meer Parricides yea and the worst and most flagitious of all Parricides The Scripture foresaw some such would be 1 Tim. 1.9 The Law is not made for a righteous man but for the lawless and disobedient 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. for murtherers of Fathers and murtherers of Mothers c. But what punishment short of Hell its self can be thought great enough for those that are such Sith Death the greatest of all temporal punishments had wont to be inflicted upon Chiidren who were only disobedient to their Parents yea since there is such a passage as that of Solomon Prov. 30.17 The Eye that mocketh at his Father and despiseth to obey his Mother the Ravens of the Valley shall pick it out and the young Eagles shall eat it i. e. Such persons as these shall not live out half their days but shall come to untimely and shameful ends as to be hang'd or such like and so their Bodies exposed to be devoured by such revenous Creatures as are Crows or Eagles which are observed to aim especially at the Eyes of dead People whether because a very tender part and grateful to their palates or for what other causes I know not what then shall be done to those who not only mock but murther Kings who are their Fathers in a more eminent sense than were they who begat them We propagate to the Children of our Bodies original sin and actual misery which yet they ought to excuse us for as because no man can help it so likewise because they will do the same by their Children when they come to have any and so will all men in all ages and we must not set the whole World a quarrelling so do not Kings to their Political Children i. e. their Subjects Kings as Kings are Fathers to us only for our good and real benefit therefore called the ministers of God to us for our good Rom. 13.4 a terror not to good works but to them that do evil v. 3. i. e. Whosoever therefore shall ravish the Lives of them that are such Fathers by Office but especially if such by a due execution of their office punishing Vice and encouraging Vertue what may or can they expect to use and allude to the Apostles words Heb. 10.27 But a certain fearful looking for of Judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries Tenthly Neither was their Crime meer Parricides as great a sin as that is but also Patriaecidium if I may have leave 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or to make a new word upon this occasion Now by Patricide I mean the murthering of their Native Countrey putting that to death for which they ought to die if need were The phrase of killing ones Countrey may seem harsh but will be rendred more soft and suitable if we call to mind an ancient wise saying viz. That England is a great Animal which can never die unless it kill its self If it may be call'd an Animal it may be kill'd for whatsoever Creature here below is possest of Life may also be dispossest of the same but that none but its self could kill that Animal was a great mistake unless they took the word Self synecdochically i. e. for a part of its self for by a part of its self it was indeed destroy'd or brought to the very brink of destruction kill'd out-right or brought within one step of death Witness the grand and signal symptomes of death which they brought upon it for in that number are they reckoned by Physicians Magnae Jactationes multae bigiliae motus convulsivi ipsissimae convulsiones Pulsus Intermittens Facies Hippocratica c. All whichill symptoms or what was analogous to them were found upon England in the time of their raign who cut off the Head of King Charles the Martyr Let me add two or three more viz. Deliquium or frequent Lipothymies Faintings or Swoonings Also Delirium Doting and Phrensie I might have brought in Singultus or Hiccops as another deadly sign but that it is one species of Convulsions Now give me leave to say our Ruling Regicides had brought upon this poor Nation and their Native Countrey all the conclusive signs of death aforesaid whereby it appeareth they had given England its deaths wound but that God who killeth and maketh alive who bringeth down to the grave and saith return again yea God who raiseth the dead was pleased most miraculously to restore it to life again A short proof may serve for each of the particulars aforesaid they being so much known to all ingenious men that have either seen or read of the affairs and transactions of the late times the truth is the names of symptomes which I mentioned because by Metaphor applied to politicks or morals may need some little explication but when that is done they will easily command assent and acknowledgement Briefly then were there not Magna Jactationes that is great tossings and tumblings up and down in those days as dying men turn from side to side sit up lie down again call to rise and to be removed from bed to bed and chamber to chamber finding themselves uneasie in every posture seeking rest in change of posture though they find none How oft did we shift and change Governments in one year pull down one and set up another and pull down that