Kings * pitching on his knees and their so lifting up their heads in Scotland since the last Bang not a whit inferiour if not over-topping us there also why then no question when our old friends are destroyed our old Enemy and we must go to it again and I hope we have little hopes that the Catholick will take our parts unless as he promises he will the weakest side till we have totally ruined and confounded each other And now Sir I will leave his happy digression to your self to read in his 9. pag. and come back with him to his place of imployment which he sayes was Oxford which being surrendred he with his fellow-Iesuites have not it seems been idle to stir up sad contentions betwixt the Brethren and people of God Pag. 10. And now they have altered their outward Guize and appear almost in all manner of species in hopes to work more good upon us for the Catholick cause and what do they now but down to Newcastle hye they to the King where Pag. 11. they then it seems had hopes so long since to exasperate our Brethren against England which had they noâ— feared the Kings fickleness they would then have put in action but also that they over much doted on the great summ Page 12. But mark Sir Here he says they found even in our Brethrens army unpardonable Cavaleers and Delinquents more then a good many yea known Priests and Jesuits which truly afflicts my soul to consider it should so be in those times of zealous profession to the contrary to have more then private admittance yea publike acception amongst them not onely to the number of two Regiments of Catholikes Page 13. but one whole Regiment of them reduced under the Lord Synclare who shrouded a Papist under a Presbyterian walking which verily is able to grieve any godly Professor to think it could be possible Nay more Montross who since I doubt is executed rather out of a Royal Politie then a zealous Piety and O monstrous Irish Rebels then to be joyned with as we cannot deny now they are for a war then against England as now But alas our Brethren then feared the imputation of Covenant-breakers which all moderate men would have accused them of had they then begun and whether they have fairly cast it upon England by a two or three years procrastination let the Lord judge I fear but am silent But methinks in good sooth Polemo does a little excuse our Brethrens selling the King when he says their surrendring of him was to no other intent but to furnish them with matter for a new falling out with England being so cunning as to consider that our English Parliament Page 14. being thus necessitated could do no less in Justice upon the great head of their evils then what might furnish them with new pretences for an Invasion and bear them out in the opinion of seduced Englishmen for their endeavouring to raise up new distempers amidst us Of two evils verily this is their greatest if they had taken money for their King all moderate men would in part have excused them Page 15. if it had not been upon such unrighteous grounds and evil designs as are these so that it seems an hard Problem to me whether they are more glad they had so much for him or less sorry they were so conveniently rid of him Page 16. And now Sir our Novice like a mad Rambler flies out into many several odd passages and stories nay he descends to several particulars of persons and places running on in a pretty wilde Discourse but very strongly confirming his Relation by indubitate circumstances which hoping you have wel weighed I shall pass over many pages together for indeed my design at first was no other but to touch upon that which most touches those of our party and where it is possible to wipe off that dirt which is thrown in the face of us that have not yet stooped to bow our knee unto Baal nor gone back from the Covenant of God Page 17. But the next place he leads us to is to that Mother of Reformation that Metropolis of Scotland Edenburgh for to the anguish of my soul he speaks it Page 18. A Catholike delights in no air besides his own so well as in a Presbyterian where belike Montril was at that time egging on our Brethren to fall out with England though there were indeed mature deliberations had upon his Proposals because they savoured too much of a French-English-King and no English-Scotch-King Page 19. nor were our Brethren so valiantly foolish to fall on when the Independent stood so prepared for them they onely made some flourishes as I profess verily I fear they now do meerly to enhance the price of a second bargain Page 20 Page 21. Page 22. Page 23. Besides this great skip many pages more do I now willingly run over as particularly the horrible cunning actings of Hambleton Montril and the Jesuits it s indeed a fitter Lecture for the Cavaleer then us though most horribly have we both of us been deluded by Royal tricks the gratious God be pleased to open their and our eyes that we may see and understand his ways and the evil of our misleadings Ay but Sir I beseech you in the name of Jesus Christ let the words of that cunning Merchant Montril never depart out of your breast O how prophetick are they truly it s a very great discovery and worthy our perpetual consideration Page 24. I mean that additional good news which he spake to the comfort of the Jesuite which came unto