any private spleen but in his zeal to the house of Israel and of Judah but none of these did sway with those Covenanters and God himself acquits them from any mistake in the Obligation of that their Covenant in his proceeding against the house of Saul before observed when private men swear to their hurt they must not change when States swear they may not change there is no security without God from any danger it is more safe to keep with God though seemingly we run upon peri I then to quit the wayes of God deserting him for prevention to speak the fairest these reasonings come from unbelief You go on and say You see what pinches your friend He thinks that they that made the change broke the Covenant and if he engage under this change as is desired he thinks he breaks the Covenant also To which you answer First That they who made the change will plead for themselves that they are not guilty of any breach of Covenant notwithstanding the change But this you leave to them to justifie And seeing you will not justifie them I shall not stand to implead them your Reader being fully satisfied that your own pen in your former confession hath already done it Secondly you answer For the consequence your friends make from the taking of the Engagement to a breach of the Covenant it doth not at all follow to your understanding for the direct and plain matter of the Engagement binds him onely to procure the good of the Common-wealth as now it stands and because at all times and in all constitutions thereof he is bound to do this no less by the Covenant it self then by the Engagement therefore his taking of this to this effect can be no breach of that which you endeavour to make good by a comment upon the words of the Engagement for the negative words without a King and a house of Lords in the Engagement may as you say be properly and most obviously taken as an explication of the words now established immediatly going before and not an absolute abnegation of the things looked upon truly and as in themselves with more words to the same purpose which gloss of yours calls for some observation and well deserves animadversion First necessarily implying a high charge of such inconsiderateness in the heads of those that did devise and in the power of those that do impose this Engagement of which none can believe that they are guilty 1. They knew that all the Subjects of this Nation stood before engaged to the intrinsecal good of this Common-wealth as by the dictates of nature the obligation of reason self-preservation which each one knows is wrapt up in the publick so also by an oath prescribed by their power since they entred upon it reaching doubtless thus far and as some conjecture intended further that which was already done to their hands as you say by so many Oaths and Covenants which themselves also since their investiture in power had done they will not do over again in words not at all further obliging but onely perplexing amusing and insnaring 2. They know that the Engagement in this sense will nothing tend to their establishment as before hath been evidenced yea they know with this gloss upon it it hath a full tendency to their further danger not a few being perswaded how erroneously soever that the publick good is best provided for and consequently the Engagement answered in their opposition all of which is so clear to every eye that it could not be hid from those that imposed this Engagement so that none can think that they would trouble the consciences of so many thousands in such a needless way to their own non-benefit yea to their further peril If the Covenant mentioning Monarchy in a King do tye us to a republick in a State as you before affirm then the Engagement mentioning a republick without King or house of Lords may tye us to Monarchy by the same reason Secondly This gloss carrys a full contradiction in it self you say these words without King house of Lords may be properly and most obviously taken as an explication of the word as now established immediatly going before and not an absolute negation of the things themselves when as those words as now established do fully imply that abnegation of Kings Lords which you there mention now being an adverb of time the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Engagement must needs stand in full opposition to the face of things in former administrations it cannot look on the Common-weale abstractively as the same in all revolutions and junctures of times but as it now stands in a present different posture as now is a full contradiction to your sense as ever And I pray you consider whether the powers now established without King and Lords have not voted down both King and Lords as useless and dangerous and therfore now established is no other then an abnegation of Kings and Lords heretofore established therefore your friend being in this pinched is not yet eased You go on as discerning that what is said will not hold Suppose say you that in your apprehensâ—â—â— of matters this Engagement doth materially settle some thing in the Common-wealth which is contrary to the intention which you had in taking the Covenant yet I say that by giving your assent thereunto as matters now stand you break not at all your Covenant because your obligation to those matters by vertue of the Covenant was extinguished before you were