had promised was most expedient for his glory he presently forgot all his Promises Therefore when he had the K. in his power at Hampt Court and often conferred with him his Majesty expressed his perplexity to persons of Honour telling them I cannot saith he treat with these people upon any foundation who refer me to their inspirations for that which they promise me to day they contradict too morrow if the Spirit dictate to them but you must note that the Spirit never dictates any thing to them but for their profit The wrath of God is great against us in suffering us to be ruined and destroyed by fraud and hypocrisie but verily his indignation is yet greater against those who are seduced for it is a lesser evil to be persecuted by the Devil then to mistake him for the Spirit of God But let us consider other Acts of the evil faith of the Covenanters How have the Members of Parliament answered the intentions of those that sent them Was it the desire of those Countries and places for which they served that the Divine Service so much loved by the people should be taken away and their Ministers driven from their Benefices and Anabaptists and such like without knowledge and call established in their places Did they give them Commission to levy and make War against their King to cut off his head And were they not sent and departed to councel and advise the King and to succour their Counties â—nd have not they done the contrary When their fellow Citizens chose them did they chuse them to be their Soveraigns Was it their intentions that they should â—it in Parliament to perpetuity and place in their children to perpetuate their Raign in their Families whereby they have gained more in a few years then the house of Austria which hardly in two hundred years of an Elective Empire have made one Successive for these people have in a few years turned into succession an Empire in which they have no Election And it would be very hard to tell who gave them the power to dispose of the goods and lives of the people and to govern the Kingdome by an Army of which England hath never hope to be delivered but by an absolute victory obtained by the King Of these high actions of Presumption and Tyranny warranted by no Authority and upheld onely by the strength of Arms they must render account to God and since they maintain that the Soveraignty resides in the people they must also one day give an account to the people of their administration They made an Ordinance That no Member of Parliament should exercise any Office in the State but how well did they keep it Did they not make amongst themselves a Monopoly of all the gainful Offices They gave out they would give an account of the Treasure expended of the State but in the mean while they followed the Councel of Pericles which was to studie how never to give any They invited the people to present their plaints against their own Members but those who dared to do it were ruined in the prosecution and served as a sad example to all others to beware and keep themselves from so dangerous an enterprise for the future They have also forced the Consciences of men to break their Faith witness the breach of Articles subscribed in the Counties of York and Chester whereby the Gentlemen engaged on both parties were mutually obliged to lay down their Arms and live in peace but the Gentlemen at Westminster frighted with this Hideous name of Peace declared this accord Null as destructive to their affairs for both the Devil and the Covenanters maintain themselves by dissention They forced the Londoners taken and released by the King at the Battel of Brainsford to take up Arms against him the second time against their Faith sworn to his Majesty who most graciously gave them both their Lives and Liberty releasing them without any ransome But as for them they wickedly massacred those who yielded themselves upon their promise of life and liberty as Duke Hamilton the Earl of Holland and the gallant and noble Lord Capel Sir Charles Lucas Sir George Lisle and many others They being thus habituated in disloyalty and unfaithfulness their great quarrel against the late King of blessed and glorious memory was That he would not break his Faith nor falsifie his Oath he took at his Coronation to maintain the Rights and Priviledges of the Church and to defend the Laws of the Land And as they were perfidious to us so were they also to one another they falsified their faith to their Army which had too well fought for them under the Command of the Earl of Essex and disbanded them without their pay But another Army paid them for this perfidiousness by another The Independent Troops were those which professed to them fidelity with the greatest zeal And these were they which unroosted them at Westminster and pull the Gentlemen out of their Thrones leaving there only such as pleased them And in passing let us mark another seat of activity of Cromwel he perswaded the House of Commons to casheer this Army promising them that he would lay down his Arms at their feet but he gave them this counsel only for to provoke and irritate the Army against them and to ruine them as indeed it did Then when the Army began to present criminal informations against the King they sent an Embassie of six Collonels to the House of Lords to keep them quiet promising to maintain their priviledge of Peerage but as soon as the King was beheaded they casheered the House of Lords and those Lords having basely abandoned their Head to the slaughter presently lost the Life of Honour which flowed from thence upon them and were most justly laid aside as dead and unprofitable members The Scots also for having been too faithful to their Brethren in Rebellion were paid with the like treachery for all that power and interest which they ought to have