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
our first Parents for had they fear'd they had not fell but this their Guardian Angel being departed from them they quickly lost their Innocence and Paradise The only care must be that it be plac'd upon its right objects and these in Solomons Judgment are only two God and the King 1. He counsels us to fear God with a Filial Fear of Reverence and Circumspection a Consciencious Fear in Worshipping him and a Careful Fear of offending him such as becomes all ingenuous and dutiful Children who out of love to their Parents are afraid of displeasing them and of falling short of their duty to them which Filial Fear he who is born of God cannot put off but he will be fearful of any stone of stumbling in the whole course of his life which may make him fall into Sin and will make it his principal care and design to approve the sincerity of his heart to the piercing eye of a jealous God which Fear discovers it self not in a trembling amazement but in a chearful and uniform Obedience to all his Commandments which is such a divine fear as never damps his Spirits or robs him of those succours which Reason would afford him but makes him as bold as a Lyon and may Prov. 28. 1. therefore be justly termed the beginning or principal Prov. 9. 10. part of Wisdom And indeed what greater folly and madness can the most desperate Malefactor be guilty of than to commit Capital Crimes in the sight of his Judge And yet how easily are we tempted to offend the dreadful Majesty of the Omnipresent and Almighty Judge who observes our closest Actions and will infallibly call us to account for them and reward us according to what we have done in the flesh whether it have been good or evil When you walk in the ways of Math. 16. 27. Eccl. 11. 9. your own hearts and in the sight of your eyes remember that for all these things God will bring you to Judgment And knowing this terrour of the Lord let me perswade 2 Cor. 5. 11. you not to let your Lives give your Lips the lye when you say that you fear him but consider that you naturally fix your eyes upon that which you fear and cannot easily get that out of your minds which doth affright you If therefore you pretend to be afraid of Gods displeasure where is your tenderness of his Honour Your care to please him your zeal for his Cause and Service your delight in his Commands and your rejoycing to do his Will You cannot fear his Name and blaspheme it If against the clear evidence of his Word and your own Consciences you entertain any rebellious thoughts against the Lord whom you should fear you can neither escape his sight in this life nor his vengeance in the next Be not deceiv'd God is not mock'd by wearing his Livery and doing the Devil Service by talking as if you were inspir'd and had Cloven Tongues and yet acting as if you were possess'd as some Cloven Footed Protestants have of late done There is no way to please God 2 Cor. 10. 5. Jam. 1. 22. but by bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ Be ye therefore doers of his Word and not hearers only Indent not with him to spare you no not in your darling sins but resist them to the blood because the keeping of some of his Commandments will not expiate for the breach of the rest Make no League with any Gibeonite spare no Agag no ruling sin but crucifie the Old Man with his affections and lusts Dash all those Babylonish Brats against the stones which are Traytors to the Crown and Dignity of the King of Heaven throw them from you with the same indignation that you would do those loathsom things which you cannot behold without great distemper Let Christ be your King on Earth and he will be your Saviour in Heaven Be as ready to be over-ruled by him here as to be rewarded by him hereafter so shall you prove your selves to be Solomon's Sons indeed nay Sons of God and Heirs of Eternal Glory always provided that to this fear of God you add that of the King 2. My Son Fear the King God commands us to subdue our wills to that will of Man on Earth that he may the better subdue us to his own will in Heaven and accordingly our Saviour came into the World to take away the Sins not the Laws of it Nor was the Religion he established designed to loose the Reins of Civil Government but to keep Subjects under the same and greater Obligations than he found them to make sacred the Persons as well as Offices of Princes and to establish their just Prerogatives as being those Visible and Mortal Gods whom the Almighty had honour'd with his Name and to whom he had deligated his Vicegerent power over us and bound us not only for wrath but also for Conscience sake to obey and fear them as ordained of him and to reverence that Divine Character of Soveraignty which that his Ordination had impressed upon them Fear Good Kings as God Bad Ones for him though they should strain the necessary and essential Powers of Government beyond its due pitch and become as very Tyrants as Nero was whose Power was from God in St. Paul's Rom. 13. 1. 2. judgment though the abuse of it were from himself and his way of attaining it not justifiable For the Roman Emperors were not by right but by force then Lords of the World and yet he commands Every Soul Omnis anima quoniam ex animo to be sincerely subject to them and though they were unworthy of that Authority which they usurp'd and abus'd yet were they not in any case to be resisted under peril of Damnation 'T was God made Solomon King over Israel not the Priest or the People and he is said to have set him on 2 Chron. 9. 8. his own Throne to let the People know that he did immediately represent his Person and was in his stead among them as his Vicegerent and Lieutenant under him Inde est Imperator unde homo antequam Imperator Tertul. inde potestas illi unde Spiritus He made him a King who made him a Man and from him had he his Scepter from whom he had his Soul And this was no Court-Complement of Tertullian's None of those Love-Tricks which were plaid between the King and his People in the Honey-Moon of His Majesties Restauration as the Plato Redivivus who is not yet out of love with his Commonwealth Principles styles them nor did he speak it in his own Person but as the Judgment of the whole Catholick Church whose Cause he was then defending So that the King does not Reign it seems in the Judgment of the Primitive Church either by the Commission of the Pope or the Courtesie of the People who can no more chuse their Princes than their Parents and have as much
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