him about carrying on their plots in Scotland I doubt not quoth he by what I have already brought to pass with the Scots and English but to see our three enemies beaten by themselves and his Banner of Christ and Standard of his Master to be in time erected amongst us Heretiques for so you see they account us Never a Barrell the better Herring O then good Sir should not this induce us to be all one in one as it becometh the Saints and servants of Jesus Christ shall we rather desire to be governed by a forraign French Foe then a Native-English friend Fie on this carnall mindedness this selfishness and desire of rule and government which thus rules and rages even in the breasts of holy professors truly this becometh not the dear Saints of God Pag. 25. But that which is the most intolerable burthen upon my spirit is when I consider they say they had great hopes by the King and his party but more now then ever if but we of the honest party and those old Reprobate Malignants could be ever brought so to shake hands though but with the teeth outward as to be both willing to accept of aid from the French King which truly I doubt is now past bringing to pass in Scotland and by our Country Club-meetings of both parties too neer wrought
according to your present light in your wayes of worship of God but in an amicable way to compose such triviall impertinencies concerning which we have so often to no purpose sent overtures unto you ye know that a man once in danger of drowning indifferently catches hold of whatsoever is obvious to his sight or sense though it be a naked sword or hot iron I have seen two beasts fighting that would presently part and fall upon a third common enemy shall we be worse then beasts is there such a necessity in it that you must needs divide from us your heretofore Brethren and unite and joyn interest with strangers enemies aliens forraigners Danes Swedes French Dutch O horrible Irish too c. I must confess self-preservation is the most pressing if not the most legal of all duties but have a care Brethren that you have not learned this maxime out of Machiavel That its convenient for a Christian to agree with the Turk against a Christian for in danger saith he Honesty and fair-dealing may be laid aside and but what seems best may be undertaken this is but to defend a mans self with the left hand Now let the world be Moderators whether you have not gone these sinister wayes to work Good God! what I trow is the end and object of your designs what is there in the cause under which you now warfare that either a learned Doctor may be able to maintain or that a consciencious Presbyter dare excuse I see I must once more impeach you of the highest piece of perfidie and pursue you to the inmost retreates of your plots and see whether as the world gives out your Nation in general or that black counsel under which you now labour be least innocent or most viperous True ye paint over your pretences with the guilded colour of righteousness but seriously wise men judge that there is nothing but a desire to become masters of other mens habitations which makes ye so often desirous to go out of your own It was ever the custom of you cold Nothern ones to come before you were bid and to creep nearer the Sun Lord what a many arguments which now lye in English Jaques were there once rak'd up to prove the conveniencie of our Vnion and your naturalization what oldd remnants were there scrap'd up to assert the legality of your Sixth Jemmies transplantation as intricate as a Welsh Pedigree and because forsooth descended from a seventh Henry we must be your fellow-slaves and this unhappy fancy of yours bringing your third Hobby-Horse because his sons-son will in the end certainly prove fatall to you if you be not the more timely wise ye ran well who hindred you that ye might not obtain that precious liberty chalk'd out by us unto you ye were at your own disposition ye might have been what ye had desired but ah me in the midst of peace ye have the spirit of war and a seditious will and when ye once made us beleeve ye were at rest ye onely then plotted how ye might be more active these tricks will prove State-Torments to you in the end ye will not be at quiet till ye have the rule of our Church and Sate Really a man may read in the white-liver'd physiognomy of ye Scots and our Presbyters that innate Coveteousness in them to rule and raign which burns and consums ye within and is the true internal sign that makes them look as they do T is true your Duke Hamilton who paid so deerly for our University Earldom is now dead but his instructions live still and are now as vigorously on foot amongst you as ever though you invited us when you were well knockt and humbly cried Peccavimus a sinful ingagement because ye saw that unless you took in that young Renegado into your pack it would be as unfeisable for you to win England as those Kingdoms and Provinces which Galileo points out unto you in the Moon but now I le warrant by his help ye are as sure as a gun In good sober sadness the extravagancy of your designs is worthily to be jeered at they are so contemptibly ridiculous in the thoughts of all knowing men would to God ye did but in part understand how mightily you and your Dagon Presbytery is generally laught at in