hath more offended against the King and the Realm than the King hath done against him or us Thus Sir spoke that Heroick Prelate in the Court of Parliament and his practice was answerable to what he spoke For he chose not the safer but the juster side as all good Men ought to do He knew while he spoke that Bonds and Persecutions would attend him nevertheless he spoke freely and after speaking was committed to Prison and after that was crushed with many other brave Men by the Usurper against whom they rose up Afterwards about the sixth year of his Reign Rich. Scroop A. B. of York with the L. Maubray Marshal of England H. Piercy E. of Northumberland L. Bardolf and * As I suppose the Earls of Salisbury Huntington Glocester the Lords Clarenden Roper with divers other Knights and Esquires and after that the Lord Thomas Piercy Earl of Worcester and Lord Henry Piercy Son and Heir to the Earl of Northumberland many others published an Excommunication and †In the first Volume of Fox's Acts and Monuments in the Reign of H. IV. Remonstrance consisting of several Articles against Henry which they fixed upon the doors of Churches and Monasteries to be read of all It begins thus IN THE NAME OF GOD Amen Before the Lord Jesus Christ Judge of the quick and the dead We not long since became bound by Oath upon the Sacred Evangelical Book unto our Sovereign Lord Richard late King of England that we as long as we lived should bear true Allegiance and Fidelity towards him and his Heirs succeeding him in the Kingdom by just Title Right and Line according to the Statutes and custom of this Realm have here taken unto us certain Articles subscribed in form following to be proponed heard and tried before the just Judge Christ Jesus and the whole World but if which God forbid by Force Fear or Violence of wicked Persons we shall be cast in Prison or by violent death be prevented so as in this World we shall not be able to prove the said Articles as we wish then we do appeal to the High Coelestial Judge that he may judge and discern the same in the day of his Supream Judgment First We depose say and except and intend to prove against Lord Henry Darby commonly called King of England himself pretending the same but without all Right and Title thereunto and against his Adherents Fautors Complices that they have ever been are and will be Traitors Invaders and destroyers of God's Church and of our Sovereign Lord Richard late King of England his Heirs his Kingdom and Commonwealth as shall hereafter manifestly appear In the second Article they declare him forsworn perjured and excommunicate for that he conspired against his Sovereign Lord King Richard In the fourth they recite by what wrong illegal and false means he exalted himself into the Throne of the Kingdom and then describing the miserable State of the Nation which followed after his Usurpation they again pronounce him Perjured and Excommunicate In the fifth Article they set forth in what a barbarous and inhumane manner Henry and his Accomplices imprisoned and murdered K. Richard and then cry out Wherefore O England arise stand up and avenge the Cause the Death and Injury of thy King and Prince if thou do not take this for certain that the Righteous God will destroy thee by strange Invasions and Forreign Power and avenge himself on thee for this so horrible an Act. In the seventh they depose against him for putting to death not only Lords Spiritual and other Religious Men but also divers of the Lords Temporal there Named for which they pronounce him Excommunicate In the ninth they say and depose that the Realm of England never flourished nor prospered after he Tyrannically took upon him the Government of it And in the last they depose and protest for themselves and K. Richard and his Heirs the Clergy Commonwealth of the whole Realm that they intended neither in Word nor Deed to offend any State of Men in the Realm but to prevent the approaching Destruction of it and beseeching all Men to favour them and their Designs whereof the first was to exalt to the Kingdom the true and lawfull Heir and him to Crown in Kingly Throne with the Diadem of England Upon publishing these Articles much people resorted to the Archbishop but he being circumvented by the Earl of Westmoreland who pretended to join with him dismissed his Forces at his persuasion upon which he was immediately made Prisoner and beheaded at York with the Earl Marshal and divers York shire Gentlemen and Citizens of York who had joined with him The Earl of Northumberland and Lord Bardolph escaped and held out two years longer before they were crushed by the Usurper but at last they were both slain Fighting in the Field against him You see Doctor in this Remonstrance how the Archbishop and Lords that joined with him contrary to the general sense of Mankind unking'd this Providential King for want of a Legal Title and Remonstrated against him as a Perjured Traytor and Vsurper and when he lay upon his Death-bed he himself also began to be of their Opinion contrary to the general sense of Mankind when his guilty Conscience forced him to tell his Son That he had no good Title to the Crown but he not inferior to his Father in Ambition snatched it from his Pillow and plainly told him That as he had got it by the Sword so by the Sword he would keep it And in