called upon to take this Engagement now that which is extinct and made void cannot be said to oblige any more This supposition of yours is wholly yielded by others that it is in full opposition to the Covenant and other Oaths and so all your labour lost in endeavouring to reconcile them and this which you now bring is onely held out for a Plea to carry it in the affirmative that the Engagement may be entered malè res agitur cum tot opus est remediis is wont to be said for your Proposition that that which is extinct and made void can no more oblige must be acknowledged as truth with its just limitation provided that those concerned in the Oath have no hand in the extinguishing of it for their own disobligation David was bound by Covenant unto Jonathan and his seed after him had he consented to the death of Mephibosheth the Son of Jonathan the matter of the Covenant had then been extinct and yet David had been guilty of the breach of it for your assumption that the matter of the Covenant as to the third Article is extinct it being impossible in nature to preserve the Kings life now it is cut off and the house of Lords now it is put down I shall not stand upon that maxime the King never dyes and so though the man be cut off yet the King remains and may be preserved if you please to look into the Preface of the
This evasion to eye the end and not look at accidentall forms as you call them will facilitate a way to any Oath and as easily disobliege rendring the Oath vain as soon as it is entered Thus it had been safe to have entered the Canon Oath prescribed by the Convocation in the year that this Parliament did commence for the establishment of the Hierarchy in Arch-bishops Bishops Deans Deans and Chapters Chancellours c. Seeing we might have entered into it how opposite soever our judgements were against it and then have avoided it explaining our selves that we swore to the end namely Church-Government order for publick edification without respect to external forms which is accidental which Government being in our judgment best setled in an Independant Congregational way as some think or in a Presbyterial Classical way as others this Oath thus interpreted is so far from engaging to Prelacy that it engageth against it so far from binding to a non consent of the change and alteration of it which was the letter of the Oath that it binds us to a vigorous endeavour of change and alteration thus also all Covenanters are disobliged from the second Article in the Covenant which is to the extirpation of Prelacy as there explained in case they believe as many do that Church-Government is best settled and the Churches edification best provided for in such a constitution and so Covenanting against it in the letter of the Covenant they Covenant for it in the end which you say is onely to be heeded Neither can any State this way find any security in any Oath prescribed all may enter and then evade with this shift of the intrinsecal good of the Common-wealth of the Nation and plead that the necessity of the publick good calls to the transgression and contradiction of it Thus Zedekiah might have freed himself from his Oath of fealty to Nebucadnezar it being as he might have pleaded against the intrinsecal good of that Nation that strangers should rule over them and they be made a Province to Babylon his Oath to serve him would have strongly engaged to a revolt from him And the Oath of the Elders of Israel to the Gibeonites thus understood had been null in the very taking of it evidently tending to the publick dammage of which the Commons of Israel were very sensible as appears in their exceptions taken against the Elders for entring into it Saul in the act which brought a three years famine upon Israel if this divinity might take place had done a work singularly commendable seeing it was his zeal to the house of Israel and Judah which alone moved him against the letter of his Covenant to the slaughter of those persons even the publick good so evidently damnified and endangered by their abode in the midst of the people Sauls slaughter of these Gibeonites had been as praise-worthy as Davids his successors slaughter of the Jebusites the publick good being Sauls end the Holy-Ghost bearing witness as well as Davids and what good the present State can reap by this Engagement your interpretation being once admitted I believe you know not which way to demonstrate the engagers may say they will be true and faithful to the Common-wealth as now established without King or house of Lords in their endeavour to re-establish a King and house of Lords which they may think most tends to the honour and peace of it You go on to answer a further Objection of your friends that in the third Article of the Covenant he is sworn to preserve the Rights and Priviledges of Parliament amongst which this is one that therein should be a house of Lords distinct from the Commons and this another that all the Members of the Commons should sit and vote freely for when he swore he meant a Parliament so constituted and no other In answer of which you first confess and then endeavour to avoid and if you did avoid as clearly as you do confess ingenuously you would give more satisfaction you confess that these are Priviledges that the intention of the Covenant was to preserve these and that now such intentions cannot