had in the affairs of both Kingdoms according to the Articles of their League was denied them with scorn and insultation Amongst our miseries this is a recreative spectacle to us to behold the Thieves who pillaged us to pillage and rob one another and to deal treacherously amongst themselves after they betray'd us To their disloyalty let us joyn their falshood wherein consisted the Foundation and Building of all their Fabrick This appeared singularly in the beginnings of the Covenant Then the Gentlemen discovered daily some Treason or other with as much facility as the Labourer finds his work News of England written from Spain France Italy Denmark Politick Discourses of a Dutch Mariner to an English Hostler of Armies kept under ground by the King to cut the Throats of all the Protestants in a night and the greatest danger of all which caused the chiefest fear to the subtle spirits of London was a design laid for a mine of Powder under the Thames
they may then give it the name of Lex and in effect it is but a request before the pleasure of the King makes it pass into a Law and was never other before this present Parliament Therefore the English Lawyers call the King the life of the Law for though the King in Parliament cannot make any Law without the concurrence of the two Houses yet nevertheless it 's his Authority only that gives it the strength and Name of a Law and they are so far from having any Legal Authority in their Commands without the consent of the King that the customary right gives them not so much as a Name neither takes any Cognisance of them To say then that the Parliament hath declared this War lawful and that the Orders of Parliament are Laws is by an ambiguous term to abuse the ignorance of the people for by the Parliament they understand somtimes one House somtimes both and somtimes the King and both Houses together it 's thus that men understand them when they speak of the Supream Court of Parliament and of Acts of Parliament for the King was ever accounted the first of the three Estate without whom the two other had not power to conclude any thing lawfully for all their Authority is derived from him not only for a time but by a continual Influence which being interrupted the power of necessity ceaseâ—h These three togeâ—her have power to interpret the Laws to revoke them and to make others therein properly lies the Oracle of the Laws A Judicious Writer of the Royal party calls the union of the three Estates the Sacred Tripos from whence the Oracles of the Law are pronounced When any one of these three are separate from other the other two stagger and are lame nor cannot serve for a firm foundation for the safety of the State and satisfaction of the Subjects Conscience But let us assume the business higher you cannot more vex our Enemies than to tell them this Truth that the Monarchy which is at this day began by Conquest this is that which by no means they will endure to hear of but would perswade men that it began by an Election and Covenant which indeed had never any being but in their own Fancies If they would be believed for this they should then produce some Records For the bold conjecturers are less credible than all the Histories which assures us of three Conquests in this Kingdom since the Romans and Picts Namely that of the Saxons Danes and Normans Moreover those that would abolish this Office and Dignity destroy that of their own Laws for all the Lands of the Kingdom are held of the King by right of the Sword as appears by the nature of Homages and Services that the Lords of Fiefes owe to the King when William the Conqueror took possession of the Kingdome strengthening the Right of his Conquest by the last Will and Testament of Edward the Confessor he declared himself Master of all the Land and disposed of it according to his pleasure His Son Henry the first eased the People somwhat of the severe and unlimited Government of his Father and confirmed to the English their ancient priviledges which since after long and bloudy wars were anew confirmed and the Quarrel determined by that wise King Edward the first who having as much valour as wisdom in condescending to the Rights of his Subjects knew well how thereby to preserve his own for after all the Soveraignty of Kings remained inviolable and those prerogaâ—ives were preserved which were only proper to him who is not subject but to God alone Such also is the Court of Wards by which a great many Orphans of the Kingdom are in Wardship to the King and almost all the Lands appertaining to him until they be of Age. In this thing the Kings of England exceed all other Christian Princes This being such an essential mark of absolute Soveraignty that there cannot be a greater Certainly if this Monarchy had begun either by Election or Covenant the Subjects would never have given the King so vast a power over their Estates and Families Amongst the priviledges of the English these three are the principal That the King cannot make a Law without the consent of his Estates That no Law made in Parliament can be revoked but in Parliament and that the King can levy no moneys of his Subjects beâ—â—des his ordinary Revenues without the concurrence of the Two Houses in the intervals of Parliaments the King according to his Supream Power may make Edicts seem burdensom to the Subjects or to impair their Laws and Priviledges they humbly present them in the next Parliament the K. when the complaint appears just unâ—o him easeth them for to make their requests pass for Acts without the pleasure of the K. they cannot neither can the K. make new Acts in Parl. without their consent In the mean while the King makes not them partakers of his Authority but assembling them in Parliament he renders them capable to limit his Authority in Cases that