was very unjustly and perfidiously used by Saul he had kept himself on a pure defensive and Saul's being frenetick and possessed with an evil spirit are great justifications of David's little Army or rather Guard and his being a Man according to Gods heart ought to possess all with that esteem for him as not easily to find fault with him or with any of his actions yet his Army being made up of men distressed in debt and discontented is a shrewd Indication that the Cause was not over-good when he had such a following Besides his going to live at Gath with the Uncircumcised his cutting off the Amalekites and pretending to Achish that he had destroyed his own People by an unjustifiable deceit and finally his going out with the Armies of the Philistines and professing a great desire to fight against the Enemies of Achish who were no other but Saul his natural liege-Lord and the Armies of Israel wherein he either acted a very unsincere part or did really resolve to have engaged against them are things so manifestly contrary to the Laws of God that they give a strong presumption that the whole business of his taking Armes was contrary to Law and Religion But I shall not enter further into the Dispute and so leave it inclining rather to believe that David's Conscience did accuse him of having failed in his Duty to Saul But after all this our Case is much more justly deplorable who did not lose our King by the prevailing power of a hostile Invasion but by the unnatural hands of his own Subjects who were both by the tye of Subjection by their Oaths of Allegiance which many of them had sworn and by their constant professions of fighting for the King and in defence of his Authority as they gave it out for training in the multitude by so deceitful a bait tyed to the preservation of his person and yet did wash their hands in his blood and by their pretending Religion and Justice in a Fact so contrary to both did as much as in them lay bring the foulest imputations on both that could be How did this open the mouths of the Adversaries of our Religion whom we had justly charged for their seditious and treasonable Doctrines to insult over us but without all cause for as all the Reasons pretended were but upon the matter the same with those their Doctors have published allowing but a small change so those of our true and soundly reformed Church did abominate so foul a Crime with all possible horrour and as was most just did both in publick and private declare against it and with a generous and truly Christian constancy endured Sequestrations Imprisonments and every thing which that insulting Power put them to rather than comply with so vile an Action and its vile Actors But to all this it may be said Let these mourn who were of accession to it that concerns not us To which I must answer That such publick Crimes leave a guilt upon the whole Nation which therefore must be expiated with a publick universal Repentance And if in the Law of Moses God declared that Blood was a crying sin which called to Heaven for vengeance and therefore when a Murder was discovered and the Murderer was not known there was to be a Sacrifice for the whole People to expiate the guilt how much more in a Crime attended with so many foul and black Circumstances ought we by earnest Prayers to study to avert these Judgments which we may but too justly apprehend And to this let me add that there are not so many innocent as those perhaps imagine for as David here did it is probable charge himself for arming against the Lords Anointed so what reason have these who engaged in Opposition and Arms to our Royal Martyr to charge and judg themselves that they be not judged of the Lord who not being satisfied with those great and large Concessions he freely and willingly offered did pursue his Person and Life in the Field after which it was no wonder others learned to pursue him to the Scaffold May not the one be said to have killed the King that robbed him of his Revenue Power and Authority and every thing was necessary for the maintenance of the Royal Dignity whereas the other did but murther Charles after he was spoiled of his Royal Power and the Government taken out of his hands Though in a formal Pageantry Writs were issued in his Name And thus we find the grounds of our mourning grow larger and take or rather call in more mourners But in fine by another advance a great many more will be comprized within this Duty even all those who did not with the most vigorous opposition was possible prevent this barbarous Regicide which made a foreign Historian giving account of it say it was a wonder how Englishmen could look on and behold so barbarous and unexampled a Crime Where were the hearts and hands of the brave English whose loyal and noble valour appearing on this occasion had been a Subject to be celebrated by all the highest and most grateful Remembrances Posterity could dedicate to so glorious an action Did a pusillanimous fear freez their courage when their Head was thus struck at Did the care of their Fortunes prevail when they could expect no longer to live secure in the Possession of any of their Rights when all was in this one Act unhinged Did the atrocity of the Fact astonish them so that they were not recovered out of this amazing surprize till it was too late Or did the suddenness of the Crime prevent their diligence Or were they so charitable to their Country-men as not to think any could be capable of committing this Crime till they were convinced of it by an unanswerable Argument yet all these palliations or excuses will not serve turn they should have put all to hazard when they saw the Case so desperate and all like to be lost And thus it appears many are concerned to mourn on this Occasion who perhaps think themselves far from any guilt Finally there be yet others concerned who may be do not so much as imagin how it may come to their door and these be the present Generation who either were not born then or at least of that age that nothing could be expected from them but even they must consider that God visits the sins of the Fathers upon the Children and though no Child is guilty of his Fathers fact unless he concurred in it or did afterwards approve it yet many times the Judgments of God in Temporal things do overtake them for their Fathers faults which is no more unjust than for the Law to deny the Child any of the Privileges of Subjects for the Fathers faults From all this then it will appear how much more reason we have to mourn than the People of Israel had on this occasion who have to the scorn and insultings of our Enemies been one way or other so
