the King is under none but God This saith he is that divine Sentence Quod nec Jovis ira nec ignis nec poterit ferrum nec edax abolere vetustas which neither angry Jove nor fiery Vulcan neither devouring Age nor bloody sword a worse devourer then that shall ever expunge out of our Law-books or explode out of the memory of every pious man Thus he Bracton cited by the Reverend and Learned Judge Jenkins tells us Rex non habet parem in Regno suo That the King hath not an equal in his kingdom if not an Equal then certainly no Superior and so by consequence shows the fiction of the Two Houses Supremacy There hath been so much already cited for the Supremacy of His Sacred Majesty over all persons in his Dominions by Judge Jenkins Mr. Diggs and several others that I need not trouble the Reader with any more repetitions thereof but refer the dissatisfied to their several Writings and conclude this point with a word or two concerning the Oath of Supremacy which every Member of the two Houses must take before he sits in the House or else according to Law he stands a person to all intents and purposes as if he had never bin elected or returned which clearly declares the King to be the onely Supream Governor of this Realm and of all other His Highness Dominions and Countreys as well in all Spiritual and Ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal and so certainly by undeniable consequence over the Two Houses in Parliament causes For why was the exclusive Particle Onely inserted but to cut off all pretences of co-ordinacy or share in the Regal Supremacy And truly if he be Supream there is neither Major nor Superior saith the Learned Lord Bridgeman in his Speech aforesaid Was this Oath think you Mr. Crofton composed by the Lords and Commons in Parliament in the time of Qu. Elizabeth and at their suit by * Eliz. c. 1 Act of Parliament made high Treason 5 Eliz. c. 1 for a subject to deny to take it for to be evaded and treasonably denied the subject matter thereof ascribed to the Subjects themselves who were fain to take it ere they could have the least colour or pretence perjuriously to claim or usurp it from the rightful owner and this too by such a Shadow of a Disputant as your fanciful self who have armed your self with so much confidence to bawl out these seditious Assertions which deserve nothing else but the utmost rigor of the Law for a confutation Nothing but self-condemnation No other way left you to save your credit but by writing sedition and throwing your poison'd darts of malice against your Superiors for the pretended denial of that the truth whereof your own whimsical self is found to be a real disclaimer Cannot you dig a pit for another but you must presently fall into it your self These shabbed courses of yours forces me to deal with you by a retortion and ask you once again some more of your own questions Where is Sir the Kings Prerogative over all persons in all causes What is become of the Oath of Supremacy Hath a Gracious King lately pardoned you and your Delinquent party for your former misdemeanors really to debase nay dethrone Him by your impudent and traiterous entituling his sworn Subjects with His Onely Supremacy Truly Sir I cannot blame you much now for your words in your Preface where you tell us That side 2. having animadverted this Anti-Baal-Berith i. e. the Bishops Book you finde a necessity to apologize for the very act of your Animadversion and fear nothing more then to be bound to your good behavior in misbehaving your self so much as to answer not according to what your confidence helped you to prate A fool according to his folly wherein you may seem like unto him but a learned reverend Prelate with whole mouth-fuls of sedition and rebellion wherein you are the perfect image of all the traiterous Conspirators that have been before you why else do you divide non dividenda make a division in that wherein none without perjury ought or can be make two sharers and partners in the Supremacy which the legal Oath and Statute-Laws of this Realm by which we must steer our course and not by your horrible frightful dreams declare to centre and to be the peculiar right and Sovereignty of one alone and that inseparable from his person too The goodly aim and end of all your Jabbering for the Two Houses co-ordinacy in the Supremacy is but to fulfil the Martyrs words e See Eikon Basilike in 24. P. 47. That the Majesty of the Kings of England might hereafter hang like Mahomets Tomb by a Magnetick charm between the power and priviledges of the Two Houses in an airy imagination of Regality But the Two Houses usurpation of the Supremacy it seems will not serve Mr. Croftons turn if they cannot swallow up the Legislative power too from the Royal Owner In his Analepsis * p. 12. he called them then onely Co-ordinate and Sharers in the Legislation of England now he grasps for the Suprem Legislative power alone for those long Parliament Legislative theives that made it their precious saintly work to make their strength the Law of Justice robb and pillage and murder the Subjects of their Soveraign by their cursed illegal Orders quirkes and devices and then show them the Law of their uncontroulable atheistical wills for it sic volo sic jubeo stat proratione voluntas I am perswaded the man hath a huge fancy to go higher and higher in his Seditious and treasonable language till he