appertain to their cognisance for there are many cases wherein they are not to meddle at all in the point of the Militia and for fear they should forget that even this power they have to limit the King comes from the Authority of the King and he can take it away from them when he pleaseth for when he breaks up the Parliament he retires to himself the Authority that he gave them to limit his and moreover if they stretch their priviledges beyond the pleasure of the King he hath power to dissolve the Parliament and after the word of the King is passed which dischargeth them and sends them away they have not power to sit or consult a minute Whence Bodinus well versed in the nature of the States of Christendome concludes the King of England to have Soveraign Authority The Estates of England saith he cannot be assembled nor dissolved but by the Edict of the Prince no more then in France and Spain which proves sufficiently that the Assemblies have no power of themselves to command or forbid a thing and he laughs at the ignorance of Bellaga who affirm the States of Arragon to be above their King and yet nevertheless confesseth the States cannot assemble nor separate without him Illud Novum planè absurdum That saith he is New and altogether a most absurd Doctrine And therefore it was that which occasioned them who had a design to overthrow Church and State to labour to draw a promise from his Majesty that the late long Parliament should not be dissolved without the consent of both Houses well knowing that without that granted the King when he pleased might have overturned their designs which they having obtained shewed by their Actions that they thought themselves then priviledged to do what they would without his Authority and thus it is with us at this day Yet so it is that they themselves do confess that this grant did
France nor the Low Countries we never knew or understood the least trace of dissention hereupon and if the fashion of some Particulars amongst us displease other Churches they do not less displease ours The Reformed Churches are better instructed than lightly to quarrel at the exteriour circumstance of Divine Service where the substance is whole and sound they have learned to speak after Calvin in the Confession presented in the Name of the Churches of France to the Emperour and Princes of Germany We acknowledg that all and every Church have this right to make Laws and Statutes and for to establish a common Policy amongst them provided that all things be done in the House of God decently and in order and they owe obedience to these Statutes so that they do not inthrall the Conscience nor impose Superstition and those that refuse this are accounted by us seditious and wilful Beza goes yet a little further and maintains that in the outward of Religion Many things may yea ought to be born notwithstanding they are not justly commanded St. Augustin hath an Epistle upon this Subject which is a Golden Epistle wherein he instructs Januarius of the indifferency of Ecclesiastical Observations as of the times of Fasting and the divers customs of receiving the Blessed Sacrament of the Lords Supper All things of this kind saith he have their Observations free and for this there is no better of Discipline for a grave and prudent Christian then to do as he seeth them do in all the Churches whither he goes for that which is neither against faith and good manners ought to be held indifferent and ought to be observed according to the company with whom we live and converse and hereupon he reports how his Mother being come to Millan found her self in great perplexity because they did not fast on the Saturday as they did in the Church from whence she came and he to resolve he went to ask counsel of St. Ambrose Archbishop of Millan who answered him When I saith he go to Rome I fast on the Saturday when I am here I fast not on that day do ye the same Into whatsoever Church ye go observe their customes if you your self will not give offence to persons and will that no person should give you offence All Protestants of Europe except the Faction of the Covenant govern themselves thus in whatsoever place they are they joyn with the Reformed Church whatsoever their form of Discipline be which as some say is divers in all Nations To this grave counsel of S. Ambr. S. Austin adds a Character to the life of the imperious and scrupulous humour of our melancholy zealots whom one would think had an intention to paint them out I have oft perceived saith he with much grief and sorrow that many weak and infirm persons have been much troubled through their Contentions wilfulness and superstitious fearfulness at some of their Brethren for doing some things which could not be certainly defined by the Authority of the Holy Scriptures nor by the tradition of the universal Church nor by the utility that might thereby come for the bettering and amendment of our lives only because there is some matter for their conceptions to reason and discourse upon or because they think the farther they go or are able to separate themselves from the Customs received is the most exquisite and nearest to perfection moving such litigious and idle Questions that they make appear to all that they will never allow of any thing well done unless they do it themselves The Reformed Churches take and give this Liberty that every one form an outward Order of Divine Service according to their prudence and its more to be wished than expected that there should be one and the same order throughout all Churches But I know not any Church that reject and cast off all certain Forms as the Covenanters The Declaration following made some few years since by persons of account in the Churches of France is notable As for the Ceremonies and Customs of Ecclesiastical Service