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
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
Richard Gourney then Lord Major of London from his Office and put in a fiery persecutor of the Loyal Clergy whose name as one saith should more properly Isaac Pennington have been Julian in his place as well as others who they knew or suspected to be affectionate to the King and his Legal Cause and placed others of the most factious and seditious Covenanting Extirpaters in their rooms How they wrote their Letters to the French Protestants abroad and sent their Agents into all parts of the Nation at home desiring the one and requiring the other to joyn with and assist them How they set up a Disciplinarian Inquisition among us that cast out more Ministers in three or four years then all the Bishops had done in fourscore years before How before and after all this they wrote their Letters and sent their printed demonstrating declaratory Knacks to the King to disguise their actions That they had no ill meaning against His Majesty but had been and still remained his dutiful and loyal Subjects How yet by their leaguing together and prospering in their wickedness they came at last to a peerless act of Regicide of murthering their Sovereign before His own Palace windows Shall quickly and easily perceive that they were sworn Leaguers together in one and the same Cause of Extirpating Reformation and Covenanted Rebellion and yet both hypocritically pretending their Loyalty and Allegiance which manifests the Serpents art in beguiling people into the snares of wickedness and into the ways of impiety and profaneness and then showing his servants the way to delude others to disguise their Villanies with the shew of Godliness and their seditious actions with the vizard of faithful Obedience and Subjection for there is no more difference between our Covenanters here and their Deer Leaguing Brethren of France as to the main end and scope of their Leaguing Designs then there is between Guy Faux with his Myne and dark Lanthorn and Bradshaw and his execrable Confederates in Westminster-Hall both whose intentions we know well enough was clearly the Murther of Kings though upon different grounds The first endeavoring to blow up the Father for being too much an Enemy to the Popish Ribaldry and Massing Trinckets The latter actually cutting off the Son because they thought him in their cauterized consciences to be a Popish Tyrant but murther we see was the aim of both The world saith a See his Survey of the pretended holy discipline p. 7. Archbishop Bancroft now adays is set all upon Liberty Everyman almost is of their humour which thought scorn that any should be lifted up above the Congregation Numb 16 1. Crofton at least hath wedded himself to their murmuring fancy for Ecclesiastical parlty and is very well pleased with his confused thoughts of it or else we should certainly have never found him affronting his Episcopal Antagonist with his Jangling Discourse of Falshood and Sedition more particularly asserting this palpable whimsie against the general current of Venerable Antiquity viz. That b See p. 25. of his book that which was charged upon Aerius by Epiphanius for Heresie was an undeniable universal truth Knowing man Excellent Disputant that can daub over his own errors with the untempered morter of confidence and falshood There 's no meddling with such kind of people who with the men of China conceit two eyes to themselves and that leave all the rest of the world in arrant blindness No hopes of ever prevailing with fanciful creatures who will for no other reason but because they wil be in the right order and way and have voted all their Antagonists to lie and stick fast in a muddy ditch of error It s very strange to me I must needs say that an Ecclesiastical Historian should not know what he wrote at the same time he wrote it better then one of his Juniors at many hundred years distance that should at that time point blanck affirm That what he said was false but when men are resolved once to have their wills no Truth nor History must dare to controul them for fear of being taxed of speaking untruths But seeing its an Affirmation without proof 't is but answering No to his Ay and then where is he He hath a wish behinde still a request to the Bishop to ease him of his unprofitable unlucky pains which is this that follows I would Dr. Gauden would own Dr. Saunderson as his Dictator in the nature of an Oath he should not then so much need the Dictates of little Master Crofton It s Page 45. no marvel indeed Mr. Croftons Dictates are of such profound depth that the Dr. should want them to enlighten his understanding It s the unhappiest man one of them that ever I met with to bring Dictators to overthrow his own dictates I wonder what he can get by his Citation of such a Reverend Prelates Works What profit or advantage is there in those learned Writings for the upholding of his Covenanting Spell The Reasons of the University of Oxford declares him to be a person of admirable parts and himself to be a grand Antagonist against their sacred Covenant The Reverend Prelate cited by that faithful Royalist Mr. Roger L'estrange in his Holy Cheat tell us That no man can binde himself Page 35. in things wherein he is subject without leave of his Superior And again The Oath of one who is under the power of another without the others consent is neither firm nor valid Now unless our Presbyter can prove that a son or servant can do any thing without the Father or Masters consent That a part of the Two Houses who themselves were but part of a Parliament can