comes to make his last ascent at the Sacred Gallowes or else he dreams with the Fifth kingdom Rebels That notwithstanding any thing he saith or doth yet that not a hair of his head shall perish I shall not stand long upon answering him in this fiction and dream of his but shall quickly dispatch him by adding to what I have upon this point already said that which now immediately followes And therefore for that which he termes the Legislative power and because he is just like the Cuckoe repeating over and over one and the same thing to lengthen his Book Let 's hear a little what Justice Hide told the Blackening Regicide Harison at his Tryal in the Old Bayly I am sorry saith he that any man should have the face and boldness to deliver such words as you have You and all must know That the King is above the Two Houses They must propose their Laws to him The Laws are made by him and not by them by their consenting but they are His Laws That either or both Houses or any assembly or people in this or any other Nation Governed by Monarchy hath or ever claimed saith f See the Royallists defence p. 39. another in 1648. to have a Legislative power or so far to represent the Kingdom as to make new Laws and change the old without
Warning p. 30. To observe a wicked engagement doubles the sin according to the found determinations of the Reverend Primate And so my Argument herein I am sure ad hominem is unanswerable § 16. The next thing that will come under examination will be the unlawfulness of the Covenant in respect of its contrariety to the two former legally established Sacred Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance and the Protestation and to that end I commend to the consideration of my Readers the excellent Determination of the Irish Primate in relation to this point in his incomparable Fair Warning to take heed of the Scottish Discipline p. 31. Where after he had affirmed That a Supervenient Oath or Covenant either with God or man cannot take away the obligation of a just Oath precedent he immediately addes But such is the Covenant a subsequent Oath inconsistent with and destructive to a precedent Oath that is the Oath of Supremacy which all the Church-men throughout the kingdom and all Parliament men at their Admission to the House and all persons of quality thoughout England have taken The former oath acknowledgeth the King to be the only Supream Head that is Civil Head to see that every man do his duty in his calling and Governor of the Church of England The second Oath or Covenant to set up the Presbyterian Government as it is in Scotland denieth all this virtually makes it a Political Papacy acknowledgeth no Governors but onely the Presbytery The former Oath gives the King the Supream Power over all persons in all causes The second gives him a power over all as they are Subjects but none at all in Ecclesiastical causes This saith he they make to be Sacriledge And therefore I Quaere 1. Whether he that hath taken the legally established Oath of Supremacy to His Sacred Majesty which as a Paraphrast very well noteth y See The Oathes of Supremacy Allegiance which have layen dead many years c. p. 10. Admits of no Rival in the Throne but doth exclude all others from the Supremacy from being enabled to act above His Majesty or contrary unto Him or without Him or his allowance in any acts of Government can take this illegal Covenant whereby he swears according to his utmost power not onely to carry on the Rebellion then already begun for that it was so needs no further demonstration but also to assist all other persons that shall take it in what they shall do in pursuance thereof thereby implicitly owning the power of the then two Houses and disowning the Onely Supremacy of the King so clearly asserted in that Oath I say whether he that hath taken the former can ever swear the latter without a notorious guilt of apparent Perjury If not as no man I think upon serious consideration will affirm he may then it necessarily follows that the one is an opposition to the other Again The Oath of Supremacy bindes the takers to their power to assist and defend all Jurisdictions Priviledges Preheminences and Authoritys granted or belonging to the Kings Highness and united and annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Realm And the famous University of Oxford have told us That y See their Reasons p. 38. the whole power of ordering all matters Ecclesiastical was by the Laws of the Land in express words For ever annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Realm citing the Statute for it in their Margin whence I Quaere Secondly Whether he that hath once taken the Oath of Supremacy and afterwards swallowed down this Regicidian League was not desperatly forsworn in taking upon them the ordering of Ecclesiastical matters which is one of those Jurisdictions and Priviledges granted to the Kings Highness so far as to swear the Extirpation of the Legally established Ecclesiastical Government without and against his Majesties Royal assent one while swearing to defend the Jurisdiction and Preeminence granted or belonging to the King and another while vowing the performance of that which is absolutely contrariant unto it And Perjury attained by taking of two Oaths in my shallow judgement doth unavoidably imply the vast proportion of difference and contrariety that is between them Since the writing of these last words I heard of the burning of the Solemn League and Covenant by the hands of the Common Hangman according to the Noble Order of the truely Honourable two Houses May 22. 