and Discipline no judge convenient to leave to every Church his own without altering or changing any thing One day when it shall please God to perfect and confirm amity amongst these Churches we may be able by an universal councel and consent to form a certain Liturgy which may be as a Symbole and Bond of Concord The Churches of the Covenanters ought to be exempted out of this Number for the Liturgy is become to them an Apple of Discord which hath made them quarrel with all Churches of the world being in this point like unto Esau whose hands were against every one and every ones hands against him Therefore the Directors refute themselves by a manifest contradiction then when by their publike Declaration they tell the people that it is to conform themselves to the Reformed Churches that they prescribe not an ordinary form of publike Prayers and Administration of the Sacraments Seeing that it is a thing most notoriously known that all the Reformed Churches have certain Forms of Prayers But they do as if they should apparrel themselves with Green and Yellow because the Ministers of France apparel themselveâ— with black 'T is the Doctrine of the Brownists which now predominate in England that for to have a Liturgie or Form of Prayers is to have another Gospel Now after all this Do they not well think you to court the Churches of France and to make a great noise of their conformity with them having so openly condemned them and their phanatical Phrensie in this point is proceeded so far that neither the Lords Prayer nor the Ten Commandements nor the Apostles Creed are repeated in their Churches nor are taught their Children in their Houses much less any Form of Catechism Behold here a Faction who reject the Books of Christian Religion An horrible and unheard of thing in all ages and in all Churches since Christianity entred the world And dare these people speak of Reformation and Conformity with the Reformed Churches CHAP. XVI Of the great prudence and wisdome of the first English Reformers and of the fool-hardiness of these at present IF these directors who boast themselves of a new Light had had at least the light of Prudence they would have considered that they had to deal with popular Spirits who were accustomed to a good and holy Liturgie but since on a sudden interdicted the use they could not but think they were suddenly transported into another Gospel for the people are dull and fastned upon the exterior and that if they be once fastened to a form of devotion which is good although below perfection there is occasion to praise God that the people have any tast of devotion even in any Form and it should be cherished and encouraged And if there be any thing in this Form to be amended it should be done so mildly and dexterously that the people be not exasperated and the
which a wild melancholy renders fearful superstitious suspitious and cruel and when all these ingredients meet together ignorance superstition presumption and wilfulness and a flitting and imperious humour all steeped in a black and hot melancholy they make the most malignant composition of the world pernicious to Church and State to families and all societies causing every where ruine and combustion like a Granado fired that makes all fly a pieces that is near it CHAP. XVII How the Covenanters labour in vain to sow dissention between the Churches of England and France upon the point of discipline Of the Christian prudence of the French Reformers and of the nature of discipline in general HItherto we have found no such conformity as might induce the Covenanters of England to invite the Reformed Churches to espouse their quarrel for they every where carefully administer the Lords Supper they take order that Infants be baptized they suffer none to be re-baptized they suppress heresies scandals the liberty of fanatique spirits they repeat to the people the ten Commandments of God the Articles of the Christian Faith they make use of certain forms of prayer in administring the Sacraments and other parts of the Divine Service They teach the people to submit to every Ordinance of man for the Lords sake and not to resist Supreme Powers but to suffer for righteousness sake they are free from a capricious weakness in matters of indifferency which are peculiar to our enemies also these Churches approve of the English Liturgy and without scruple joyn with it in prayer when occasion serves what is there then which should oblige them to associate together The Reformed Churches say they have no Bishops but we demand of them whether all those Churches which have Bishops are not Reformed They incline doubtless to this opinion for in the title of their Epistle to the Reformed Churches they name but those of France the Low Countries and Switzerland they let the other pass under an c. If that be their opinion they have much forgot themselves in their Copies which they sent to particular States for they writ to the Churches of Hesse and those of Anhalt which are governed by Superintendents that is to say in our Language Bishops In all those Countries subject to the Crowns of Denmark and Sweden The Episcopal degree is kept so almost through all Germany this degree is preserved under the name of Superintendent and in some places as in Brene the name of Bishops remain although part of these Churches be Lutherans we will not refuse them the name of Reformed there wanting but a little charity in them to make both them and us to accord So likewise in the large Territories of Bohemia Polonia and Transylvania the Evangelical Churches are governed by Seniors as they call them who have Episcopal power They should not then boast of the consent of the Reformed Churches nor complain to them that the King would not admit a Reformation which pretends to abolish the