiter of that Controversie and how bloody a sentence that will give on which side soever it light our Civil Wars and the fatal period of them may easily convince us by which all that we gain'd at last was an endless liberty of ruining one another without hope of redress Though the King should oppose Gods express and immediate Will and overturn the very Foundations of Religion yet the Almighty is able to defend his own Cause nor will He allow the People whose Passions Humours and Insolencies make them always unfit to become Reformers without and against his express warrant to usurp so great a Power as to pretend to any right to restrain the Royal Power which they never gave Let us therefore as becomes Solomon's Sons pay the Duty of Subjection to whatsoever Prince God in his over-ruling Providence shall think fit to set over us for though he were as bad as Nebuchadnezzar the King of Babylon we must either serve him or perish eternally and they prophecy a lye to you in Gods Name who preach any other Doctrine if the Prophet Jeremiah say true Jer. 27. 10 15 16. With what Alacrity then should we subject our selves to such a Pious and Gracious King as our is who if he be not in as much reverence with us as he is in esteem with God all our pretended Piety to the Deputer will never expiate our Disloyalty to his Deputy which will the better appear because the Obedience which God commands us to yield the King is but the payment of an Old Debt which is due by the Fifth Commandment to the Supreme Father of our Country to him as next Heir to Adam the first Monarch of the World in whom the Supremacy was as large and unlimited as any act of his Will for God gave him Dominion over the World and made him Sole Proprietor of it Gen. 1. 28. And if he had not been so expresly made the Sovereign Lord of the Vniverse by that Special Commission from the High Court of Heaven yet all Mankind being sprung from his Loyns were born in Subjection to him by the Law of God and Nature which invested him with a Patriarchal and Vncontroulable Power not only over his Children but also over those who were descended from them during his life which being transmitted after his death to his Eldest Son and Successor Seth Cain having forfeited his Birth-right by the Murder of Abel and so downwards in the right line there could never be a time till the Flood when the World was not under such a Monarchical Government Now when the Vniversal Deluge had swept away all Mankind but Noah and his Sons Noah was not Gen. 9. 2. Tenant in common with his Sons as one Lawyers Opinion is who was no better a Friend to the Crown than the Church for God would never have disinherited so just and pious a Prince as Noah whom he made the Restorer of all Mankind And therefore Cedrenus and Eusebius tells us as that Antiquary knew well enough that he by the Right which God and Nature had invested him with did Twenty Years before his death make a Partition of the World among his Sons allotting to every one his share which he confirmed by his last Will and gave it into the Hands of Sem and to him over and above his share after his death a kind of Supremacy as Lord in chief over the whole admonishing them to live peaceably and not to invade each others Territories Nor did the Kings lose their Ground till after Joshuah's time for then the tame People thought this Prerogative Doctrine which we now Preach to be wholsom Divinity and yet they were neither Evil Counsellors nor Flattering Courtiers nor Time-serving Priests who put him upon it nor was he himself thought a Tyrant for accepting such an Arbitrary Power over them as this would seem to be through a Pair of Modern Spectacles Josh 1. 10 11. And they answered Joshua saying All that thou commandest us we will do and whithersoever thou sendest us we will go according as we hearkned to Moses in all things so will he hearken unto thee and whosoever he be that doth rebel against thy Commandment in all that thou commandest him he shall be put to death And that the Kings of England hold their Imperial Crowns for so Nine several Statutes at least do call them by the Law of God and Nature subject to none but the Almighty and only Ruler of Princes and not by Human Institution hath been the agreement of all Parliaments though of different Interest Religion and Tempers whom they therefore styl'd their Supreme Natural Liege Lord Omnes sub eo ipse sub nullo nisi tantum sub Deo saith Bracton who was Lord Chief Justice in Henry the Third's time next under God and inferiour to none but him so that his is Potestas Dei Vicaria a Ray of Gods Majesty who hath arm'd him with the Power of Life and Death by his Commission who alone could put the Sword into his hands for that purpose as being the sole Arbiter of Life and Death who only can take it away because he gave it For 't is plain to all who understand any thing but Rebellion that the Peoples Consent could not do it for they have not Power over their own Lives and so could not transfer that to another which they had not themselves His Title may well be Dei Gratia for of God does he hold his Crown in Capite 't is by his Grace that Kings are what they are and our Kings of England have their Crowns unquestionably established by an Inherent and Independent Right Antecedent to their Coronations by Birth-right by Consent by Prescription and by Law which are all the ways whereby any Right can be legally established and 't is the Power of God in their Hands to which we are required to subject our selves and the violation of every particular Law made by them does necessarily draw along with it the violation of the general Law of God by which he commands Matth. 22. 21. Obedience to them not with eye-service as men-pleasers but in singleness of heart fearing God and the King In which words we are diligently to observe two things 1. Their Methodical Order and Disposition Fear them both in their proper Order but First God and 't is 1 Tim. 6. 15. good reason for He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords If the King bids what God forbids and so the fear of both become incompatible you must obey God â—ather than Man because the Subordinate must