truth Doctor your Title by Providence against Law is Sword Title and your Providential Kings Sword-Kings for in all Kingdoms the Sword is King where their lawfull Prince is not the Sword or Supream Force Rules all and that Supream Crushing Force which by God's permission gets and keeps possession makes your Providential Kings 12. I have hitherto shewed you what Opinion many Wise and Considering Men had of Henry IV. and his Reign for want of Legal Right and Title And I now proceed to shew the sense that a whole Parliament had of him and of his Son and Grand-Son's Succession the latter sitting in the Throne This appears from Roll. Parl. 39 Henry VI. as it is in Cotton's Abridgement or rather from the Record at large as it is to be seen as it was lately printed in an Answer by a skillful and faithful hand to The unreasonableness of the new Separation upon account of the Oaths This Roll gives an account how Richard Duke of York Father of Edward IV. brought to the Parliament Chamber in writing not a Petition but a Claim to the Crown of which Henry had been long fully and quietly possessed and his Title which was only Succession by Birth-right being fully made appear it was the Opinion of all the Lords that it could not be defeated That single Title by Proximity of Blood was thought sufficient to supersede all the patch'd Titles of Henry and all that could be said in
Law gives to Sovereign Power he is King and King no sooner than he hath that Right I have now answered every thing in your Sermon relating to the Controversie concerning Kings and I here declare that I have onely defended the Principles and Reasonings of your Adversaries against you but if they be mistaken in Law and misapply them and this to the wrong Object let them answer themselves for their Mistake My design and business is only to rescue your Text and that in Rom. 13.1 and the Duties there commanded from the mere Providential to the Legal King but if those Men have so little Wit Law or Philosophy nay so little common Sense as of two Pretenders to the Crown at any time not to know which hath the legal Title their Mistake may prove fatal but I have nothing to doe with that I am sure Dr. you have done their Majesties much Disservice by awarding the legal Right from them and giving them instead of it an airy Title by Providence which Athaliah Absolom and Cromwel had and every prosperous Usurper can pretend to and I am confident had they been rightly informed of the nature of your Principle and of that loose and fickle and worthless Allegiance which Princes only get by it they would have had your Case of Allegiance censured as it deserves and instead of preferring you had punished you as the underminer of their Throne I am certain had you wrote and preached so in any of the former Protestant Raigns you would have been severely censured and punished by the Laws of Church and State and if as you tell us the Revolution hath made no Alteration in Government it is not yet too late to bring you to condign Punishment 15. I thought I should have made an end but finding some other Passages in your Sermon upon which the Reader may expect I should make some Reflections I cannot well pass them over First then I cannot but animadvert upon the great and undecent Liberty you take of speaking of the FRENCH KING in this and almost all your Sermons whereas in France that Antichristian Tyrant as you modestly call him will not suffer the greatest of his Clergy to bring so much as a railing Accusation against their Majesties or meddle with their Administration as you and the Bp. of St. Asaph and I know not how many more presume to do with his But who made you Judges over him He is God's Minister and God's annointed Servant and who art thou that judgest another Man's Servant To his own Master he standeth or falleth And what have you to doe to impeach him of Tyranny Persecution and Oppression Do you know the reasons of his Actions or can you tell what may be said to justifie or excuse the worst thing that he ever did You told Dr. Burrnet at Ely-house when he spoke reproachfully of King James that Crowned Heads ought not to be so treated but now Dr. you make no difficulty of treating the greatest of Crowned Heads at a much worse rate tho' he is God's ordinance on a double account both as a Legal and Providential King One would think to read in what a losty and insolent manner you speak of him that you were your self IMP. PON. MAX. or some great Prophet that had received Commission from Heaven to arraign Kings Certainly there is something very extraordinary in you something very divine or very diabolical that of late you have a Mouth given you speaking Blasphemies against Kings and against a King who has as many and great Vertues as any King in the World * f. s p. 10 11 12. Persecutor Oppressor Enslaver of Mens Bodies and Souls Tyrant and antichristian Tyrant This Dr. sounds like the Language of the Beast not of a Minister of the Church of England it runs in the Style of an Excommunication Bull and as you are as great as the Pope in your own Opinion so you have learnt to huff and hector Kings But what are you thus to take upon you You who but the other day were digging in Gravel-lane for Bread to what an height are you come from almost nothing and a Conventicle to defie Crowned Heads But we