again Sic cum voluit fortuna jocari So were we banded as it were by fortune or male-administration rather from end to end so reell'd we too and fro like drunken men or like a ship ready to be overset with stiff and contrary winds so sound we no rest for the sole of our feet and it was most easie to make the prognostick that nothing but a miracle of divine power and goodness could save us from sudden death and ruine Such Governments as they then set up seemed to be things that would not keep above a month or two or little Gourds which had a Worm at their root which caused them to wither presently And as the Nation had at that time little rest in one sense so little sleep in another for were not the minds of men continually kept awake with fears and sad apprehensions like people that live in an old rotten decay'd house who cannot sleep in tempestous nights for fear the house they dwell in should fall upon their heads These were the magnae vigiliae which I spoke of or rather the causes why men could not sleep in those days as they desired to do and ought to have done Again whosoever knows what State-Convulsions mean must needs understand that we had a great many of them in those days There are particular and universal Convulsions spoken of by Physicians i. e. some of particular parts only as of the eyes when they are distorted of the mouth when that is drawn awry c. Others again of the whole body whereby a man is rackt as it were from head to foot we had of both sorts in those unsettled times
them murtherers each of other because they did abet and encourage each other in and unto the murther of the King in which was included their own consequentially If there were forty of them each of them was guilty of the death of forty not the forty only guilty of the death of one man viz. the King but each of them of forty murthers viz. each of other for that they strengthened each others hands in and unto the work Again If naked Murther be a damnable sin as hath been proved that murther which is cloathed with barbarous and inhumane circumstances must needs be so much more In Judg. 19.25 we read of a Levites Concubine not only killed but with circumstances that were very barbarous viz. forced to death by the Benjamites dwelling in Gibeah Chap. 20.5 But what dreadful things ensued ver 6. I saith the Levite took my Concubine and cut her in pieces and sent her through all Israel for they have committed lewdness and folly in Israel The product of this was what we read Judg. 20.34 35. And there came up against Gibeah ten thousand chosen men out of all Israel and the battle was sore And the Lord smote Benjamin before Israel and the children of Israel destroyed of the Benjamites that day twenty and four thousand and an hundred men all these drew the sword or were men of valour as is said ver 44. Though wilful murther it self cloathed with the most extenuating circumstances be a great sin yet the barbarous circumstances wherewith it may be cloathed may make it twice so great a sin as otherwise it had been and much more expose it to the Divine vengeance as appeareth by the instance aforesaid But to proceed 6thly Is Hypocrisie a damning sin or not It must needs be so because Hell or the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth is called a portion with the Hypocrite Matth. 24.51 intimating that Tophet was prepared of old as much for Hypocrites as for any sort of men Doth not our Saviour let fly as many Vae's or Woes against Hypocrites as against any sort of men Mat. 25.14 15 16 23 25 27 29. and does he not utter those dreadful words in the close ver 33. Ye Serpents ye generation of Vipers how can ye escape the damnation of hell Now with what direful circumstances of Hypocrisie the late King's death was managed I have told you before 7thly If it be a mortal damning sin to murther but one man especially if a King a Monarch or any thing so great is it not more so to murther a whole Kingdom Country and Monarchy at once The whole species of Monarchy is much more than one individual Kingdom or Monarchy Now I have shew'd before that was aim'd at in putting the King to death which was not only Monarchicidium but designed to issue in Monarchiaecidium or in the ruine of all Monarchy 8thly Is it not a horrid and damning sin to subvert and destroy the good and necessary Laws of a Nation all at once Yea. Not the Laws only but also the very Legislative Power or the Power of making more good Laws as the matter should require If they who resist or disobey the powers that are shall receive damnation as the Apostle speaks Rom. 13.2 What will become of them who in effect destroy and disanul all the Laws of a Nation at once and all the Law-makers Such were the Regicides For when there was no King in England arm'd with power no new Laws could be made nor the old ones executed neither Legally for who but a King has power to give Commission to Judges and other great Instruments of the Law upon all emergent occasions c What the Apostle saith of the Law of God viz. The Law is good if a man use it lawfully is