prayers to God and preachings to the people are these no wayes nor means of disquieting and stirring up the people We commend unto you that of David Lord lead me in a way of plainness because of them that observe me Psa. 27. 11. And the primitive Church in Acts 2. 46. walked in simplicity and singleness of heart But if your future deportment shall attest and make good the truth of this your profession that which is past will be forgotten and forgiven But for men of reputation to relinquish and abandon that Interest we are apprehensive how much it may reflect upon their honor and wisdom in tampering with it so long in complying with it and cleaving to it at the first and we have seen Conscience pretended when such an Interest hath layn at the bottom which is hypocrisie From which as also from pertinacy in your way there is no better way to purge your selves that it may not seem to cleave to you as Naaman's leprosie to Gehezi for ever than by submission to the Powers that are and supplications for the City wherein you live in the peace whereof you shall have peace For the present let us briefly commend to your most serious thoughts these four Considerations in reference to the matter in hand 1. What a fruitless and sad mistake of the nature of your work it is to pray and preach up particular interests among your people when you should preach the saving truths of the Gospel to their souls Alas what profits it to the business of Faith and Repentance and Spiritual union and communion with the Lord Jesus to cry-up the King or to cry-down the Common-wealth Will you cease to preach the Gospel rather than cease to preach up Charles Stuart We mourn for you before the Lord in this thing and the Lord Jesus help you in it Would the Spirit of God thus forsake you and leave you to such a sinful and dreadful mistake were there not something wherein you have first forsaken him Now the Lord help you to look into your hearts and to consider your wayes and to make diligent search Sure we are that you are sadly and strangely below and beside the business the great business of Divinity in these impertinent strifs about Civil Interests And this is the first Consideration 2. That the same obligation lies upon our consciences to preserve the peace of the Commonwealth which you say doth upon yours to hold up the Interest of the King and with this advantage that we are subservient therein to Him whose Almighty Hand hath actually placed this power over you and hath not yet born witness to the contrary Interest For we will remember the Name of our God and his wonderfull works we will often make mention of the loving kindness of the Lord and the praises of the Lord according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us and done for us according to his mercies and according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses And indeed it is a matter of conscience with us not to betray nor to wrong or weaken that Cause through over much indulgence to which God himself hath born witness We do beleeve that the present Cause of the Commonwealth hath much of the Interest of Christ wrapt up with it And though to tender consciences dissenting from us we shew much favour and forbearance yet Conscience you know is not the rule but the Word of God And though we hope better things of you yet there be two sorts of consciences which we conceive are not usually very tender viz. heretical consciences and seditious consciences 3. Consider how long a time of tenderness and forbearance you have had ever since the English power first prevailed here and how long God and man hath waited on you which we think will not be easily parallel'd in the Histories of former Ages We have carried our selves towards you to the praise of his Grace we speak it because you call us compel us to it not as Victors to conquered Enemies but as Brethren to brethren for so indeed we desire to look on you and no otherwise And whatever there is in our power wherein we may further encourage you and strengthen your hands in the work of the Ministery we hope we shall rejoyce to do it for His sake whom you ought to serve in the Gospel of His Son If the Lord would encline your hearts to know and to do his work It is our hearts desire and prayer to God that His good pleasure may prosper with you Wherein we hope we shall one day praise Him when the envy of Ephraim shall depart You may be as good as holy as you will you may enjoy all the Ordinances of Christ in the liberty and purity of the Gospel according to your hearts desire in your own way and according to your own consciences Which is more than you would have allowed to us We know nothing but the carkass of Church Discipline without the life and power of it yea a mungrel Discipline made up of Civil aswel as Spiritual power and so no better than a Gospel Monster that hath been taken from you which warming in its bowels a fatal engine of disobedience to that Civil Government which the Hand of the Almighty hath set over you and which doth plenarily possess and protect you it could not with any colour of conscience or reason be any longer suffered in that exorbitancy But if your Discipline which hath been wont to be a check to your Parliaments will hereafter learn to keep within its own channel you may still practice it as sundry godly persons of the Presbyterian Judgment do at this day in England Therefore why are the dissentions of Brethren like the bars of a Palace What shall be done for you You speak of burdens We know not what you mean unless it be the Monthly Assessment for there is no other burden