Episcopal degree as an appurtenance of Antichrist which is in effect to condemn all Churches where there is any preheminence amongst the Clergy I forbear to speak of the Churches of Russia Grecia and India and of the rest of the world whose Doctrine is less known to us then the point of their Discipline which are all governed by Bishops But the Covenanters Magisterially prescribe their Discipline to all the World although they themselves have none vaunting themselves of a piety without pair and yet will not leave to other Churches any liberty Therefore their Declarations give all to understand that after they have planted it in England they will go and do as much beyond the Seas The Donatists shut up the Church within the confines of Africa which then was a small thing unfitly applying that Text of the Canticles Tell us where thou feedest where thou makest thy flocks to rest at noon Cant. 1.7 but the French translation reâ—deth to rest towards the south At present the Kingdom of Jesus Christ is in danger to be confined within England whither other Nations must come and search it saying Tell us where thou feedest where thou makest thy flocks to rest towards the North. It 's easie to make the consent of the Churches named in the title of the Epistle to sound high because they have no Bishops but to prove their agreement with the Covenanters in this point they should do well to make these two things to appear the one that these Churches condemn the Episcopal Order as unlawful and Antichristian the other that these Churches do conform to the discipline of the Covenanters things which they will find false As for the first we see not that the other Churches quarrel at the Church of England hereupon but pray God to bless them in the order against this it matters not to alledge the thirtieth Article of the Churches of France confession of Faith We believe that all true Pastors in what place soever they be have the same authority and equal power under one head Jesus Christ and that for this cause no Church ought to pretend any dominion or Lordship over the other He that speaks for the General expounds this Article Ye must know saith he that the equality of Pastors in that which is of Authority to declare the Gospel and administer the Sacraments and for the use of the keyes is held necessary amongst all for Baptism the Lords Supper and the declaring of the remission of sins is of equal dignity in the mouth of Pastors whether they be of great or little Authority But as for Ecclesiastical policy we do not hold the equality of Pastors absolutely necessary we do not account this Order a point of faith nor a Doctrine of salvation we live God be thanked in brotherly concord with our neighbour-Churches which follow another form and where the Bishops have superiority In his disputations of Divinity in the University of Sedam this is one of his Theses We maintain that the Bishops of England after their conversion to the faith and their abjuration of Papistry were faithful servants of God and ought not to forsake neither the name nor title of Bishops Calvin himself spake as much before in his Epistle to Cardinal Sadâ—let speaking of the Church of Rome Let them saith he establish such an Hierarchy where the Bishops having the dignity refuse not to submit themselves to Christ and depend of him as their onely Head and refer themselves to him and let them maintain amongst them such a brotherly society which is not entertained but by the bond of truth Then if there be found any persons who refuse to respect such an Hierarchy with reverence and Soveraign obedience I acknowledge and confess him worthy of al sorts of Anathema's This passage serves for the Episcopal degree in general This other of Jacobus Lectius Professor at Geneva hath a singular regard to the Bishops of England He saith That those Bishops only were
in the Assembly We could wish also that the power of their Consistories and Synods were a little more limitted for these Assemblies being Courts of Conscience which takes cognisance of all the offences of the Church they may enclose in their Jurisdiction all criminal and civil causes of the Kingdom there being no cause which hath not in it a point of Conscience And so hereby it may come that the sentences of Judges may be controuled in the Consistory and the Officers of the Crown questioned about their managing of publick affairs and so the Government of the State become purely arbitrary And the power of the Ecclesiastical Councel being such the most unquiet and ambitious will be ever pressing to be of it whereupon sidings and factions will abound revenge and particular interest will turn the ballance There they will form factions in the State and parties against the King for what is there that they dare not enterprise who have so vast a power which have no other limits than the extent of the flitting and moveable conscience of particulars which give account to none who pretend to have their authority only of Divine right and therefore are not subject to be controuled These are not conjectures nor suppositions but observations of long experience certainly that personal citation which was sent by the National Synod of Scotland to their King when he was in the midst of his Armies in England Feb. 1645. filled Forreign Churches with amazement and scandal And no less is the Authority they exercise even over their Parliaments which having demanded advice of the Synod concerning what they were to do with their King the Ministers concluded that they should not bring the King into Scotland and that the Kingdom of Scotland ought not to espouse his quarrel for to maintain his Rites in England and their advice passed for an Ordinance after this they cannot reprove the Bishops for being Councellours of State Monarchy which