lawfully i. e. by the Laws of God or this Land order and change the Affairs of the Church and thrust out and put in what and whom they please without the Kings consent the learned Dictates of that excellent Bishop clearly proves the nullity of the Covenant and the rottenness and weakness of Mr. Crofton's Dictates how imperiously soever they are ushered in with his I deny and I averr and such like examples of his brother the Scotch Confuter of the Learned Cardinal Bellarmin Dr. Gauden having affirmed He took no Oathes but those appointed by Law Crofton tells him c Page 63. He might reckon the Covenant to be of this nature And why so Pray Reader do but observe his pitiful reason for the Authority of Parliament is by the Petition of Right the legal appointment of an Oath And what then I cannot but laugh methinks at his folly and wonder how he keeps his proselytes in his nose how he leads them by the nose to believe his fooleries to be unanswerable The Petition of Right desired no Oath might be imposed upon the people of this Land but by Act of Parliament Ergo The Covenant imposed by an illegal Ordinance made by a part of a part of a Parliament is appointed by Law What a Non sequitur is here
the times of Popish Egyptian darkness shall any pretending to true Protestantism which severely declaims all such perfidious Antichristian courses be found to be so far approvers of such infamous actions as to commend them for examples to others to tread in the same steps Can Subjects combining and swearing together to extirpate the legal established Church-Government of a Nation as Bishops were and are still here though the leg exercise of their Coercive power in the Star-Chamber and High Commission Courts was taken away by the Act in 1641. to prevent the subsequent Rebellion and Jesuitical-Combinations of Leaguing Presbyters and vowing to assist one another in their Covenanted Rebellion with their lives and fortunes against the express command of the supream Governor for the attaining of their Leaguing ends be called and stiled Commendable by any one pretending some affinity to Loyalty or Christianity which are inseparable and the constant attendants upon a true fearer of the Lord It 's a brave time with Rebels when their Treason and disloyalty are enrolled amongst the Records of Fame and Honour and their obedient opposites to the commands of their lawful Prince are in the very act of Loyalty tearmed and Recorded for terrible Delinquents against the thing which Nick-named it self so often A Parliament Halcyon daies for Sacrilegious Schismaticks when that which is condemned by the word of God nothing more shall be garnished forth with an Epethite of Commendable though what the Prophet by God's express command said so long ago that do I say now unto these strangers to Truth and Loyalty b Isaiah 5. 20. Wo unto them that call evil good and good evil § 2. They tell us too It was according to the practice of Gods people in other Nations Aha! What Gods people and Covenanting Rebels too What Reformers and swearing Extirpaters of the Episcopal promoters of the Reformation Saints and yet Schismaticks Christians and yet Traytors Surely our Covenanters were put to extream hard straits to make lies their refuge for their carrying on of their extirpating Reformation No other way to catch people into the black Road with them but by blinding their eyes with Errors and Contradictions A sad geneneration of Merozians It s true indeed the Guisian Leaguers in France went directly in the same impious courses before them unless they be their Gods people I know none for they alone were the Monsters that our Leaguers could properly say they were imitators of because they went to their hellish work with an Oath like ours and yet Guise himself like ours too had the face to tell his Prince That he was his faithful subject for all that Who as the Translator of a Parisians Work tells us living under c See the right of Kings and duty of subjects Pref. a milde and peaceable Prince slandered their King that he was an enemy to the Roman Catholick Religion as our Covenanters did the late Carolian Martyr to be an enemy to the Protestant and under the fair pretence of Religion screwed themselves into the favour of the Common people who are usually deceived by such pretences raising a strong party against the King by the name of the holy League which caused much confusion in that kingdom as by too sad and lamentable experience we have found to be the effects of our English Leaguers in this And now I appeal to the conscience of any man living whether they that can first Rebel against their d For so they swore the King was only Supream Governour and then have the confidence to tell us of a thing which never was like that of the man in the Moon and set it down with such a positive Asseveration as making it a pattern for their illegal traitorous undertakings and stile that Commendable which if any such thing had ever been ought to be abhorred as much as hell by him that desires the Rules of Christianity I say I appeal to the Conscience of any man living who desires not to be ensnared and kept so with the e See Mr. Reynell's Panegyrik intituled The unfortunate Change Caledonian Boar which was the cause of our distempers whether they that speak these lies and juglings these palpable falshoods and deceits could possibly have according to their assertion Before their eyes the glory of God and the advancement of the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ whose f See Mr. Quarrel 's Loyal Convert P. 5. glory will not be vindicated by such unlawful means and unwarrantable