be prosecuted which confession alone is enough to create a bigger scruple in your friend then the whole force of all which yet hath appeared in your answer can wipe off Your way to avoid is that your friend did what in him lay when time and place was according to his Calling to prevent these breaches and so cannot be accused of the infringement thereof for when a fatal necessity of State as you say in the course of divine justice with a power irresistible not onely to men of private but to all that were in publick vocations did bring about that change upon the Parliament no particular mens engagements were considerable This no doubt is a clear justification of your friend one mans sin pollutes not another when by opposing and in his place withstanding he keeps himself from guilty participation But in this excuse of him from breach of Covenant in the infringement of Parliament Priviledges you do plainly charge that irresistible power which you speak of with it He is therefore innocent because he did what in him lay in his place to prevent this change those then cannot be innocent that being interested and obliged in the same Covenant did yet with such a power as you mention work it Neither can that supposed fatal necessity of State which your answer speaks of acquit that power from breach of their Covenant in such confessed infringement of Parliament-Priviledges The reason of the Kingdom as else-where you call it saw no such necessity as your Paper takes for granted but with high resolutions opposed when the power was at their doors and themselvs in imminent danger both Houses judged the way that they were upon to be the way most conducing to the States safety and it was their business and no other powers in such case to give judgement And in case this necessity had been real and not imaginary or pretended yet it were no sufficient plea for such a transgression Joshua and the Elders of Israel understood no such State-divinity to break Covenant on such grounds much less on such pretences Much might have been said by them to have necessitated a breach with those Gibeonites with whom they had entred Covenant Gibeon was one of their Royal Cities and of danger to be possessed by such an enemy or to have him still in their howels to lay claim to it the Land was Israels by the gift of God and too narrow for themselves in such multitudes to inhabit there was no reason that the fat and the sweet should be devoured and eaten up by strangers The arguments of Egypt against Israel might well here have been taken up by Israel when there falls out any war they will joyn unto the enemies These Reasons or the like of equal or greater strength Saul doubtless saw when he sought to slay them not out of
Congregation if they had executed the sentence of death which God by Moses had denounced against them could not have been counted transgressors against God notwithstanding the Oath of Joshua and the Elders but then it would have been counted cruelty in the Congregation and breach of Oath in the Elders and a disrespect in the people towards the Engagement of their Princes and many other inconveniencies besides would have followed in reference to men and their interpretation of that action if no equitable temperament had been found in the business which upon a second Treaty the first being declared void was done with the consent of the Congregation and this second Contract God did ratifie as appeareth by the punishment of Saul for the breach of it Thus you have my sense of the Oath of Joshua to the Gibeonites which in many and main things is different from the present case only I have been thus large upon it to prevent your mistake lest you should think as I know some do the first contract de jure binding because confirmed by an Oath and thereupon infer by this president that an Oath is indissoluble although it be made to establish a thing materially unlawful and although it may fall out to oblige to something literally which is contrary to the main intent thereof Now I hold that if a thing once sworn become either materially or formerly unlawful or by change of circumstances impossible to be done that then the Oath is no more binding but ipso facto extinct In that matter which is said to pinch my friend and my answer to it you consider two things First because I say of those who have made this change in the Government that they will plead for themselves and because I take not upon me professedly to justifie their proceedings you conclude but most irrationally that I condemn them for Covenant-breakers but there is no equitable and ingenuous Reader who can construe any thing out of any words of mine which will yield such a conclusion for I profess it is wholly against my Conscience to do as you do viz. to make my self a Judge and out of my sphere to define matters this or that way concerning them but you seem willing to catch at any thing to discredit them which I see no warrant to do Secondly when I shew my Friend that the consequence which he made thus if I take saith he the Engagement then I shall be accessory-to the breach of Covenant which I apprehend others are guilty of was not good you are much displeased at me for it and intend to make not only an observation but an animadversion upon my discourse concerning that matter let me first represent briefly the substance of my reason