THE Royal Martyr AND THE DUTIFUL SUBJECT IN TWO SERMONS By G. BVRNET LONDON Printed for R. Royston Bookseller to his most Sacred Majesty at the Angel in Amen-Corner 1675. THE Royal Martyr Lamented in a SERMON Preached at the SAVOY ON King CHARLES the MARTYR'S Day 1674 5. By Gilbert Burnet LONDON Printed for R. Royston Bookseller to his most Sacred Majesty at the Angel in Amen-Corner 1675. THE Royal Martyr Lamented in a SERMON Preached at the SAVOY on King CHARLES the MARTYR'S Day 1674 5 2 SAM 2. 12. And they mourned and wept and fasted until even for Saul and for Ionathan his Son and for the people of the Lord and for the house of Israel because they were fallen by the sword THere is no Maxim so general or so constant but that it may allow of some exception and therefore though the Wiseman after all his experience his most searching Observations and the great prospect he had of the order of second Causes and the temper of mens minds does pronounce there was nothing new under the Sun Yet this day and that never-enough-lamented Villany we now remember must put in for an exception from that rule which did indeed exceed all the common measures of wickedness so far that as there is nothing in any History like it so when the World is some Ages older if such an action be not an Omen that its end is near this will scarce gain credit but be looked on as the Tragical contrivance of some deeply-Melancholy wit Some Princes have been by their prevailing Conquerors put to death others have been assassinated by their own Subjects But to see a Soveraign Prince brought to the Pageantry of a Mock-trial and by a Court made up of his own Subjects on a pretence of Justice sentenced to lose his life not in the corner of some private Prison but in the chief City of his Dominions and in the most eminent place of it is an evidence of the degeneracy of the age we live in that would dare to act what in former ages none would have thought on What Phocas did to the Emperour Mauritius is the nearest parallel to it which History offers but comes far short of matching it for neither were the Rights of the Roman Emperours derived by so clear a Title nor so long a Descent as our Royal Martyr's were and so no wonder if those who rose by the sword did also fall by it Nor did Phocas so far affront Justice as to pretend to put his Master to a Trial and Mauritius had by so base an avarice exposed so many of his Soldiers to be cut off and used the rest so ill that no wonder they in their fury against him were guilty of so foul a Conspiracy But how much more exquisitly wicked was the crime we now remember when a Prince whose Rights were devolved on him by so many Titles the British the Saxon the Norman and the Scotish Races having all united in him who had also in his whole Government shewed that deep sense of Religion with a most tender regard to the good and quiet of his Subjects was against all the rules of Justice and yet upon some colours of it brought to so publick a death But as Phocas as basely treacherous and wicked as he was was most ignominiously and shamefully courted by Pope Gregory the Great who writes to him in a stile of so mean and servile flattery that it justly stains all the other good Qualities of that Prelate And his Successor Boniface did yet more meanly comply and got himself declared by him the Universal Bishop of the Church From which we may judg of that See by vvhat arts they are resolved to rise and to make use of the worst of men if they can but serve their turn So in this Regicide Religion was vouched and God appealed to And indeed it was no wonder that these treated his Vicegerents so coarsely that made so bold with God himself as to pretend he was their Patron and warrant in what they did And perhaps if these actors had as fully complied with him that pretend to be Christs Vicegerent as Phocas did he had as plainly justified their actions as Gregory and Boniface did which might have been far rather looked for now after all the opinions some of their Emissaries have broached of murdering Princes then at that time when their corruptions were but a-forming and their ambition was beginning to fly at Supremacy and Universal Jurisdiction But is all our work only to reflect with some horrour on this infamous action have we no other concern in this Day The Collect tells us That the sins of this Nation have been the cause which hath brought this heavy judgment upon us We also pray That this our land be freed from the vengeance of his blood And indeed had not our sins been great so that the cup of our iniquities was quite full it could not have run over in a tract of a long Civil War which brought along with it so much bloodshed rapine and contempt of all things sacred and humane and all was compleated in this crime beyond which wickedness could go no higher Those who were so nobly and generously loyal as to serve his late Majesty of most blessed memory do with a just glorying rejoyce in the reflection on their past Services yet let me crave leave to offer even to them how far they ought to be concerned in mourning and