proceedings and whose kingdom is endeavoured to be pulled down by such a peerless Covenant But what 's it they swear that must have a juggling Preface to set it forth Why they tell us in their first Article That they will sincerely really and constantly through the grace of God as though that would ever square with such proceedings endeavour in their severall places and callings the Preservation of the Reformed Religion in the Church of Scotland in Doctrine Worship Discipline and Government according to the word of God and the example of the best Reformed Churches § 3. What have I to do with the reglement of Foreign Churches * See his Fair warning P. 1 said the Reverend Primate and so say I too What had English men to do to swear to preserve the Doctrine and Discipline of another Countrey Let them stand or fall to their own Master Ay but here was the Mystery We have an earnest longing desire to have Bishops extirpated and we having followed the pattern of our dear Scottish Brethren in rising up in arms against our King for that purpose and being not well able and sufficient of our selves to carry on our design against them we must call in the other to our aid and they will not come to us unless we will swear to set up their Church-way amongst us and therefore rather then Bishops shall stand we will do it For as the late Martyr said upon the Covenant nothing will induce them to engage till those that called them in have pawned thier souls to them by a solemn League and Covenant I am verily perswaded that there was not one amongst a hundred that swore that League to preserve the Scottish Discipline that knew no more what their Discipline was then a horse and so they swore with a blinde implicite faith to preserve they knew not what themselves Pure good swearing is it not Was this sworn in Truth Judgement and Righteousness as the Prophet saith an Oath should Jer. 4. 2. If not as it was not Is not therefore such mens swearing unlawful and so to be renounced and repented of Is it not an abominable wickedness in any one to swear to preserve the Scottish Discipline or when sworn to keep such a wicked Oath when the Reverend Primate hath made it appear by such cogent and undeniable Arguments of truth and sound Divinity beyond the reach and power of a Crofton or any Presbyterian adversary to answer without palpable
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
own naturally deformed one appear the neater and beautifuller But I consider otherwise he could not hide his folly from being palpable and open to every person that is not possessed of a Bedlamers understanding nor his Book from being thrown into the fire by ingenuous persons rather then they would vex themselves so much as to read his lies and juglings his cavillings and sedititon his false quotations and confident language both of the judicious Assertions and person of that Learned Reverend Prelate whom this Holy Leaguer may well put to silence after the usual Presbyterian ways of Disputing for indeed it will soon make any wise man leave off medling with such notorious Salamanders who loves to live in peace and quietness and endeavour to advance the Unity of the Church and delights not to live in contention with them to kindle the fire of Combustion and Sedition both in Church and State But we will see however what the man conceived fit in his Scotized noddle to say for himself and make it the matter of his Answer to the words of the Bishop as he had filthily mangled them in his false quotation of them and that I finde upon search to be this learned one that follows with a m P. 25. of his Book But Sir have you not stretch'd too far and stept into a Premunire Little Mr. Crofton should fear to be made less by the head as guilty of Treason Sedition at the least should be thus confront King and Parliaments in what all their Statutes declare to be their own creature and constitution changeable at their pleasure even from the Statutes of Carlisle and 25. of Edward the 3. Declaring against the Pope That holy Church was founded in Prelacy by their own Donation Power and Authority and so by the same way changeable Where is Sir the Kings Prerogative why not Supremacy Would not that word have choak'd you over all persons in all causes Ecclesiastical What is become of your oath of Supremacy Can you make this peremptory determination as your self calls it consist with it any more with your Covenant Hath a gracious King lately advanced you to debase nay dethrone him and his Parliament too And then tells his Readers a story How it hath been observed to be the fatall chance of the Bishops of England to run themselves into a Premunire The man would fain make people believe that Bishops are Seditious persons and in particular his Reverend Antagonist and therefore the best course will first be to consider what the Bishop hath said and then see whether it amount to the Sedition supposed by the Leaguing Rhodomantado and in order thereunto I shall begin with the first particle of the Bishops words That Kings Lords and Commons have no prudent moral religious and lawful authority to change an ancient universal Church-Government by Bishops to any that is As new and schismatical So far worse and unsuitable to England every way and see whether they may be found to be either contrary to truth or a derogation to His Majesties legal Supremacy and therefore first that they have no prudential authority to change Episcopal Government much less swear to extirpate them root and branch is evident not onely by the desperate excommunicating antimonarchical brasen tricks and practises of the Godly partie