which you seem not at all to take notice of and then I shall take notice of your animadversion I shew that his inference was not good Why no man by the Engagement can be accessory to other mens sins if they have any for makeing a change in the State from the direct and plain matter of the Engagement lookt upon in the letter thereof which binds us to nothing else but to procure the good of the Common-wealth as now it stands and this I say at all times is a duty to be done however it stands I say also that to intend and do this is agreeable to the intent of the Covenant from whence to my understanding is clearly inferred that the taking of the Engagement to this effect can be no breach of the Covenant which doth allow of this as a duty for if the plain duty of the Engagement is that which the main intent and design of the Covenant doth presuppose then the obligation to that can be no breach of this and consequently his inference is not good for it is clear that the Covenant obliging us to some particular duties of truth and faithfulness towards the Common-wealth as it was then established with a King and House of Lords cannot bind us up from promising and intending to be true and faithful to the whole Common-wealth as it is now established without a King and House of Lords The having or wanting of a King and House of Lords is but accidental to the main duty of being true and faithful to the Common-wealth as it is offered to us in the Engagement To this matter of reason you say nothing which yet was the main thing to be spoken to if you intended an animadversion But you tell me that my discourse doth necessarily imply a high charge of inconsiderateness in those that made and imposed the Engagement whereof none can believe them guilty and this you intend to make good by telling me further what they who made and imposed the Engagement knew as inconsistent with my sense of the Engagement wherein you follow your ordinary vein to make the worst construction you can of my sence and to presume to express their sense and intentions little to their commendation To dispute with you conjecturally what their thoughts were is no part of my duty it is sufficient for my aim to evince that the plain matter of the Engagement is a clear duty not disagreeable to the intent of the Covenant which you overthrowe not and therefore my answer to my friends scruple stands firm for which cause I think it needless to spend time upon the rectifying of your misconstruction of my sense of the Engagement as if it meant by the duty which I press only the intrinsecal good of the Common-wealth and had no respect at all to the extrinsecal good thereof and to the clause as it is now established Nor shall I insist to make an animadversion upon your misapplication of this misconceived sense of mine as if I took the Engagement in so large a signification as that any man might foment under the words thereof what intentions he would though never so destructive to the present Establishment these things I shall pass by because I suppose no candid Reader will so understand me but will easily perceive that you frame to your self fictious absurdities upon misconstrued notions The observation which you make upon my interpretation of the words without a King and House of Lords which I call an explication of the words now established immediatly going before and not an absolute abnegation of the things lookt upon barely as in themselves Whether the words without a King and House of Lords are an abnegation of them barely and as in themselves hath somewhat a better colour of reason then that which you mentioned before and although I make no such account of that acceptiō of these words as to stand confidently upon it that they cannot rationally bear any other interpretation for suppose they may by some consequence imply an abnegation of a King and Lords House how will that oppose my assertion or prejudice my reasoning with my Friend yet your arguing against the abnegation of them so as I have mentioned is not valid for first
Covenant there we professed That we had before our eyes the glory of God and the advancement of the Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ the Honour and Happiness of the Kings Maiesty and his Posterity As we dare not shut out the Glory of God the advancement of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ no more dare we wholly shut out the Kings posterity from the Covenant for the Lords though they sit not as Lords in Parliament yet still they are as Lords and in a capacity for actual admission You say they may have a title to this right yet be obliged even for preservation of that right to suspend it for a time and many I say are well satisfied that they for such end do suspend and yet dare not engage to an opposition of it You yet go one step higher and so you are at the highest in this particular being willing to perswade your friend that we are so far from being barred from the Engagement by the Covenant particularly the third Article of it that we are engaged to it if the third Article of the National Covenant concerning Priviledges of Parl. be yet in force in any degree you say then it binds us to preserve the Priviledges of Parliament that now are as well as those that then were To which I say I know no such distinction of Priviledges that are and were Parliament