know from whence all this comes even from a most servile Spirit that cares not what it saith or doth so it humor the Times and please the People Of this no man hath been more guilty than you and I will give you and the World an instance of it Sometimes Liberty and Indulgence to Dissenters were in vogue and sometimes not and accordingly you watcht the Opportunities and wrote pro and con on it on both sides You were for it in your Preface to your Religious Assemblies and you were against it in your Answer to Whitby and your Reflexions upon the Plot but for it again in your Sermon before the Ld. Mayor a little before the Revolution and I doubt not but another Crisis would make you once more against it From this Time-serving and Self-seeking Principle it comes that the French K. is made the common place of Satyr in your and other such Clergy-mens Sermons He hath taken the part of K. James and that makes him so great a Tyrant but had he been against him and the Confederate Power for him then they had been the Tyrants and Oppressors and he that is now a Nero a Dioclesian had then been a most excellent Prince How many Declamations had Dr. Sherlock by this time made for him and against them if he had been our Allie and his victorious Legions employed in our Service Then we had heard again from the Pulpits the old Philippicks against Spain and the Inquisition the Pulpits would have rung then with Invectives against the Pope the Emperor and the Hungarian Persecutions and we should have been told again of Amboyna and all the Injuries and Insults of the Dutch But as the Case now stands nothing must be said against them the French K. is the only Antichrist and all the Tyrants in Europe a very Devil in humane shape Well Dr. you know many men have made Speeches in praise of the Plague and Famine and Tyrants and therefore for once let us defend a Paradox and try what may be said for Busiris or rather for the Hercules of France You tell us he invades the Liberties of Europe but I protest that is News to me for I never heard before that he made War with Europe Sweden Denmark Poland Switzerland Italy and Russia as I take it are all in Europe but I hear them not complain of him for usurping on their Liberties or pretend to have any Reprisals to make upon him Besides Dr. I am not able to understand what are the Liberties of Europe and desire to know where they are or in what Code or Charter one may find them If Europe have any Liberties it must be a Community but I never read of the Community of Europe tho' I have of that of Asia which was a Community of 13 Cities in
Dutch and the Dutch as our Friends and Allies And by consequence it would be false Logick and a foul Reflexion upon some to say that they invited the Dutch to conquer us Well but your meaning is that you wonder that any English Protestants should invite the French to place King James in his Throne again For my part I know no such English Protestants as invite the French upon any score but Have you not left King James the legal Right to the Throne And do not you allow him to prosecute it and recover it if he can And doth not the Law from which as you grant he hath his Right to prosecute and recover permit him also to seek Aid from the French as well as from the Dutch or Spaniards And I dare say if these would bring him in it would be all one to him and to you too Ay but the French are Papists And was not the last Pope but one a Papist And was not S privately sent to him and did not he send a Nuncio privately hither And are not the Spaniards Inquisition-Papists Or did the French ever do so base a thing as to say they were French and no Christians or have they not as much natural Humanity as any other men But they are arbitrary Masters But what have we to doe with them as Masters And do not those that have to doe with them find them as good Masters as some find their Neighbours And come Doctor tell me plainly would you not accept of Help from the French if you stood in need of it Nay Would you not onely accept of it but be very glad of it too And therefore can you blame your old Master if he seeks for Help from France since you to recover much less than Three Kingdoms would doe the same thing If he had choice of Assistance you might have some colour to blame him for accepting of French Help and be angry with those who consider the French as his Allies But here Doctor lies the Secret of your Displeasure It is not the French as French or any other thing but as King James's Friends and Allies that you and other Men hate them You are affraid of him and would hate the Dutch as well as the French if they were his Friends And the reason why you hate him is not that he is popish or arbitrary but because if he recover his Throne you will lose your Chair This Doctor is the hidden but true Resource of all the Venom you disgorge upon him and the French You know you have sinned beyond 〈…〉 like the Trumpeter in the * In Sir Roger L'Estrange's Aesop's Fables Fable which with the Reflexion upon it I recommend to your 〈…〉 could you have been secured of Pardon and more Preferment upon his Restoration I believe you would never have written your two Letters against the French Invasion nor have done the part of Shimei and Milton against him as you have lately done It is observed for your Honour that neither