can endure neither Master nor Companion can hardly comply with this Court of Conscience which gives Laws but receives none unless themselves make them and limit the King but refuse to be limited by him but the Magistrates of an Aristocratick or popular Common-wealth will shift better with them for this Court pretending an Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction purely Soveraign and Divine yet nevertheless admit lay men to the participation of this power The Lords never fail to be Members of this consistory and to govern there And thus the question touching the Ecclesiastical authority is Eluded Now although above all we desire to enjoy an Apostolical and Episcopal Discipline where the Bishop assisted with the Councel of his Clergy governs the Church and admits other Pastors according to their degree and quality to the participation of the power of ths Keies yet nevertheless if the revolution of the State brings in another Discipline our Ministers submit themselves to it not to be Actors there remembring themselves of their duties and promise made at their reception of Orders but to surfer themselves to be governed remembring that they are call'd to preach the Gospel and whether there be a good or an evil Order in the Church or even none at all the vocation binds them to feed the Flock and to maintain the holy Doctrine But indeed its great pity to be reduced to expect a Discipline of those that have none and yet make the Kingdom of Christ to consist in it for which they made such clamours in their licentiousness and overthrow of all Order and lawful Vocation in the Church The Reformed Churches of France who employ all their Zeal and Industry to maintain the purity of the Gospel without contending with any about the outward Discipline look upon with contempt and compassion the impetuous weakness of our enemies who overthrow the holy Doctrine and ruine Church and State for points of Discipline which is to lose the end for the accessaries yea although these accessaries are not good in this regard there being but two things to reprove in the Covenanters their end and the meanâ— which they employ to attain that end CHAP. XIX That the Covenanters ruine the Ministers of the Gospel under colour of Reformation ONE of the points of Reformation for which they laboured so much with Cannon shot was to abase and pull down the Clergy which is a work already done without proceeding further As for their greatness the only thing wherein it consisted was taken from them in the year 1645. Which was the Bishops sitting and having power to vote in the Lords House the rest is a smal thing As for their Revenues they are confiscated and sequestred and even the Revenues of the Bishops were such as might cause rather pitty then envy except four or five Bishopricks the rest were so poor that for to help them to uphold their Degree and pay their dues to the King Tenths and first Fruits his Majesty ever out of compassion gave them some other Benefices otherwise very few would have hazzarded the taking of them the Bishopricks of England being like the ruined Monasteries in some Countries which have nothing remaining but the wals with nothing in them The children of those parents who had formerly fâ—tted themselves by the Bishopricks have now swallowed the rest and yet labour to begger the inferior Clergy This is that they call Reformation and in truth 't is the Reformation of Scotland where the Tenths of the Clergy are possessed by the Ruling Elders above all by the Lords some of them having the Tenths of whole Provinces Therefore ye need not wonder they fight with such Zeal for a Reformation which is so profitable In England ordinarily the great Towns and rich Parishes are impropriated and in the hands of Lay persons the rest of the Benefices have but to provide in a Mediocrity for Students in Divinity Those who Reform the Clergy are those who possess the Goods of the Church and besides the Tithes that are alienated many of them even make use of the Tithes of the Clergy with which they are lawfully invested terrifyâ—g their poor Ministers with Sequestration too weak to contend against them and force them to injurious and damageable contracts How many Patrons are there who sell their Benefices to them who will give most And by the infamous Simony of these Gentlemen who make a noise of Reformation the door of the Church is shut to the Clergy unless they have a golden key to open it and thus they prefer profit before conscience 'T is well done of them to mend that which they have marred and they of all other have reason to take in hand the Reformation of Ministers because themselves have done what possibly they can to corrupt them Of all Liberal Professions Divinity is the poorest and have most Thorns in her way and therefore Parents find it more profitable to put their children to a Trade than bring them up in the Study of Divinity and yet after all this their very poverty