fasting on this Occasion It was our contempt of God and Religion our being purely formal in our Religious Worship our forgetting to acknowledg God the author of our Peace and Plenty our abusing these by excess and riot that brought on those sad and unheard-of Judgments Among the much-abused words of the late time were Incendiary and Incendiarism but those were the great Incendiaries that kindled Gods wrath and it is from such that we may justly fear the like or rather severer Judgments if our sins now be greater than they were then Therefore the lamenting and repenting of these sins by which what is past may be forgiven and what may be feared be prevented being the proper work of this day I come now to consider my Text and what reflections may be drawn from it though in a case so much without a precedent as this is it is not to be imagined that a Text wholly pertinent can be pickt up But we shall make the most of this we can and consider three things in it First This King whose Death was so much lamented and in what particulars he was a Parallel and in what not of our Royal Martyr Secondly What reason David with the rest of the people of Israel had to mourn for his Death and how far that agrees with our case Thirdly How they expressed their sorrow and how far their example calls on us to imitate it For the first it was Saul the Son of Kish whom God had by the hands of Samuel designed to be King of
Israel for whom David had that respect that even when he was most unjustly hunting his life yet he would not stretch forth his hand against him seeing he was the anointed of the Lord. And in this our Royal Martyr was his Parallel since he was by a tract of an undisputed Succession that which Saul was by immediate Revelation the Lord 's Anointed And indeed he looked on himself as having his Authority from God as will appear from the following instances which before I mention I must preface with this that I will not enlarge on the whole field of that Murdered Princes Vertues for that were both endless they being so many and needless they being so well known But having by a great happiness seen not a few I may add hundreds of Papers under his own Royal Pen I shall only now offer divers passages drawn out of those that vvill give some Characters of his great Soul And as in the Indies the Art of Painting is only the putting together little Plumes of several colours in such method as to give a representation of vvhat they design vvhich though it be but coarse vvork yet the Colours are lively so I can promise no exact vvork but true and lively Colours I vvill offer being those mixed by our Martyr himself though perhaps unskilfully placed by me And as the Popish Legend tells of tvvo Pictures of our Saviour done by himself one particularly vvhich he left in Veronica's Handkercher vvhen he vviped his face vvith it so from the svveat of our Royal Martyr some Lineaments of his Face shall be offered And to return to make good the character of our late Soveraign he ovvned all his Authority to be derived from God and therefore in one of his Papers I find these vvords vvhen he is acknovvledging the great blessings and eminent protection he had received from the hands of the Almighty he adds To whom we know we must yield a dear account for any breach of trust or failing of our duty towards our People And in another Paper reflecting on the Demand concerning the Militia he gives the reason vvhy he could not consent to it as it vvas proposed Because thereby he wholly divested himself as he conceived of the power of the Sword intrusted to him by God and the Laws of the Land for the Protection and Government of his People thereby at once disinheriting his Posterity of that Right and Prerogative of the Crown which is absolutely necessary for the Kingly-Office and so weakening Monarchy in this Kingdom that little more than the name and shadow of it will remain In another Paper he expresses his zeal to preserve the Lavvs as became Gods Vicegerent in these vvords If we wanted the Conscience we cannot the discretion to tempt God in au unjust quarrel the Laws of our Kingdom shall be sacred to us we shall refuse no hazard to defend them but sure we shall run none to invade them And that Paper vvhich is very long he thus concludes God so deal with us and our Posterity as we shall inviolably observe the Laws and Statutes of our Kingdom and the Protestations we have so often made for the Defence of the true Reformed Protestant Religion the Laws of the Land and the just Priviledges and Freedom of Parliaments From these Evidences it will appear what severe thoughts he had of the Obligations he lay under to Almighty God from whom he had his power and to whom he knew he was to give account of his Administration 2. We find it is said of Saul that after he was anointed God gave him another heart and that meeting a company of Prophets he prophesied to the astonishment of those that beheld him How much of this Divine Spirit rested on our Blessed Martyr all those Meditations which were his Exercises in his retirement do abundantly declare If by Saul's prophesying be meant the foretelling what was to come I meet somewhat very near it from his Royal Pen Anno 1642 in a Letter wherein he writes these words I have set up my rest on the justice of my cause being resolved that no extremity or misfortune shall make me yield for I will either be a Glorious King or a Patient Martyr and as yet not being the first and at present not apprehending the other I think it now no unfit time to express this my resolution to you A very overly observer will see much in these words even without a Commentaty Or if by prophesying be to be understood an elevated way of trusting in God and adoring him then I shall add what I find under the same Sacred Pen when he was at Newcastle in a Letter to one of his Subjects Know that I rather