1661. now at this present assembled in Parliament by vertue of his Majesties Gracious Writ which as it is no more then its deserts in having bewitched people into an odious Rebellion against their Prince which as one saith well z See the Right Rebel p. 72. Must needs be acknowledged a sin of Sodom especially since the Sodomites are the first that the Holy Ghost in Scripture hath taxed for the practise thereof So I shall desist from saying here any more of this Loyal Vote concerning that monstrous League but shall now go on to the finishing of what I have here intended to show the sinfulness thereof in its contrariety to former Legal Oaths and to that end and purpose shall again Quaere Thirdly Can that Oath Which * was devised onely to ** See his Majesties Proclamation prohibiting the taking of it prevent peace and to engage the Kings good subjects in the maintenance of an horrid and odious Rebellion against him as this wicked League did any way accord with an Oath of Allegiance which solemnly bound all its takers to bear true faith and Allegiance to his Majesty and to defend him to the uttermost of their power against all attempts and conspiracies whatsoever therefore against that damnable one of the then two Houses which shall be made against his Person Crown and Dignity Fourthly Can this subsequent seditious and trayterous Vow and Covenant which endeavours to withdraw the subjects from their natural Allegiance which they owe unto their Prince they are his * Majesties own words and engages them in acts of High Treason by the express letter of the Statute of the 25. of King Edward the 3. be any way consonant or agreeable with two preceding Oaths which expresly obliges them to bear to the King truth and faith of life members and earthly honour and to a See the oathes of Allegiance and Supremacy c. p. 15. appear for the defence of him of his Person and Government against all attempts against them by any whatsoever upon any pretences soever Can any be so wilde and frantick as to make such an affirmation Fifthly How can that Oath which bindes men absolutely to bear true faith and Allegiance to the King without any relation to his good or bad Government sute with an Apostate that is sworn with a cursed destructive limitation to defend him so long as he shall continue in the preservation of that which the swallower thereof shall fancifully call the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdom and no longer See more of this in the excellent Scotch-Covenant condemned That
the one is the intention of the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance and the other the purpose of the Covenant needs not to be demonstrated with any illustration seeing the doubters may be satisfied in the Oaths themselves And therefore I conclude the contrariety between the one and the other in the words of the learned Paraphrast when he set down his minde with a Neither can that limitation in the Covenant wherein they oblige Page 8. themselves to the preservation of the King in the maintenance of the true Protestant Religion the Priviledges of Parliament and the Liberty of the subject limit or abate the force of those absolute obligations whereby all subjects are obliged to the King and his lawful Heirs and Successors which are upon them by the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance but as such limitations look very unhandsomly so they have not at all any force of abatement in them but ought to be abhorred disclaimed and rejected by all honest Subjects and Christians as an evil gapp opened to Rebellion and Sedition to those that have a minde to make such an evil use thereof under pretence that the King doth that which indeed he ought not to do either depart in any thing from the true Religion or violate the Priviledges of Parliament or the Liberties of the subject § 17. Lastly For this League and Covenants contrariety to the Protestation I shall first set down in general the words of a Right Reverend person upon it who hath told us That b See the Imaâ—e unbroken the Protestation was confined to established Law but the Covenant to destroy Law and what was established by it the Protestation to defend the Doctrine the Covenant to destroy the Government which is comprehended in the Doctrine How do these two hang together Reconcile them and it will be as easie to make light and darkness order and confusion vertue and wickedness lawful unlawful acts to appear one the same thing to every persons eye and ear And therefore how shallow and weak soever my judgement is in every thing yet I hope those that are judicious will excuse me though I presume for once to commend what I say now to their and every mans serious consideration because if I am erroneous it s not through wilfulness or obstinacy but meerly for want of understanding to discern that which is better upon supposition that I am in an errour which I cannot say till I be convinced of it and that which I have to say upon this account shall come dressed to peoples eyes in no other terms then these which I have now subjoyned Every one that took this Protestation did Vow and Protest to maintain and defend as far as lawfully