in their Armies they made use of all Religions yea that of the Church of Rome as we shall shew hereafter If it were lawful for them to make use of those who denied the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and of others that denied his Divinity and those who were re-baptized and denied Baptism to Infants and the Blessed Sacrament of the whole Church it were not less lawful for the King to make use of Souldiers of the Roman Religion and if those whom they now call Reformed embrace the Doctrine of the Jesuits touching the deposing and murdering of Kings and that persons of the Roman Religion reject this and joyn themselves with the Reformed Church in this point the King had reason to serve himself of the Last as well as of the First Moreover the King had but two Religions in his Armies which were too many And although the Roman is not tolerated by the Laws yet the Statutes give protection to the persons which make profession of it but the Covenanters Motly Army consisted of many Religions there can be no certain number of them for they multiplied and subdivided daily and these Religions had no tolleration by the Laws nor the persons which made profession of them But put the case that the Covenanters were a party Reformed uniform and illuminated since they have destroyed their King what Law Divine or Humane doth hinder him for using all means that God gives him to defend himself And if amongst his Loyal Subjects there be some who are blinded in matter of Religion why should he not make use of those who are blind to repress those who are illuminated and maintain his Life and Crown 'T is then a ridiculous Question which they demand of the King whether he will defend the reformed Religion with Souldiers of the Roman Religion for he makes not use of them to defend his Religion but his Person and Scepter which those whom they call Reformed would wickedly pluck out of his hands 'T is foolishly and unjustly done of them to complain that the King made them to kill the Protestants a name which they make a great noise with when they have lost the thing they were not Protestants but Rebels whom the King killed in his just defence The King was not to enquire of what Religion they were that made War upon him the true Religion gives not license to Malefactors to do evil and to binde the hands of the Judge that he should not punish them chiefly when the Malefactor fights against the Judge and he to whom God hath committed the sword to execute vengeance in wrath is constrained to make use of it to defend his life and authority the Malefactor who is instructed in a holy Religion is doubly guilty he is the evil servant in the Gospel who knows his Masters will but does it not and therefore he shall be beaten with many stripes This above written serves as an Answer to the eâ—clamations of our enemies That the King caused an Armie of Irish Papists to come over to kill the Protestants in England for it matters not what Religion the English be of if they be Rebels and who can blame him for employing Rebels converted against Rebels obstinate but onely those that perish by them But that which gives occasion of laughter in this Objection is that there were none and the Irish have not yet sent over their Army into England according to their promise to help the King We grant that the English are far more considerable to the King then the Irish suppose the difference be as great as betwixt a Son and a servant but if the Son prove unnatural and draws his sword against his Father who can blame the Father if he arms his servant were he a Barbary slave to defend his life 'T is not to purpose then for them so often to object to us that the Irish were the Executioners to cut the throats of a multitude of Protestants in Ireland and that it 's a horrible thing to bring them over into England to do as much here for at the worst they were but Executioners of Rebels Certainly civil War is a horrible thing where one destruction draws on another Abyssus abyssum advocat but since the enraged and implacable obstinacy of the Covenanters brought the King to this extremity that he could not quench the fire that they had kindled in his Kingdom but by ruine like those who would quench a Town all in flames with Cannon-shot what could we do other then call in the Irish to his succours having rebellions then on all sides Was it not wisely done of him to make an agreement with the most tractable and pliant and to serve himself with their Forces to make head against the others If the English would not have had the King made peace with the Irish why did they then refuse the peace and pardon which the King so often and so graciously rendred them And did he enter into Treaty with his Irish Subjects before he had a long time in vain sollicited his English to their duty Should he rather willingly have lost two Kingdoms to help his enemies to render themselves Masters of the third But say they the Irish shed abundance of Protestants blood in Ireland which should have been revenged in stead of granting them peace It s true they committed many fearful and strange cruelties but this blood hath been sufficiently revenged For for one which they put to death five of theirs have been killed since the beginning of the War And moreover this reason sounds ill in the mouthes of Christians who ought to leave vengeance to God We could not expect that the Covenanters would ever commend this peace which might have been so disadvantagious to them and might have supplied the King with many Souldiers if the Irish had kept their word The principal reason of their complaint was because the Londoners lost much hereby for they had advanced great sums of monies to the two Houses for which they were to have had the Irish Rebels Lands after they were extirpated which was to buy the Bears skin before he was killed and this partly was the cause of breaking up of the Treaty at Uxbridge for the Citizens of London would by no means hear of Peace unless the King would break his faith with the Irish and root them out for the quarrel that the English Covenanters had with them was not for their Religion or Rebellion but because they would not suffer themselves to be killed in a peaceable and quiet manner that thereby the Merchant Adventurers of London might have their Bargain And thus the Covenanters as much as in them lay justified the unjust arms of the Irish since they would by no means have peace with them And after all the King hath the sole power of Peace and War and if he will receive into grace and pardon his Subjects who have offended him he is to give account to none Yet nevertheless that it may appear