Priviledges being alwayes the same admitting of no such changes though we have no more Parliament actually existing then in Winter-time we have Roses yet as the properties of a Rose are still the same in all seasons so are the Priviledges of Parliament and if there be any remainder of Priviledges in actual being as you contend then the third Article that binds to preserve them binds us to perfect them A Physician cannot preserve unless he recover strength in his weak Patient You conclude this first general piece of yours with hopes that your friend will find no cause to scruple any further at it whereas others think that you have small cause of hopes that you have eased him of any of his Scruples In your second part you make it your business to satisfie your friend concerning the power whereby this present Engagement is tendered which he takes to be very doubtful as a power unlawfully usurped as also whether by this Engagement he shall make himself accessorie to this usurpation For the first Instead of clearing their title as just and lawful and acquitting it from usurpation you make it unlawful to inquire and determine concerning it holding out as you say the rule whereby you order your conversation supposing him ready as it seems in all things to make you his precedent in which way of yours how dissonant you are from your self and how far you have been found a transgressour of your own rule hath formerly been shewed yet wheresoever the guilt lyes the transgression by you is aggravated to that height as to be one the greatest Characters of the Spirit of Antichrist that exalts himself above all that is called God and wherein say you hath he done this more remarkably towards Magistrates who are called Gods among men then by exalting himself over them to become a judge of all their rights and pretentions to power in this world where I pray you take into your serious consideration whether this spirit that great Character of the spirit of Antichrist doth manifest it self in the man of sin in a careful enquirie and diligent search to finde out to what power it is that he justly owes subjection and is to bind himself by Oath of feoalty for faithfulness or rather in his peremptory determinations of the forfeiture of right in those that before were possessed of an undoubted title and disobliging Subjects from their obedience and to whom this Character of his doth most belong whether to your friend or some other I leave you sadly to consider Yet after a long debate of the inconsistency of the duty which God appointed subjects with the scrupulosity of this question you are pleased to allow your friend in the judgement of discretion as a member of this Common-wealth and concerned in the publick welfare thereof to look upon superiours to see how they pretend to stand that is by what apparent right and with what visible power they possess their place Which liberty of judgment you yet allow with this reservation that he suffer not his conscience to follow the dictates of it for so he is bound up in that which follows which yet you call the bounds of Christian liberty and rationality Sure to me blind obedience is to be preferred before such use of light that when I believe I see my way I have no allowance to walk in it You help us by the way with some hints how we may judge who is our Superiour Such a Superiour I suppose you mean whom we must engage to serve with faithfulness and this we may judge say you by the dictates of sense reason and conscience Sense will shew him who is actually in possession of all power and places of Government over him and by this he will perceive under whom he doth stand Reason will shew what he who is over him pretends unto whether yea or no his pretences are backed with power to maintain his right against all advarsaries therein and whether yea or no the use of that power be limitted by Law or left wholly to his own will without Law and conscience will shew that he to whom God hath committed the plenary administration of publick affairs with unconfrontable power is Gods Vicegerent over the society of those to whom his administration doth extend it self either by vertue of a contract which makes a Law or by vertue of a conquest which is bound to no Law but the will of the Conquerour As these lead your friend as you suppose whither you would have him led so they would have also led Israel in their respective junctures of time to Cushan-Rushathim to Eglon to Jabin to the Princes chief powers of Midian to Ammon Moab and the Philistines Israel had been thus bound to so many successive and opposite Engagements and bound up in bondage from seeking deliverance No endeavour must ever be improved for any recovery of lost right if this doctrine in favour of all that are in possession and backed with power shall take place All whosoever they be in case they can get into Soveraignty may keep in and all must assist in their holding of it none may attempt any way or make any plea for the most just recovery of their rights and liberties so that either Israel sinned as oft as they were delivered or else these dictates of sense reason and conscience going this way which you point out may lead your friend into mistakes and involve him in fears Your distinction of administrations by vertue of a contract which makes a Law or by vertue of a conquest which is bound to no