he might observe that well Sir John with his life power and estate the true Reformed Protestant Religion expressed in the Doctrine of the Church of England Now minde the Thirty nine Articles as they are usually called have been alwaies hitherto wont to be accounted The Doctrine of the Church of England the Thirty sixth Article whereof is so far from speaking against the Bishops for the advancing and promoting of a dogged surly Anti-Monarchical Scottish Discipline that the very book of Consecration of Arch-Bishops and Bishops and ordering of Priests and Deacons which had the Royal Civil sanction at the making thereof is affirmed there to have nothing in it that is superstitious or ungodly and this is a part of that which in this Protestation was termed The true Protestant Religion Nay and this must not be defended neither but as far as lawfully I may so that if there had not been the least mention of Episcopacy in any of the Articles yet confining themselves in their Protestation to the rules and orders of the Laws the Supremacy of the King over all persons Clergy and Lay in all causes Ecclesiastical and Civil and Episcopacy its stout propp and defender both undermined subverted and destroyed by a Scottish Discipline stand as safe and firm by the very Protestation as they were before that was ever made or taken Now comes a Solemn League and Covenant and bindes its takers by force of Arms to beat down Episcopacy comprehended in that very doctrine which the Presbyters had sworn to maintain and defend with their lives powers and estates and established by Law to turn their neighbours as the Revered Primate See his Fair Warning page 2. saith out of a possession of above one thousand four hundred years to make room for their Trojan horse of Ecclesiastical Discipline a practise never justified in the world but either by the Turk or by the Pope I and do this too not as far as lawfully they may but any way in the world by hook or by crook per fas aut ne fas so that they can but attain at the ends aimed at in their extirpating noddles to beat down the firm brazen walls of Episcopacy to rear up the muddy noisom ones of an unwholsom factious Presbytery in their rooms And therefore once again I Quaere Can that Protestation whereby I A. B. do promise vow and protest to maintain and desend as far as lawfully I may with my life power and estate the true Reformed Protestant Religion expressed in the Doctrine of the Church of England wherein the lawfulness of Bishops is expresly comprehended any way agree with an illegal League which bindes me to extirpate Bishops in direct opposition to that Doctrine as contrary unto the power of godliness Our Leaguers I know would fain be accounted true and good Protestants and yet swear to extirpate that which is a main propp of the true Protestant Religion and therefore in this case the definition holds very firm and true which was long since given of such at the Conference at Hampton Court That they are * Pag. 38. Protestants frayed out of their wits Again part of that doctrine which by the Protestation the takers vowed to defend is that †The Kings Majesty hath the chief power in his Realm of England and other his dominions unto whom the chief Government of all states of this Realm whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil in all causes doth appertain And by the Covenant the takers swore to preserve and maintain all the days of their lives the thing called the Scottish discipline Now nothing can be more opposite to the Supremacy of the King asserted in the Article and vowed to be defended with life power and estate in the Protestation then this very Scottish discipline which our Baal-Berithists by an after oath swore to preserve Yea light and darkness God and the Devil heaven and hell the serving of Christ and the worshipping of Baal will assoon be brought to agree with each other as the Scottish Presbytery will with Monarchy King James told us it by a sad doleful experience as the discipline of Scotland wil accord with the Regal Supremacy over all persons in all causes as well Ecclesiastical as Civil he that
from rendring rayling for rayling and yet rayl your self for several times in several pages against that very person whom you so strangely exclaim against for the very same thing which clearly manifests an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a notorious self-condemnation and brings you within the reach and lash of the Apostles sentence which in his Epistle to the Romans he pronounces with a Therefore thou art inexcusable O man who ever thou Rom. 2. 