true of the Law of England it is good if it be used lawfully or legally but how could that be done when there was no King in being 9thly Is it not a damning sin for a man to murther himself as did Judas Ahitophel c And did not they murther themselves who murther'd the King For besides that they were dead men in the Eye of the Law the first moment they did or attempted it did it not cost most of them their lives and expose them to an untimely and shameful death though no punishment could be so shameful as was their crime 10thly and lastly Is Deicidium or striking at the life of God himself a damning sin If that will not damn men without great repentance what will The murthering of earthly Kings in Person is it not a kind of murthering the King of Kings in Effigie For his Stamp and Inscription they bear and from thence are called gods in Scripture frequently not that they are equal to the true and living God yea not but that they shall die like men but because in point of Power and Authority of Honour and Majesty they do resemble God much more than Subjects do Now as he that should spit upon the Kings Coin or Picture would be dealt with as one that offered an affront and indignity to his Person and were highly disaffected to him so in this case Now all those Soul-damning sins that I have mentioned being in the womb of that one sin viz. the murthering of the late King let the Reader judge whether the Regicides did not take as direct a course to damn their own Souls as men could take And whether if any shall hereafter attempt to do the same thing to his Majesty that now is as they did to his Father which God forbid it will not prove as ready and certain a course not only to throw away their corporal lives with ignominy but also to damn their Souls and the Souls of their Confederates as any that men could take I am hardned against those that shall say if any such there be That this was done in favour of Religion and for the preservation thereof in power and purity by a Story which a noted Parliament-man and Purchaser of the revenues of a Bishoprick told me about the year 1648. Whereas saith he it is given out that all the change which hath been made has been in order to the preservation and Reformation of Religion there is no such thing For said he had there been Preferments enough in Church State wherewith to have gratified all men of parts interest who were ambitious of them I do assure you there had been no war He was as capable of knowing what he said as any man could be being at that time a Member of Parliament and a great man amongst them though more plain-hearted than some others were The discoveries which I have made of notorious Hypocrisie and blasphemous pretences to God and Religion whilst men did uti Deo at fruantur mundo i. e. use God that they might enjoy the world together with the little difference which I could ever discern betwixt the conversations of those that called themselves the Godly Party
rather to scare men than to hurt them and causeth Conscience to smite them that if that will serve the turn he may hold his hand for it is better to fall into the hand of Conscience than into the hand of God If God had not such a witness as Conscience is how could he convict men at the day of Judgment of secret sins as the Text saith God will bring every secret thing to light whether it be good or whether it be evil and in the 1 Corinth 4.5 is said God will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the counsels of the heart What but Conscience can witness against Men at the day of Judgment their Heart Murthers Heart Adulteries as Solomon said to Shimei 1 Kings 2.44 Thou knowest all the wickedness which thy Heart is privy to Now Conscience is such a witness as none can withstand or deny its testimony If two credible witnesses are sufficient even in matter of Life and Death much more Conscience which is a thousand witnesses Hence it is that we read of him who coming to a Wedding Feast without a Wedding Garment that when the King said unto him Friend How camest thou in hither not having a Wedding Garment he was speechless Matth. 22.12 Hence also we read of Every Mouth being stopt and all the World becoming guilty before God Rom. 3.19 Hence it was that no reply was made to our Saviour when he said He that wâ—â— without sin let him cast the first stone at her for the Text saith John 8.9 They which heard it being convicted in their own Consciences went out one by one Now whereas some are brought in pleading thus for themselves at the day of Judgement When did we see thee Hungry and fed thee not Naked and clothed thee not Sick and in Prison and did not administer unto thee Matth. 