laid on you but some we are sure are taken off which yet is no more for all Scotland than for that one County of Vlster in Ireland viz. about 8000 l. a month And you say you have been no hinderance to the people to bear the burdens in quietness that are laid upon them For indeed why should you Are not you the very men that lay these burdens on them The Assessment is for the Pay of the Army though it goes but a little way towards it The Army is continued because the people are unquiet and disaffected But who is it that feeds these malignant humors and keeps up this disaffection of the people who is it and what will they answer for it in the great day of accompt Let us reason with you before the Lord a little This power which God hath set over you for your good and which the Lord knows hath been favorable and tender over you What have returns been Protection requires allegeance by the rule of com mutative justice But have you not made unworthy unchristian returns upon them for that protection for that love and tenderness whereby they have sought to win you by being their enemies in heaven earth endeavoring to alienate the hearts of the Lords People from them and denying them that remembrance in your prayers which they have often begg'd and which you know they would prize far more than that wicked man doth for whom you cry even to the Lord do you cry but be answers you not And are there two greater unkindnesses in the world than these And yet the Lord hath enabled them to forgive or at least to forbear you hitherto But take heed if you persist in your course having had dreadful meetings with God therein lest you bring the matter to this passe That God will not forgive though we would For thy violence against thy brother Jacob thou shalt be cut off for ever Obad. 10. Now it may be ingenuity may work in you but if nothing will break your hearts you will find to our grief and to your trouble that the patience of mortal men is finite 4. Consider sadly how little benefit and advantage ariseth to the Interest of Jesus Christ in Scotland yea what real dis-service you do to Him by your adhering to that Man whom the Lord by a mighty Hand hath taken from you and by dis-accepting his kindness therein and in casting forth the branches of that bloody House which hath been a plague to this Nation from the dayes of your forefathers If you accept not the Instruments who did it or approve not the manner of their proceedings therein yet why do you not rejoyce for the thing it self All the world knows that you were innocent enough about it We know not any Magistracy at this day appearing upon the Earth to whom the Lord hath given a more abundant and immediate Testimony and for whose establishment he hath more gloriously revealed made bare his own Arm from Heaven and who have further engaged in protecting and promoting the Interest of Jesus Christ in the world then this which you resist and whose hands you labour to weaken But will you be the men of al others who hinder the Kingdom of God from coming God forbid As for this Man Heaven and Earth are witnesses that you have don your duty to him if so you cal it even to the utmost both day and night have seen it You have wept over his grave long enough Therefore we leave with you beseeching Him to set it home upon your hearts that which the Lord said to Samuel 1 Sam. 16 How long wile thou mourn for Saul whom I have rejected from reigning over Israel FINIS
A DECLARATION OF THE COMMISSIONERS For Visitation of UNIVERSITIES and for placing and displacing of MINISTERS in SCOTLAND Against Praying or Preaching for the pretended King of SCOTLAND With some REASONS Given by some of the MINISTERS of Edinburgh why they cannot in Conscience omit to pray for Him Together with an ANSVVER to the said REASONS Wherein the unwarrantablenesse of that practice is proved from the Word of GOD And the equity and necessity of the present proceedings of the COMMISSIONERS in order to the publick Peace is cleared and justified to the Consciences of rationall and peaceable men By a Friend to the Commonwealth Printed at Leith in the Year 1653. BY THE COMMISSIONERS For Visiting UNIVERSITIES in SCOTLAND and placing and displacing MINISTERS BY vertue of an Order to Us directed from the Right Honourable the Councell of State impowering Us to punish all such in the Ministery or Universities as shall be found reviling the present Government or shall endeavour to debauch or keep the People dis-affected by praying for the pretended King of Scots or his late Fathers Family or by praying or preaching for a Monarchicall Government by which they labour to weaken the just Interest of the Commonwealth of England in this Nation and to affix and fasten the Common-People in their late enmity and oppositions who are caused to erre by following such sowers of sedition all which being contrary to the aforesaid Order and also expressely forbidden by the Word of GOD which injoyns a peaceable subjection to Civill Powers and much more to those that the Lord hath now appointed over this Nation to the Justice of whose Cause his hand hath given a Divine and immediate Testimony in most memorable and many signal Consequences Wherein not onely not to see and acknowledge the finger of GOD But on the contrary maliciously to oppose the wayes of his Providence must needs argue a very high degree of Ignorance or wilfulnesse Therefore in conscience of our Duty to GOD as also in reference to a faithfull discharge of that Trust and Authority committed to Us and for preventing the great Inconveniences by such Enormous Practices in