1. art that judgest for wherein thou judgest another thou condemnest thy self for thou that judgest dost the same things § 39. But Crofton hath not done yet but continues belching forth his own wickedness and folly against the Reverend Prelate with a z Page 51. Thus he supposeth the Two Houses into a non-entity as to their Supream Legislative power by the temper they were a Page 52 then in and the absence of the King though they were animated by an express Statute Law which some upon good grounds and reasons beyond the reach of Dr. Gauden or little Mr. Crofton to resolve have openly averred to continue them yet in being And thus he profoundly supposeth a Parliament swearing qua Parliament in the fullest formality and profession of their National capacity was a personal Covenanting Bless me what doth this Presbyter prattle thus for of things he lets us know by his fanciful jabbering he hath no more skill or knowledge in then his neer acquaintance the Ass The man is out of his element sure he is got into a wrong way and fancies to himself that he 's going the direct right way on to his journeys end and therefore I le do what lies in my power to manifest his error and mistake unto him And therefore first Doth the Doctor suppose such a thing Doth he suppose nothing to be nothing that to be a non-entity which never had a being A terrible cause indeed of a Presbyters exclamation for we finde that the Supream Legislative Bauble of the Two Houses is the very very Loadstone that draws up a sanctified Puritans zeal and affection to them to shew us a Presbyters inclinations more to fictions and whimsies then to those which are visible undoubted Truths Supream What Gimcrack or New-nothing have we got here That the Body should be affirmed to be above the Head The Legs Arms and Trunk of the Body indeed as Judge Jenkins b See his Lex Terrae p. 49. saith are greater then the Head and yet not above nor with life without it Certainly the man hath a mind to show the profound depth of his skill in Corah's art of murmuring and rebellion against the Supremacy of the Prince and Priest He tells us of an Observation in his Book That it hath been the fatal chance of the Bishops of England Page 25. to run themselves into a premunire If he speak of any since the Reformation I defie him to show me one example of any Protestant Bishop that ever since then proved disloyal either in words or actions to either King or Queen except Bishop Williams when he began in his old age to dote and lean too much on that rotten prop of Presbytery which taught him to fortifie his House against his Gracious Sovereign I do not mean those pretended premunire's for which the incomparable Laud was so infamously murthered nor by which sundry others of the Royal Adherents were the very same way dealt withal as Traytors against His Majesty and the Bauble which they call'd The Parliament for assisting him by that Black Cabale that Assembly of Treacherous Men before in and after the year 1644. But certainly there 's none but can observe the Presbyters Loyalty is good enough when they are deficient in power that is to say when they cannot help it for it is as clear as noon-day that a Puritan never wants a will to rebel if he hath at any time any power and opportunity and that the Magistrate refuse to set up the Consistorian Slavery which made the Learned Dr. Pierce cry out c See his Self-Revenger exemplified p. 100. Blessed and happy is that Nation where such mens Loyalty consisteth in their want of power or opportunity to make resistance In good earnest Mr. Crofton I le for once make answer by a retortion and ask you your own questions you so weakly and impertinently to say no worse propounded Page 25. to the Bishop Sir have you not stretcht too far and stept into a premunire I should fear to be made less by the head as guilty of Treason Sedition at the least should I thus confront the King and Loyal Parliaments in what all their Statutes and an Oath of Supremacy declare to be the peculiar Prerogative of the King And that they do so need no further demonstration then that which follows even the words of the Lord Chief Baron now Lord Chief Justice Bridgeman in his Speech to the Grand Jury at the Regicides Tryal where we thus finde his learned Language Gentlemen Let me tell you what our Law-books say for there 's the ground out of which and the Statutes together we must draw all our conclusions for matter of Government How do they stile the King They call him The Lieutenant of God and many other expressions in the Book of Primo Henrici Septimi Says that Book there The King is immediate from God and hath no Superior The Statute says That the Crown of England is immediately subject to God and to no other power The KING say our Books He is not onely Caput Populi the Head of the People but Caput Reipublicae the Head of the Commonwealth the Three Estates And truly thus our Statutes speak very fully common experience tells you when we speak of the KING and so the Statutes of Edward the Third we call the King Our Sovereign Lord the King Sovereign That is Supream And when the Lords and Commons in Parliament apply themselves to the King they use this expression Your Lords and Commons your faithful subjects humbly beseech I do not speak any words of mine own but the words of the Laws Stat. 24. Hen. 8 cap. 12. Whereas by divers sundry old authentique Histories and Chronicles it is manifestly declared and expressed That this Realm of England is an Empire and so hath been accepted in the world governed by one Supream Head and King having the Dignity and Royal Estate of the Imperial Crown of the same c. 25 Hen. 8. cap. 21. There it is the people speaking of themselves That they do Recognize no Superior under God but the Kings Grace Thus that learned Person To the Judge let me add Mr. Duncomb who telling us d See his Royal buckler or a Lecture to Traytors p. 108. That the Law of Nature shall perish and the heavens and earth shall pass away before Lex Terrae the Law of the Land shall deny this Oracle Omnis sub Rege ipse sub nullo nisi tantum sub Deo All men are under the King and
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