25.44 The reason is because they knew not that which Christ tells them of in the next verse In as much as you did it not to one of the least of these you did it not to me If their Consciences had been sooner convicted of their unkindness to their Saviour expressed in their unkindness to his Disciples and Followers they would not have had one word to say for themselves or presumed to open their Mouths It can never be doubted whether the Message were left with those Persons whom Conscience was appointed to warn because Conscience alwayes speaks with the Parties themselves and leaves its errand in their own Breasts Indeed when Christ shall come to judge the World it is said He will come like a Thief in the night Yea when God comes to ruine Persons or Nations after fair warnings given but never taken he oft-times doth it suddenly Hence Destruction is said to come as a whirlwind or as sorrow upâ—n a Woman in Travel who are sometimes never better at ease or more light-some or cheerful than just before their Pains hence those words of Solomon Prov. 29.1 He that being often reproved hardeneth his Neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy There we read indeed of sudden destruction but of frequent reproof going before it Now Conscience is the great Reprover and a man is never throughly convicted as to himself till he be so of his own Conscience so I have done with the first use Second Vse The next Use or Corollary is this If Conscience be such a Smiter as hath been shewed then it is no argument that sinners scape scot-free or go unpunished because their sins do not go before to Judgment that is are kept secret from men and consequently exempted from Humane Punishment Pain and Shame because it is Punishment enough God wot for a Man to run the Gantlet and undergo the Rack of his own Conscience If God shall but say take him Conscience take him by the Throat clap Irons upon him throw him in thy Dungeon feed him with the Bread of Spiritual Affliction and give him those Waters to drink which are more bitter than the Waters of Marah If the great Judge shall thus deliver up a man to the severest of Jaylors and say throw him in Prison and give him no hope to come out till he pay the utmost farthing Handle him as thou didst Cain Judas Francis Spira for thou canst do it teach him as Gideon taught the Men of Succoth with Bryers and Thorns tear him in pieces and let none deliver him Psal 15.22 If such a sentence as that shall come forth from the great God he upon whom it is past needs no Poverty no loss of near and dear Relations no Bodily Sickness or Pain no Temporal Prison no Reproach or Disgrace from Men to make him miserable nay he shall be so in spight of Riches Honour Power the best of Wives and Children the kindest of Relations and Friends and what ever else this World can give him he shall tremble as did Belshazzar even when quaffing and carouzing with all his Friends about him he shall fit Uneasie and as it were upon Thorns though he sit upon a Throne with his Crown on his Head and his Scepter in his Hand and Thousands of Nobles standing bare before him he shall not be heartily merry though upon his Wedding day nor at the Birth and Baptizing of a brave Son long desired nor at a Prince-like Feast when he hath all his Kindred and Friends about him the rarest Wines shall not be able to make him merry till they have made him not himself and then how he can be said to be merry who is not himself I know not Wine commonly makes the Brute or Brutal part of Man merry but what is that to the Man or to the Soul of Man which is himself God knows if Conscience be wounded a Man can possess no Mirth but what is rather to be called Madness or like the Laughter or Dancing of those who are stung with a Tarantula and let the Beast or Beastial part of Man be never so Brisk and Jocond that which is properly called the Soul viz. The Humane rational Soul or Spirit of a Man intermeddles not with its joys which makes me think of the Apostles words The Widow which liveth in Pleasure is Dead while she lives for what is Death but a separation of Soul and Body and in this case Soul and Body are separated for her animated Body hath Pleasure but her Soul hath none Reader If thou hadst ever known what the smitings of Conscience mean I need not tell thee that they are sufficient to give a man a very Hell upon Earth whilst they who behold his outward Prosperity not knowing where the Shooe pinches him do think him as it were in Heaven if there be any such thing as Heaven upon Earth So I have done with the second Vse The Third Vse is this If Conscience be so great and terrible a smiter it must needs be great folly in Men needlesly to provoke and inrage it as too many do from day to