forsooth in Scotland against the excellent King James in walking direct contrary to his Royal Commands and stirring up the people in Rebellion against him because he did not submit himself to their traiterous imperious humours and making him for his own safety to flie out of his own capital City of Edinburgh but also by that Kings famous Motto No Bishop no King and by the sad woful experience of the truth thereof by the late never to be forgotten Rebellion in 1642 and the Regicidian genuine issues and effects of it knowest thou not Sir John Presbyter the undeniable truth of that Assertion of the noble L'estrange which he put forth to the view of the world That m See his Interest mistaken or The holy Cheat pag. 88. by those very Troops that cryed down Bishops was the King murthered Knowest thou not Sir John what the wise King James said to Dr. Reynolds's desire at the conference at Hampton Court for the rearing up a domineering Tyrannical Presbytery within this Kingdom if not then I shall for once declare it unto your Honor the Royal Answer ran thus n See the Conference at Hampton Court p. 81. Stay I pray you for one seven years before you demand that of me and if then you finde me pursey and fat and my wind-pipes stuffed I will perhaps harken to you for let that government be once up I am sure I shall be kept in breath then shall we all of us have work enough both our hands full but Dr. Reynolds till you finde that I grow lazie let that alone If Kings and Parliaments have a mind never to be quiet and to be alwaies in a combustion I know no better advice can be given them then for to set and rear up this Presbytery but if they desire to keep themselves in rest peace and unity they 'l find I am confident no prudential authority to extirpate Episcopacy by a Baal-Berith and bring an headless currish Presbytery in its room but will abandon the Covenant that o See Mr. L'estrange his Interest mistaken p. 35. popular Sacrament of Religious disobedience as the very poison of hell and the secret underminer of the Regal Authority and Supremacy but then § 25. Again secondly that they have no religious authority for as for moral authority that is an authority secundum morem according to former custom their authority is so altogether in the negative there that its in vain to blot any paper with an answer but I say that they have no religious authority to change Episcopal government is evident too in regard of the Apostolicalness and primitive use thereof by the Apostles while they lived in commanding obedience and controuling the subordinate governors and their disorders as well as the peoples in the several Churches they planted and enjoyning the same to be done by his Episcopal deputies at Ephesus and Creet and in them all their successors in the Episcopal office in those several Churches over whom they had their jurisdiction Certainly he that tells me that p 1 Tim. 3. 1. he that desires the office of a Bishop desires a good work gives me no religious nor lawful authority to vow and swear with an Anti-regal Oath to extirpate it and make an exchange for one of the plagues of Egypt to overwhelm us instead of that That the Apostle said the one and that therefore for that very reason Kings and Parliaments have no religious authority to do the other None but a Crofton and his crafty companions would ever have had the confidence to deny it which makes me proceed to the next thing and that is § 26. That they have no lawful
they that they are well governed or that their Prince mind their peace and safety If I may be so bold with the world as to tell them my simple judgement of those words of the Kings I humbly conceive with submission to those that are wiser That those Statutes were made meerly to cut off the spring of the Popes universal Supremacy and as much as in them lay to cast out his bold unwarrantable antichristian Encroachment upon the English Liberties and to give acheck to his Lordly domineering over them that the Kings as now might have their due rightful Supremacy over all persons in all causes within their dominuous Over Clergymen who were humble servants to the principles and injunctions of the Papal Vsurper as well as over Common people who were led by the nose by them In all causes Ecclesiastical to reform Abuses in the Church and punish Clergy-men for their Errors Heresies and Seditious principles aswel as Civil To execute wrath upon those that do evil either by Rebellion or Treason or Speaking or bellowing out from Press or Pulpit their damnable positions against their Persons Crowns Dignities or Governments upon any accompt with any person or persons joynt or seperate whatsoever This I understand to be the grounds of that Royal saying That holy Church was founded in prelacy by their own donation power and authority and not for any intentions of theirs to extirpate Episcopal Government or the manifestation of the lawfulness of their power by the Laws of God and Rules of Christian Piety and Polity for the doing of it § 28. But the man hath not done yet but hath some more questions such as they are to be answered still and therefore I le hasten to the consideration of them and what should they be but these paultry impertinent ones that follow which are as proper Queries for the Bishops true position as if he should have put his pen in 's tail and held them both up to the Sun to look at Where is Sir the Kings Prerogative over all persons in all causes Ecclesiastical What is become of your Oath of Supremacy Can you make this peremptory determination as your self calls it consist with it any more then with your Covenant Weighty