Ministers and others for the future We do by these presents Declare to all Persons whom these shall or may concern That whosoever shall be duely convicted to offend in any of the aforesaid Particulars after Publication of this Our Declaration shall be severely punished and proceeded against as an Enemy to and a Disturber of the Peace of the Commonwealth And to the intent that due notice may be given We do Order that these Presents be Printed and Publickly Proclaimed at the Mercat Cross at Edinburgh and also that Copies thereof be sent to the severall Sheriffs in the respective Counties and Shires in this Nation to be by their appointment Proclaimed in the Chief Mercat Towns or Burghs within their Jurisdictions and to be affixed on the Mercat Crosses or most Publick Places whereby full obedience may be given to the abovementioned Orders and none concerned may pretend ignorance At Edinburgh the second day of August 1653. SOME REASONS Why the Ministers of Christ in Scotland ought not to be troubled for praying for the KING And wherefore we cannot in Conscience omit that Duty HAving seriously pondered as in his sight whose servants we are the practise of this duty now prohibited We find that we may not omit publick Prayer for our King notwithstanding of the said Prohibition And least our practice be misconstrued as flowing from ignorance or wilfulnes We shall first offer to wipe away that aspersion of pertinacy and next shew the grounds which do fix us to this necessary duty As for the first Our witness is in heaven and our record on high that it is not out of any carnal design or stubborness of spirit that we continue performing this dâ—ty It were extream folly needlesly to provoke the Power under whose hand the Almighty hath put us If we durst advise with flesh and blood spare thy self would sound loud in our ears and quickly present Overtures of yeelding but the terrour of the Almighty and his Oatâ— lying on our consciences hold us on to this duty 2. We conceive that our peaceable and quiet deportment in our respective charges doth vindicate us from the imputation of stubborness and sedition in this our practice We have been no hinderance to people under our charge to hear the burthens in quietness that are laid upon them Neither have we anywise stirred them up to tumults and commotions 3. The way wherein we have formerly walked speaks herein for us unless constancy in conscientious principles be misconstructed and nicknamed Pertinacy 4. The point is also manifest to every one who will soberly be pleased to consider the Petition or Petitions which we present to God for him which usually are for a sanctified use of the sad afflictions that lie on him and preservation from snares his condition calling for this much at our hands Shall others in distress captivity and exile be remembred to God in our publick Prayers and this be accounted a commendable duty And ought it to be accounted Pertinacy not to cast out from the Prayers of Gods Church and People the distressed King compassed with so great difficulties 5. When we call to mind our publick Prayers for our late King in the midst of his hostility against us We marvel if any who profess respect to tender consciences will offer to put the Messengers of Christ to trouble for a duty bound on their consciences and so little hurtful to any Finally they who do or forbear doing out of pertinacy and stubborness of spirit can shew no just and weighty grounds of their acting or forbearance But we offer these ensuing grounds and warrants of conscience whereupon we walk in this practice First We look upon this performance as a duty not only enjoyned in the Word of God and established by the Law of the Land in the Directory for Worship confirmed by Acts of Parliament but also as bound upon our Consciences with our own consent both in the National and Solemn League and Covenant wherein He also hath entred with us and therein not only our own consciences but also the whole world are called on to witness with God to whom the Oath is made to our reallity sincerity and constancy in performing our duty Secondly This Obligation hath a new tie on our consciences to this individual Person by the Oath sworn by the Representative of the Land in our Names when the Civil Securities unto Religion and the Interests of Christ in his Ordinances were likewise confirmed unto us by his Oath aswel as by Law Thirdly As it is a great sin in any to countermand that which God hath commanded And to give order that a precept which God hath appointed to oblige us alwaies though not to all times shall never oblige And that we shall never give obedience thereto So when such a command is given out it is then
casus confessionis Then to adhere to the Authority of Divine Precepts is a necessary testimony to the truth and doth oblige them more than ever unless we would obey men rather than God Fourthly Ministers of the Gospel are the Ambassadors and Servants of Jesus Christ from whom they have their Commission which may not be lâ—mited nor altered by any power on earth For if in one duty earthly powers can alter or limit they may aswel do it in moe And if they may prohibit a duty they may also command that which is no duty and so render us the servants of men in matters of God An ANSWER to a PAPER Intituled Some REASONS why the Ministers of Christ in Scotland ought not to be troubled for praying for the King and wherefore we cannot in conscience omit that duty THat Concession in the beginning of your Paper That the Almighty hath put you under the hand of another Power is remarkable But how