he was besieged by Omri and saw that the City was taken he went into the Pallace and burnt the Kings House over him and died 1 Kings 16.18 How sped the Servants of Amon King of Judah who murthered him in his House See 2 Kings 21.24 And the People of the Land slew all them that had conspired against King Amon and made Josiah his Son King in his stead Joash his Servants conspired against him and slew him 2 Chron. 24.25 which was a most just thing on Gods part to avenge the Blood of the Sons of Jehoiada the Priest v. 25. but how came they off see 2 Chron. 25.3 When the Kingdom was established to him he i. e. Amaziah slew his Servants that had beheaded the King his Father If the Murtherers of private persons be now and then reserved to the judgment of the great day to be punished yet Divine Justice and Vengeance as if more concerned about the death of Princes than of Private Persons by the instances fore-cited seems to have alwayes overtaken those even in this Life who have spilt the Blood of Kings as Water upon the Ground Whence is easie to infer that though Homicide be a very great sin yet Regicide is greater and that he was a King whom the Men I am writing of put to death no man ever doubted Seventhly Neither was it Regicide only or the murthering of one who was meerly a King of which these men were guilty but also Justicidium or the murthering of a good King Who knows not that the wilful murthering of any man though a bad yea though the worst of men is a great and crying sin but the murthering of a good and vertuous man a man of a thousand is worse than that and beyond either of them is the murthering of a good and excellent King yea of one of the best Kings in the World which is the case before us Now by how much better the murthered person was by so much worse was the murther for Corruptio optimi est pessima is a never failing rule I dare not apply to this occasion those words of St. Peter Acts 3.14 Ye denied the holy one and the just because they are peculiar to our Saviour who is the holy and the just one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and there is no man so besides him but that the martyred King was a man of great vertue is I think as generally acknowledged by them that either knew him or have seen what is in History concerning him as almost any thing is Who could ever taxe him with Intemperance more or less Who knew not the greatness of his Patience under his unparallell'd Sufferings his professed forgiveness of his most provoking enemies Who ever did read more Divine Lines more pious Contemplations dropping from the Pen of any afflicted Prince than his incomparable and unimitable Book doth contain But it will not stand with the brevity here intended or with the Symmetry of this part with the rest of this Book to write a History in this place of that renowned Kings Vertues but he that shall read his Life excellently written as it is by Dr. Perringshief and others if he have any faith in Histories as what wise men hath not some will not as much admire the greatness of his Vertues as the barbarousness of his Sufferings and both together most of all Herein appeared the barbarousness of his murtherers that they could find in their hearts to use a Prince so immensely ill who deserved so excellently well The Apostle saith Rom. 5.7 Paradventure for a good man some would even dare to die Were they Men or Monsters or Devils incarnate or what were they then who instead of dying for a good man put a good man to death An untimely death I had almost call'd it a shameful death for so it in true tended but that I know no shame was in martyrdom If any man doubt the piety of that Martyr and the tenderness of his Conscience let him but read the 2. chap. in his excellent Book viz. upon the Earl of Strafford 's death Because when almost wearied out of his life by the importunity of those that he believed did wish him well and us'd it as a Maxime Better one man perish though unjustly than the people be displeased or destroy'd he had complied to sign a Bill against the Earl of Strafford's life though without plenary consent to his destruction as he himself saith Lord how uneasie was his Consciscience Reader forbear weeping if thou canst when thou readest those melting warning words of his I see it a bad Exchange to wound a man 's own Conscience thereby to salve State-sores to calm the storms of Popular discontents by stirring up a tempest in a man 's own bosom But I will not prevent thy reading of that whole most excellent Chapter which may almost warrant us to call him A father of Penitents as Abraham was called A father of the Faithful I shall conclude this seventh Article of my charge against the Murtherers of King Charles the First with a short reflexion upon David's words to Baanah and Rechab who cut off the head of Ishbosheth and brought it to him looking for a reward 2 Sam. 4.11 How much more when wicked men have slain a righteous person shall not I require his blood of your hand and take you away from the earth As if David had said for that he meant Saul was a wicked King an enemy to God as well as me and yet when one told me saying Behold Saul is dead viz. the Amalekite who said he slew him by his own command to put him out of pain 2 Sam. 1.10 I took hold of him and slew him who thought I would have given him a reward for his tidings If he were worthy of death who only reported himself upon a pick-thankly account to have kill'd Saul who seem'd otherwise about to kill himself and at his own appointment who was then full of anguish though Saul was a very wicked man as aforesaid what have they deserv'd who beheaded a virtuous King sore against his will and best endeavours to the contrary and that with many circumstances of barbarity as you will hear hereafter And so I proceed to the eighth Article wherewith I charge the said King's Judges viz. Hypocrisie I say with great Hypocrisie practized in that fact It was Homicidium maxime Hypocriticum It was even the Master-piece of Hypocrisie and the grandest Cheat under the Notion of Piety that ever was imposed upon the world Now all Hypocrisie is a perfect Lye and the fault that needs a Lye grows two thereby as Mr. Herbert tells us Who that understands the intrigue of that Business do's not cry out Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum Could such a Monster spring from the Womb of Religion Who laid that Brat at her Door For it was none of hers So Politicians talk most of Religion when they mean nothing less as if they would compensate by taking God