questions indeed but such as are more worthy of laughter at his folly then of any answer to his proud boasting Quaeries but seeing the Scotized Presbyters aim therein if I hit him right if not let him or any of the gang inform me how I shot amiss is to make the learned Bishop by his saying to savour of the guiltiness of perjury by his pretended contradictory assertion to the noble Oath of Supremacy which he like a true Christian and faithful Subject had sworn its high time to look about us and stand up in defence of this vilely slander'd Prelate against this Covenanting Goliath of the City of London and make answer to his sorry though insolent Quaeries which though they seem to be of a ternary quality yet in sum the three amount but to one and first he asks Where is Sir the Kings Prerogative over all persons in all Causes Ecclesiastical Good lack what a great Upholder of the Regal Supremacy you are become Mr. Caviller What Sir do you turn Quaerist after it Do Presbytery begin to shake hands with the Supremacy of His Sacred Majesty Doth the devil plead for God and Baal for the worshipping of Christ Certainly then there needs no great fear of danger from the Apostatical Calvinian Hierarchy or of Letters of horning from the Scotized Presbytery But good now Sir Presbyter Why Prerogative Why not Supremacy Was that word like a Bishops Lawn Sleeves to your party that it would have choaked you to have named it In all my little reading did I never meet with that word Prerogative joyned with that sentence before put in in stead of the rightful word Supremacy which makes me think of a tacit denial of the thing at that very time he saucily corrects the Bishop for his seeming contradictory Position to it as giving a back-blow to the Kings Supremacy in his seeming paultry defence of it else surely he would have made use of the usual word Supremacy and not impotently ask Where is the Kings Prerogative over all persons in all causes Ecclesiastical Come come Mr. Zechary you are a cunning companion and lie altogether upon the catch to see how you can take away a Prelates credit from him but all wont do you are horribly deceived if you think to meet with any unbyassed persons to trap them into your cheating Snare with you for there 's none that compares one Book with the other as I have done but will see your cunning Sophistry and infamous ways of arguing and thereby learn to detest the Leaguing Author of the one and honor the reverend Writer of the other If he that saith That the King hath no prudent moral religious and lawful Authority by the Laws of God and Rules of Christian Piety and Polity to change Episcopal Government unto any one else that is AS new and schismatical SO far worse and unsuitable to England every way and so not to bring in Schism or Heresie denies the Supremacy of the King certainly the great and invincible maintainers of it against the joynt encroachments of Papist and his brother Presbyter will be quickly found to be against it and so indeed every one else that understands Christianity sense or reason Take the Supremacy in that notion for which it was first established and this Assertion of the Prelates may very well consist with the Oath but if this Calvinian prater for a little cavilling sport for it s for no other end be be sure for he is either no Presbyter or if he be he is no more a friend to or pleader for the Kings lawful Supremacy according to the true intent and meaning of the Framers of the Oath then the rigidest Jesuit at Rome will take it to reach to every thing that he that denies the Kings lawful power to do that which is unrighteous by the Laws of God is presently against His legal Supremacy Then not onely the reverend Prelates and Episcopal Divines the onely constant Assertors of it all along against the several wilde fancies of Jesuits and Scotized Presbyters but the Kings Sacred Majesty himself wil be found to be vehement opposers of it I 'm confident His Highness desires no such thing but that His Supremacy might onely reach so far as he may lawfully exercise it without breach of the Laws of God § 29. But this is not all for there is one Question still behinde a shrewd one indeed which follows immediately upon the back of the former and that 's this Hath a Gracious King lately advanced you to debase nay dethrone Him and His Parliament too What a huge careful man this Presbyter would fain make himself appear to be of his Princes honor so far as to question a learned Prelate for his seeming sedition and
appointed to supply the place of such Regal absence for the time is manifested plainly by what I have already said and in my weak judgement so clear a truth that it is not in the power of any Factious Presbyter to contradict me that keeps in the way of verity and therefore I shall not trouble my Reader with any further answer of it Well We have seen now the Presbyters Allegations concerning the two Houses exercise of the Legislative Fiction without the Kings consent and weighing them in the ballance of right Reason and Laws and Customes of the Realm have found them to be too light and weak to bear that stress and burthen which our filthy Dreamers lay upon them I 'le now try what he saith of those Long-Parliament Legislative Thieves exercise of their whimsie against the Kings consent and here we finde him foreseeing a palpable Treason in asserting an Affirmative Proposition and yet that we may perceive his willingness to have an Affirmative maintained he thus breaths forth his doubtful fancy As to the exercise of it against the Kings consent I shall conclude nothing but commend Mr. Pryn's Sovereign