you nor the other Pamphietiers preach'd or published one word against him before our late Victory over the French Fleet and I am confident if they had been victorious the World had never seen your Temple Sermon nor Letters nor the Pretences of the French Invasion examined by that or any other hand On the contrary we should have had Books and Sermons of another make and to another Tune from the same Quarter and Apologies for King James and the most arbitrary of his Proceedings upon those very Topicks from which p. 23 24 25 26. you shew in three particulars how needfull it is to pray for Kings I would to God Doctor you would seriously read them over again and apply them to your old Master and if you will doe so I heartily pray God that while you read and so apply them he would pour out upon you the Spirit of Prayer and Supplication that you may look upon him whom you have pierced and mourn for him and all the Evils you have done against him as one mourneth for his onely Son The last thing I observe is a Contradiction of what you say p. 27. by what you say in p. 29. In the former place you truly tell us That No Prince can take our Religion from us if we resolve to keep it but they may disturb the Quiet and peaceable Enjoyment of it which was the state of the Church under the Heathen and persecuting Emperours This Doctor looks like something spoken by the Author of Christian Prudence or one of those Men who distinguish between Religion and the Externals of Religion to shew the Fallacies and Dis-ingenuity of others that will not distinguish between our Religion and the Peace Profit and Honours which by Law attend the Profession and Administration of it But then you forget your self again and run into this modish Fallacy in the latter place where you tell us That we owe our Religion to K. William which cannot be true if King James could not take it from us as indeed he could not let him have done the worst you can imagine if we had had the Faith and Constancy of the Church under the persecuting Emperours Had we followed their blessed Example no Persecution could have hurt our Religion but like the Persecutions in primitive Times would have made it more august and venerable and established it for ever whereas it is now evil spoken of for your sakes and seems to be drawing on to a fatal End in Theism Atheism Schisms Heresies and Enthusiasm and an utter Contempt of the Clergy of which you have as much reason to be sensible as any other Man But what need I to observe this Contradiction in you who have contradicted your self so often that it will take up a great part of your Time and Thoughts to 〈…〉 view and censure your own Writings and finally 〈…〉 what you will stand to and what you 〈…〉 and what you will have put in the collection of your Works and what you will have left out of it I know this is no acceptable Work to a great and haughty Writer but Doctor it is a Work necessary to be done and comfort gour self with the Example of the great St. Augustin and set about it presently while it is called day lest the Night come upon you when you cannot work You are bound in Honour and Conscience to do it and the World expects it from you and will censure you when you are dead if you leave it undone Consider therefore Doctor which of your contradictory Pieces is fit to stand in the Collection of your Works to declare your last Opinion of things Must the Old Case of Nonresistence or the New Case of Allegiance make part of them Will you stand by your Discourse concerning the Knowledge of Jesus Christ and our Vnion and Communion with him and the Defence and Continuation of that discourse or will you stand by the Discourse concerning the Nature Vnity and Communion of the Catholick Church which Dr. Clegget told you was a flat Contradiction to the two former and which you have been told again and again the Dissenters make ill use of against the Church of England Shall your Sermons before or your Sermons since you took the Oath make part of that Collection By which of your two Faces will you be represented to Posterity the Face that looks backward before your Apostacy or the Face that looks forward since you Apostatized from your Principles And will you finally stand to your Tritheistical Notion of the Trinity which hath so exposed you to the Arrians and Socinians or will you retract it These are things Doctor that will require your most mature and serious Thoughts and God grant that you may so determine about them as may be most for his Glory the Honour of the Church of England and that of your own Memory in Ages to come Amen FINIS ERRATA IN the Dedication page 1. line ult after give insert the Pope In the Contents § 7. l. 2. for is r. was § 18. l. 4. for view r. review In the Book p. 1. l. 14. after believe dele the Semi colon p. 2. l. 39. after as it was put a Comma p. 5. l. 39. l. by r. in p. 12. l. 26. r. reveal l. 29. after for r. the Prayers of p. 13. l. 40. r. persist p. 14. l. 14. r. Belisarius p. 19. l. 20. r. Moubray p. 22. l. 12. for feared r. seared l. 23. r. will ever be p. 34. l. 19. l. Idols r. Gods and for Kings r. Gods p. 36. l. 5. r. to the Discretion l 36. r. CONSTANTIAL p. 37. l. 6 f. Pomana r. Roma l. 22. r. a little of his Skill in Coins p. 38. l. 23. r. dispute with l. 31. r. commands p. 39. l. 22. r. and that they are as