save in a few instances here and there one c. and of them whom they censured as carnal and ungodly or but moral people at the best for that the morality of some of them did much outstrip their own has put me out of conceit with what had wont to be called The Good Old Cause more than any thing else has done And then to see that the Chieftains and greatest Bigots of and for the good old Cause as they call'd it could swallow such a Camel as was the murthering of the King yea be themselves some of the Camels that murthered him or caused him to be murthered whilst they seem'd to strain at meer Gnats could say This is the heir come let us kill him and the inheritance shall be ours Those I say are the things which have made me think cheaply of those times those men and their pretensions to suspect if not more than so a very grand cheat and a bottomless-pit of worldly interest and carnal design in and under all those things and to wish heartily that the Church and State might always continue as now it is much rather than to fall back again into the hands of such Tinker-like Reformers as were in those days making ten holes where they mended one and be re-invaded by hypocritical Vsurpation Sacriledge Enthusiasme and Confusion If I know any thing of my own heart I do at this very day sincerely love every body that I know or think to be truly good and possibly my charity is as large as most mens and my censoriousness as little but as for those who make the highest pretences to Religion and seem to be Piety-like Calomelanos as Physicians call it six or 12 times sublimed or like the Pharisees of old who said to other men Stand off I am holier than thou who rather blaze and blare like great Comets than shine like Stars in the Firmament of Religion if I find them playing the Knaves becoming the Ring-leaders of Murther embrewing their hands in Royal blood under pretence of abhorring Idols committing Sacriledge and bringing all to confusion and under colour of Reforming Church and State to design nothing but the feathering of their own Nests getting wealth and power into their own hands per fas nefas overturning overturning overturning till they themselves whose right it is not come and take all and when they have done all entitling God and Religion to all their Villanies like those with whom the great God doth thus expostulate Jer. 7.9 Will ye steal murder and commit Adultery and swear falsly and come and stand before me in this House and say we are delivered to do all these abominations c. I say the people to whom this Character is due whose Inscription this is are to my Soul as one calls it the first-born of Abominations Now after all that hath been said of the exceeding sinfulness of their bloody fact who were the Murtherers of the late King and of the woful hazard which their precious and immortal Souls did incur thereby give me leave to hope that if the same opportunities should ever come again which God forbid i. e. if ever the now dissenting people of England should have so puissant an Army at their back as then they had and so subtile skilful and resolute a General to conduct them and so many covetous people at their heels waiting to enrich themselves by the spoil of the Kings and Churches Lands so dividing the Lions skin when once he were dead from a real dread of thereby plunging themselves into everlasting flames they would rather burn at a stake than have their hands in such another business To shut up all I have been induced to insist so long upon the heinousness and danger of their sin who put the King to death because a thorow belief and due consideration of what I have said and I do aver it is all true might and would in my opinion be a very great security against all publick Mutinies Insurrections and Civil Wars hereafter For if the people of England did universally and all as one man dread the thoughts of Regicide as of a sin next to that which is unpardonable there would be no cause to fear Rebellion for then would men be govern'd and over-aw'd by this Dilemna If the King against whom we rebel shall always keep his head we shall lose our lives first or last but if he lose his head by our means and contrivances we shall be in great danger to lose our Souls which is worse For what will it profit a man to gain the whole world and to lose his own Soul FINIS