power of Parliaments to your serious study What a Seditious minde and Treacherous heart this Crofton is possessed of We are beholding to a wise King and a lawful Parliament for his avoiding of his Cackling and concluding of nothing in the case at this time His faint-hearted seeming Negation of the Legality of those Rebels exercise of their Usurpation is just like the Olivarian-Machiavelian-Pro-Traytors denial of the Kingly Title even full sore against his will He would not say AY for fear an Ax or an Halter might presently attend him nor won't say NO neither lest his seared Conscience should look him in the face and contradict him with a Truth That a Negative was by No means agreeable with his Classical rebellious spirit and therefore very cunningly commends another mans unreasonable Jangling as full of Treason and Rebellion as a Toad is of poyson to the Bishops study If he had commended it to the Bishops and every mans study and detestation and abhorrency thereof when they had read it as well as indignation against the Treasonable venome of the Authors heart he had spoke more truth then a Presbyter is wont to do What that book is and how worthy to be Commended to a Bishops reading and study I leave to every one to conclude something seeing Crofton will conclude nothing by that just Sentence and Condemnation which the learned Mr. Duncomb upon ferious study thereof past in these words against both the Author and the Book it felf His book saith he p See his Royal buckler or a Lecture to Traytors p. 240. is such a Rhapsody of non-sense a bundle of Rebellion and Treason a Pamphlet so Seditious Pernicious Sophistical Jesuitical Trayterous and Scurrilous that I want Mr. Pryn's Epethites to give his own book its deserved odium Truely I must needs say That the Author of that heady Trayterous discourse who as the same judicious person saith setteth q P. 243. the body above the head maintaineth that the two Houses or the Major part have the Sovereign power may act without the King levy War against him and kill him too by defending themselves hath very little or no cause to return thanks to his Seditious Brother for the courtesie he hath done him to conclude nothing in the argument himself but commend the others Book to his Reverend Antagonists serious study the true English whereof amounts but to this conclusion I dare not maintain such a Treasonable Position as that my self for fear of having my reward on a block or a Triple tree but I 'le commend a book to you wherein it is asserted and justified and made known to the world by a deluding Trap-door of the Sovereign power of Parliaments It s but a sad commendation of Mr. Prynne especially from a Brother of the Sacred Covenanting Tribe too to do as good as tell the world that his Book is the Store-house of Seditious and Treasonable Principles The Shop to furnish others with what and as much as the Rebel pleases For if the justification of an Affirmative in the controverted point be not to be found in that putrid loathsom hospital of Trayterous diseases in that which the deluding Author was pleased to term The Sovereign power of Parliaments To what end or purpose do we hear of a Citation or Commendation thereof to the serious Study of his Reverend Opponent And if it be therein justified as who doubts but it is the Conclusion that I have made doth naturally flow from the Premisses and therefore I say how much the one is bound to thank the other I leave to both their considerations to decide the controversie between themselves at their next meeting and in the mean time seeing this man of fancy our windy Croftonian disputant doth as it were in the dark confess the truth of a Negative herein I shall proceed to his next Dream where he Magisterially affirms That The Legislative power of their Votes Debates Resolves orders or Ordinances were never gainsaid by His Majesty Here 's a rare spiritual man for you now one that peremptarily determines a notorious falsity for a truth And what an incomparable mistake it is His Majesties own words shall make appear In his noble Answer to the 19 Tyranical Propositions of those Legislative Traytors p. 1. who so often have made it their Godly work to establish iniquity by a Law we finde him declaring and telling of the English Nation of those pious Theives having thought fit to remove a troublesom Rub in their way The Law To this end saith he That they might undermine the very foundations of it A new Power hath bin assumed to interpret and declare Laws without us by extemporary Votes mark without any case judicially before either House which is in effect the same thing as to make Laws without us Orders and Ordinances made onely by both Houses tending to a pure Arbitary power were pressed upon the people as Laws and their obedience Required to them Their next step was to erect an upstart authority without us in whom and onely in whom the Laws of this Realm have placed that power to command the Militia by a r See his Majesties Speech to them July 21. 1642. In Reliquiae sacrae Carolinae pretended Ordinance which His Majesty told the Knights Gentry and Freeholders of the County of Lincoln That as the same was against the known Laws and an invasion of his unquestionable right and of their liberty and property so I do now declare saith the Sacred Speaker That the same is imposed upon you against my express consent and in contempt of my Regal Authority And I doubt not but you will sadly consider That if any Authority without and against my consent may lawfully impose such burthens upon you it may likewise take away all that you have from you and subject you to