this our Common-wealth But should seem the great wrong we have done you and that which most offends you is our being free you will finde something or you will quarrel at a straw look thorow all our Histories and we finde that as long as Scotland has had a neighbour there never wanted brawlings either by good will or by force ye will enter upon and have to do with the affairs of England truly my brethren ye have always been taken for very bad Accomodators of differences Is this your stating the Cause to fight us if so for what is it I beseech you Is it for the reinstalment of your old Popish Bishop or for the reinvestment of your new sinfull King whom you have made to confess so great a contraction of the guilt of hainous sins and horrid bloudy crimes that you have even perswaded the world he is fitter to be hang'd drawn and quartered by the Laws of God and men at least we for our parts much doubt that Jus divinum of your rotten debaucht Kirk how you can or dare maintain his compurgation upon a meer formally hypocritical verball submission and that for a Jack-a-Lent who would rather turn Link-boy to you then sit out for Gods sake how comes it to pass that ye have not excommunicated him all this while as well as any other of your sinners will ye make him confess guilt and yet say he is not so or can ye dare say that his guilt is not within the line of his excommunication if ye do I dare say ye are all a company of rascally veillacons In the Spanish Schools I have read it was once a very hot dispute and there was cutting and flashing for it to some purpose whether the Indians were of the race of Adam their gold mines made them Scot-like deny their fraternity or a middle bastard species between a man and an Ape I wonder they had forgot you what can any man make of you you will have a King and no King a sinner and no sinner a righteous person and yet his whole house and himself bloody monstrous incarnate devils Well if he be such an one as ye have made him confess and we have not reason to deny then I will not say the habit of Tyranny but without question the Tyranny of habite hath got such predominancy over him that according to his instilled principles which have been drawn from the blood and been breed in his bone will hardly out of the flesh unless it be let out the same way his Tyrant fathers was In the interim me thinks the visible apparancy of his detestable horridness should at least palliate and allay your groundless
Sir in this scruple of conscience I am also much dissatisfied why we should keep such a spudder in the Pulpit in matters meerly civil and politick alas Sir let us preach Jesus Christ and desire to know nothing else Ah me how do some of our brethren especially amongst ye at London make us shrewdly suspect them whom otherwise the world must have in great reverence and estimation for their eminent worthiness in Gospel-pains-takings when the whole scope of their exercises is to set the people a madding and to spawle so so much in the face of Authority enough to make that ununreasonable Hydra rise up and tear in pieces our fellow-Saints whom 't is true the Lord hath set over us and yet to be our servant Governours Pag. 5. But on next he tells us the Good Catholike is quite turn'd Presbyter and doth now clearly relinquish the Royall Cause so much as that he is resolv'd to assist us with some grand pieces of his Treachery not doubting but that we shall serve to add vigour to their cause as more able and apt Instruments then were the hare-brain'd Cavaleers Verily Sir if his reasons hold water to prove this we shall be with some reluctancy and grief of spirit enforced to acknowledge the pernicious evill of our Presbyterian Discipline what a Papist be able to cloud himself under the holy walkings of a Presbyter O lamentable let us hear his reasons I pray Sir and the great Jehovah be pleased to work an information upon all our spirits He urges you see in the Book that they have more hopes by us then they had by the Bishops and here a Dominican Father shews us how to wit That if the points of our Religion where I conceive he hints at Auricular Confession and Penance with their Discipline and Policie no doubt he means our owning a Kirk-Chair-Infallibility were seriously considered that there is no form of Religion in the world does so neerly adhere to and consent with the true Catholick Faith though he denyes it to be super veritate fundatum as theirs is because perchance we so much stand upon our Kirk and they upon their Church He proceeds on with his Reasons because we of the Ministery are so mutable and given to change so that he concludes a probable hope of our conversion to them in the end O Sir that our unmoveableness in the wayes of worship godliness and walkings with God could supply us with an Argument to repell this undenyable objection of theirs Oh dear God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ we do confess and acknowledge the instabilities and waverings of our opinions in many fundamentals and sound points Ah Sir help me to deny that Marginall witness he there inserts against us A Common-Prayer-Directory-Covenanting-Royall-Assembly-Engaging Ministers of England Let me tell you Sir though we seem out of some humane carnall concernments so much to boggle at the