of the Puritanical Assembly or Classis which puts the People between God and the King and therefore I call the one a Papal and the other a Phanatical Jesuite for I believe them both to be Roman Pensioners two Parties commanded by one General because in all times when the Government hath been charging one of them in the front the other hath always treacherously attack'd it in the rear and as much of late as ever and both prov'd themselves in the end Abhorrers of Monarchy under-hand Contrivers and restless Opposers of it as they always pretend for Conscience sake out of a joynt design to make the King a Property and his Government Precarious Their Names are different but their Nature is the same in point of Disobedience And the third viz. The Prophane Liver who pretends to Loyalty by making no Conscience of his Duty towards God is also a false Traytor to the King notwithstanding the many good words he gives him and the great Honour he vainly boasts in all Companies to bear towards Him 1. Give me leave to set first to the Bar the Papal Jesuite who is all for the fear of God the Propagation of the Catholick Religion and of the Apostolical See of Rome but tell him of the fear of the King and then he leaves you as if the Pope and He were the Real Defenders of the Faith and the King only the Nominal and Titular one and accordingly he teaches his Profelytes to weigh out their Obedience to him by Drams and Scruples in a Pair of Jesuitical Scales makes the Prince stand to the Popes Allowance for Authority and takeâ— his leavings who of course exempts all the Clergy from their Obedience to their Natural Sovereign and makes them pay their Suit and Service to him as their Lord Paramount as if his Tribunal and Gods were but one and the Civil Magistrate by becoming the Son of the Church had lost his Secular Power An excellent Doctrine to convert Pagan Princes to the Christian Religion or Protestants to the Popish The fatal and pernicious Consequences of which Popish Principles our Parliaments have in all Ages as well before the Reformation as since expressed their just detestation of as appears by the Statute of Carlisle made 35 Edw. 1. and by that of Proviso's made 25 Edw. 3. and by many more in King Henry the Eighth's Reign who was both Parliamentarily and Synodically invested with the Supremacy in all Causes as well Spiritual as Temporal which was legally and essentially inherent in the Crown before the King of England being Supreme Ordinary by the Antient Common Law of this Kingdom of which those Statutes were not Introductory but Declarative And 't is a great wonder to me that every Prince in Christendom is not as much possess'd with an Anti-Papal Spirit at this day as ever King Henry the Eighth was considering what an Implacable Enemy the Pope hath been to the Dignity and Security to the Powers and Lives of all Princes especially such as he calls Heretical ones 2. The Protestant or Fanatical Jesuites if they would be content to be civil Subjects yet they will be Ecclesiastical Superiors they would have a King under them not over them The King must Command as they will have him or he is no King for them nor will they fear him but make him fear them if they can compass their ends He must do things against his Conscience Oath and Honour against the Fundamental Laws of the Land and the very being of the Government or else though they speak him as fair as they did his Roayl Father of blessed memory in the Covenant and so hide the Cloven Foot for a while with their broad Pharisaical Phylacteries and intrench themselves in the sure retreat of those popular and plausible Pretences of preserving His Majesties Person and the Protestant Religion yet they watch but for a fair opportunity to put off their Hypocritical Vizards and to make him feel the smart effects of their Implacable Enmity against him and let him see by woful experience how little they do either love or fear him as they did his Royal Father before him David was a Man after Gods own heart and had a Conscience truly tender I would to God all that are call'd so in our days were like it which made him so sensible of his fault in snipping off a small shred of the Skirt of Saul's Coat But our Dissenters Itching Fingers long to be tampering with the Prerogative and will cut off as much as they can get into their hands and throw it to the People as the Men of God did in the late â—â— Rebellion for so the deluded Multitude call'd them though they prov'd Men of War fir'd with Phanatical Zeal against the Most Christian Magistrate in the World our Martyr'd Sovereign The Black Coats of their Schism in stead of being Messengers of Peace sounded the Treasonable Alarms from such places as these though the Red Coats fought the Battles they taught their Congregations to construe the Singulis Major and Vniversis Minor after Buchanan's Translation and made them believe That the People which begins to be as fashionable a word now as it was Forty years since were as much above the King as the King is above the meanest of his Subjects The King say they and other Magistrates are but our Servants to protect us from Violence and Mene Tekel pag. 41. Oppression and if they break their Trust the Law of God and Nature allows us to call our Servants to account and to punish them according to their Demerits and to turn them out of our Service In good time and out of the World too as they did the Hist of In dep Part 2. Sect. 80 81 82. Royal Martyr as a Traytor to the Sovereignty of the People as that Insolent Judge Bradshaw then Impudently styl'd it which corrupt and false Principle of placing the Original of Government in our Sovereign Lords the People is not only derogatory to God whose Written Word it gives the lye to but is also destructive to the very being of Humane Society For if the Power be radically in them and only pass'd over by the Conveyance of a Common Consent with a Power of Revocation upon equitable Conditions express'd or imply'd of which the People shall be Judges it is but their recalling of that Power to which the Vnwary Mobile may be easily tempted for 't is Neutrum modo mas modo Vulgus and the Government is dissolv'd and so all our Happiness lies at the Mercy and Will of the Crowd which will make us a reproach to our Neighbours and Psal 79. 4. a scorn and derision as it hath already done in a great measure to all that are round about us We live in an Age wherein Men seem to call themselves Protestants not from that solemn and Honourable Protestation which was made by several Princes against the Errours and Superstitions of Rome and an Edict made in prejudice of