well this acknowledgment doth accord with that practice of adhering to the Power which the same Almighty hand hath removed is not apparent The Question is not Whether you may pray concerning him either for or against him in a Christian way as that GOD would shew mercy to his Soul and give him pardon of sin and repentance under that stupendious guilt of innocent blood which lyes both upon him and upon his Fathers house and that in the judgment of your very selves and that GOD would humble him under those dreadfull appearances of God against him in rejecting him from reigning over his people But whether you may pray for him as King of Scotland and put up those favourable requests on his behalf which tend to preserve a precious and religious remembrance and observance of Him in the Peoples minds This is the manifest scope and sense of the Declaration which he that runs may read Now for this you say We shall first offer to wipe away that aspersion of pertinacy and next shew the grounds which do fix us to this necessary duty For answer whereto we shal first remove the grounds whereby you labour to prove that this is your duty and then leave you to wipe off that aspersion of pertinacy if any lay it on you as well as you can For if the course be warrantable to persist therein is constancy but if it be not warrantable it must needs be called by some other name Now for the grounds and warrants of Conscience whereupon you walk in this practice you offer four whereof indeed only the two first are arguments to prove the conclusion that you ought to pray for the man whom you call King but the two last seem rather to be inferences from it if they be any thing The two first are these which we joyn together because the same answer fits them both 1. We look upon this performance as a duty not onely injoyned in the Word of GOD and established by the Law of the Land in the Directory for Worship confirmed by Acts of Parliament but also as bound upon our own consciences with our own consent both in the Nationall and Solemn League and Covenant wherein he also hath entred with us and therein not onely our own consciences but also the whole world are called on to witnesse with GOD to whom the Oath is made to our reality sincerity and constancy in performing our duty 2. This obligation hath a new tie on our consciences to this individual person by the oath sworn by the representative of the land in our name when the civil securities unto Religion and the Interests of Christ in his Ordinances were confirmed to us by his Oath as well as by Law To these in four words 1. Whereas you alledge the Word of God we are most intirely willing to submit this whole Controversie to the alone determination thereof judging it most unmeet that things of mans making should stand cheek by jowl with the Word of God But because you point us to no place thereof we wil point you to one or two wherein that word commandeth subjection to and prayers for the powers that are in being Rom. 13 1. Let every soul be subject to the higher powers for there is no power but of God 1. Tim. 2. 2. Let prayers be made for Kings and for all that are in authority Wherein he seems directly to obviate prevent any scruple that might arise about the justnesse of their Titie by pointing them so plainly to the actuall existence of powers For they all knew that the power which then ruled the world was set up by a world of blood and Nero the present Emperour as wicked a Tyrant as ever lived but yet to submit to him and to pray for him being under his power was not in the Apostles judgement any justification of the unwarrantable acquisition of his power And the Jewes are commanded to pray for the peace of Babylon when they were in the hand of the Babylonians Jer. 29 7. But you are in the hand and under the power of the Parliament and therefore you ought to pray for them for in their peace you shall have peace But he whom you call King is not King He never exercised any kingly power on this side the water and now he exerciseth none in the other part of Scotland therefore he is not King If it be said that by the Word of God he ought to be King let it be shewed where the Word of God hath intayled the Kingdom of England or Scotland upon the Family of the Stuarts 2. For the Law of the Land and Acts of Parliament for him we wonder you should speak of these having been long since annulled by the Authority of the Commonwealth And how an Act of any authority can bind and be in force when there is no authority that wil maintain it is to us a riddle Your Countreyman Mr. Knox who was as zealous against Tyrants as you are for them and did help the Grandmothers head to the same block upon which the late King lost his He tels Queen Elizabeth that she had no warrant of conscience to rule the Nation of England neither from her birth nor from any consuetude Laws and Ordinances of men and that if she stood upon that the Almighty would cut her off but from the providence of GOD calling her to that place of power who ruleth in the Kingdoms of the Earth and giveth them to whomsoever he will 3. For your Oaths and Covenants to him or to his fathers house for there is the same reason of both they were either absolute that he should be King whether GOD would continue him or no or else conditionall that you would submit to him unlesse and untill the over-ruling wisdom of God should pul him down and set up another power in his place If they were conditionall the obligation is void because the providence of God hath actually dispossessed him But if they were absolute what warrant is there in the