engaging to the present Government yet I professe it was indeed an odder change in us to run point-blank against all those former oaths we had so often taken at our severall Degrees and taking Orders then now but to make a promise by subscription of being obedient to that Government which the Lord himself doth indubitately own to be over us by his perspicuously appearing manifold providences and bringings about it doth not trouble me though indeed it was contrary to our many oaths that we have laid aside the Bishops but it grieves my spirit when I consider we could heretofore so easily swallow a Camel and that we should now so nicely strein at a Gnat. Pag. 6. Next for that which he calls Volaticum jus jurandum our Covenant how can we deny but that our Brethren make the main use of it now for a pick-quarrel with England which as we have grounds to suspect if the French have put them upon then assuredly some body hath given an assurance of his firm conversion to the Faith Catholick and we of the Presbytery the onely staffe He intends to lean upon which truths of his assertion that he may the more clearly hold forth you see he sticks not to tell us the particular services and good turns they did us for the advancement of and twisting together the catholick-covenant-Catholick-Covenant-Cause Pag. 7. Certainly we cannot chuse but see day all abroad at this great hole and through these crannies we cannot but espy the Jesuiticall closings with us I pray God it be not ours with them as in the business of France and Ireland For as he goes on it should seem when he ruled the roast the Jesuits were better able in any notion to disguise themselves under our Discipline then any other because alas we were so credulously formall that whosoever would but turn Covenanter we were eftsoon confident he must be an honest man if he had been the highest Cavaleer Iesuit or King himself which if the last had as his son now has done with his whole fry of Iesuites and Malignants about him I am subject to beleeve with the Novice they would and these will if the Lord avert it not in short time reduce England to a more sad condition then all we have hitherto sustain'd for let us speak soberly Sir if the late ungodly King had but come in by that cobled Treaty of the Isle of Wight there would I am confident hardly a moneth have commenc'd before we should have had some of our now best standing heads lopt off and I professe I have often feared with my self that such as you and I should scarce have been seated in those affluent Benefices and creaturely full enjoyments which we undisturbedly may if we will now enjoy under these our gracious Governors Pag. 8. Ah Sir what can we imagine but that when we three you know whom I mean are but once joyn'd but the effects will be most sad To us especially for whosoever stands we must fall I will not touch upon the sound reasons which in his 8. pag. he urgeth for this passage they indeed make me silent to give a Response to him or them for truly I cannot deny that the bloody intentions of the Cavaleers to us-wards and so consequently our just provocations against them must needs render us both one with another impossibly reconcilable Pag. 9. But let us us suppose now that if our brethren with the assistance we could wish them and the Cavaleers will bring them should prevaile against our present Government and lay England flat on their backs what benefit can we of all men propound or imagine to our selves for surely the Cavaleer would flye high and stand on tip-toe outvying us both for service and desert when at the most we do but wish well and are said to bawle a little in the Pulpit when in the mean while they are now suffered and let in to act in the field whose number also and considerableness every man knows much surmounts us in England and t is thought by the young
which we have suffered and outliven must needs content our memory Surely then kind Sir every generous soul cannot but be passionately affected with and as it were resolutely interess himself against the rude calumniations and dirty bespatrings which some of ye black coats and blacker mouthes dare vomit and spue out of your Pulpits in the very face of Authority what wild stupididity possesses ye silly pettish elves Ye can Saint a Tyrant your quondam mortal Foe ye extoll to the skies since ye your selves brought him to the block him whom even a world yea even of his very foraign friends ingenuously acknowledg to be the greatest Bloudshedder of this last Century It s a great wonder to me to see how the Royalists hug the memory of their late weakling-Idol why is it but because as his son now does at times to serve his turn he deserted them in plain ground they are right Spaniels the more endeared to him because he was the principal cause of their so often sound basting and utter ruine but for ye secondary adopted fondlings of the Presbytery that ye should begin so strangely to lessen the number of those thousands who as ye often brag'd would never bow the knew to Baal this is much the greater wonder of the two The Cavaleers made a God of the first and ye a Calf of the second T is very pretty to observe how oddly ye are resolved sometimes for Monarchy and then presently you could find in your hearts to have a Commonwealth rather then relinquish a fat Benefice how strangely do your great London Brethren Weathercock it about Those Cawdries Hudsons Ashes Robin-Hoods c. whatsoever is commanded by Authority they will be sure to run Counter if an act of thanksgiving be emitted to be observed on Tuesday we shall be sure to have it in some by-corner but on their own Kirks-day-Friday truly they may do well to imitate the Moores who say they on the same day do evermore use to make publike prayers and meetings for the restitution of the Kingdom of Granada but bitterly curse the memory of the last King who could not defend it against Ferdinand 7. But seventhly you stand much upon your Conscience Scruples these forsooth must be the Cover-sluts for all your sneaking-hypocritical Rogueries and Pulpit-Impostures O what witched faces do ye there make what catterwauling howlings what religious railings Really I look upon this thing called Royall Presbytery as a meer monster whose figure can not be delineated as ye have now farced and pieced it up with your very godly Brethren the Cavaleers with your holy Brethren the Scots and with your I know not what brethren the Irish true it seems at the first view when a man considers your seduced numbers to be of a very formidable and great bulke but this gross thumping body of yours consists of several pieces and patches some Popish some Prelatical some Directory and yet most-Common Prayer and some Confess Mass-book Truly Sir ye shall finde that after it hath had two or three sound Scotch-shakings that it holds together rather by Ligaments then Nerves I confess ye have many Classes and Asses that is members amongst you but they are very uglily proportioned not well compacted the Head grows out of the Breech ye make a Cushion of it for your Repentant-Close-stool to speak more properly ye walk up and down tip and tail I know not how but the Cavaleer saies Hand over head But behold a little poor people gone to whip the breech of this great Garragantulus those whom a supream Providence hath called and lifted up to humble the pride and insolency both of a Monarchick and Presbyterian Tyranny who though they are inconsistent aim both at that one thing behold I say those little hills of Pencland who were able to brave and resist an whole Kingdom of the one sort and all the forces of the other Poor contemptible souls The weak things of this world hath our God chosen to confound the mighty I can compare our Army in Scotland to nothing so fitly as those smal grains of sand wherewith the Lord bridles in the furious insultings of the main it was your own boast Sir that they would scarce serve for a Break-fast to that Nation Indeed I hope so and beleeve you brag on ye English Apostates surely those severall atchivements made under Straughan Massey Montgomerey c. since our first marching into that Hell upon Earth which ye lately so much vanted of were victories so deerly bought that your gude Brethren had ere this time been finally defeated had they gained many such but I am forced to acknowledge that the false news of the Irish Rebels your other Brethrens successes and that the Plague hath much infested the poor English Protestant there this indeed hath given you much cause thus to elevate heighen your spirits but this cannot much perplex the honest heart for I dare pawn my Reputation it will in time appear that ye have not onely confederated with the gross Papist but ioyned tailes or rather Heads with the very Jesuite yet I beseech you Sir nicely to take notice of this one sentence There is yet whereby ye may be troubled where ye think your selves so secure not that I say we have a plot to out-vye you and bid higher for the Papist then have ye we should then be so far from being confident as now ye are by it that we should evermore doubt of our future prosperity But who can be ignorant that if the honest godly Englishman whom your party have seduced and divided from us should again re-unite themselves return to their obedience and wits and at last smell out that ungodly knavery which the Brethren have lately fob'd into their pretended Kings Declaration or if your other dear fellow-Saints the Cavaleers shall henceforth surcease to lend their hands bloud and estates to the propagating of their first enemies rascally designs and resolve henceforth to be true to their Countrey knowing that the plot is carried by you as destructively fierce against them as any other party whatsoever against whom ye more grin your teeth then assuredly all the plots and devices that are now machined against England or any of us all be we what we will be that are your enemies would presently burst and shiver in pieces and the best Scotified Presbyter of you all be like an old dusty-rusty Jack never more able to turn any way having lost some of your master wheeles But this let me add moreover to your Brother-Royalist his comfort we have known the man that having been overcome hath finally endangered the Conqueror though but with the broken end of a sword and to have slain him to whom even now he was an humble petitioner for his life Noble Gentlemen Cavaleers ye often use to boast that you could not have been vanquished had not that base forraign Scotch Nation been brought in assistant against you You say also ye cannot be in a worse