expect the worse than the better event of things being resolved by the Grace of God and without the least repining at him to suffer any thing that injury can put upon me rather than sin against my Conscience And in another Letter Now for the sad consequences I know no so good antidote as a good Conscience which by the Grace of God I will preserve whatever else happen to me A third Character we have of Saul is that he was very careful to protect his Subjects when in danger as appears both by his haste to relieve Iabish-Gilead when sore pur to it by the King of Ammon and by his engaging against the Philistines with so much Personal danger to himself and his Family Now what our Martyrs zeal for protecting his Subjects was I speak not of his care in protecting the oppressed Protestants in Germany and France which I leave to the Historians I shall make appear from the following Evidences What vast Concessions he made to his native Kingdom every body knows and therefore he concluded a Paper he signed on his Pacification with them in these words And as we have just reason to believe that to our peaceable and well-affected Subjects this will be satisfactory so we take God and the World to witness that whatever Calamities shall ensue by our necessitated suppressing of the Insolencies of such as shall continue in their disobedient Courses is not occasioned by us but by their own procurement And in a Letter to one of his Commissioners there he writes But if the madness of our Subjects be such that they will not rest satisfied with what we have given you power to condescend to which notwithstanding all their Insolencies we still allow you to make good to them We take God to witness that what misery soever fall to that Country hereafter it is no fault of ours but their own procurement And in another Letter at that same time We take God to witness we have permitted them to do many things for establishing of Peace contrary to our own judgment How far he complied with their most unreasonable desires to the very great diminutions of his Royal Authority is well enough known When he saw them inclined to engage in the Civil War in this Kingdom he
the foul colours of guilt Another Method by which Conscience binds on us the sense of Duty and Subjection to those set over us is the Obligation to pray for them according to that great Rubrick of Prayer S. Paul gives I exhort therefore that first of all supplications prayers intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men for Kings and all that are in authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty which whosoever is a Christian must needs observe This then must every day awaken and keep alive the sense of Duty to those over us so that if we have been prevailed on to undutiful courses when we retire to our Devotions this must certainly open our eyes to discern and repent of our faults for if we pray and act contradictions then we either mock God by praying for that we do not desire and which we study to destroy or we act most impiously in opposition to that we judge our selves bound to pray for And every man whose Conscience is not strangely asleep will soon discover this double dealing in himself if he pray against what he acts and be acting against his Prayers Thus it appears that Conscience brings the sense of our Duty to the Sovereign Power nearer us and to closer conflicts with our daily thoughts and forceth upon us a frequent review of them Nor is this a blind and brutish Subjection to which Conscience ties us but it binds it on us with the fullest evidence of Reason 3. And this is the third Particular to which my Design now leads me wherein I am to lay-out those Arguments that Conscience and the Doctrines of Christianity offer for this Subjection we must pay the Magistrates I shall not meddle with those Reasons that may be drawn from the Rules of Humane Policy the Nature of Societies the Origine and Ends of Magistracy but shall confine my Discourse to those which natural and revealed Religion do offer for obliging us to Subjection to the higher Powers 1. And first of all we are taught that these Powers are of God that they are the Ordinance of God his Deputies Ministers and Vicegerents That have the Sword of Iustice put in their hands by him for the punishment of evil doers and the encouragement of those that do well and he himself hath said They are Gods a strain of speech that if Divine Authority did not warrant it would pass for impudent and blasphemous Flattery Though then the Powers that are over us be clothed with our Natures and are subject to like Passions and Infirmities with us and live and die like men yet for all that we must look on them as Sacred and Divine by their Character The severe Respect that Conscience enjoyns us to pay Authority appears in the Instance of David who though pursued by Saul with all the violence and injustice of Oppression and Cruelty yet when he had him in his hands and offered him the small affront of cutting off the hem of his garment his heart smote him for it This was a Character of a man according to God's heart Deputed Powers are only accountable to those from whom they derive their Authority so the higher Powers being deputed by God must indeed render to him a severe account of their administration but not to others we are therefore to obey them for the Lords sake and to be subject to them for Conscience-sake 2. Another consideration that obligeth to Subjection which Religion offers is the steady and firm belief of the Government of the World by that Unerring Providence that wisely maintains that great Fabrick and vast Frame of Beings which it self raised out of nothing We are apt upon the first appearances of things to judge rashly even before we have seen all the sides and secrets of humane Counsels which would often alter our thoughts very much from our over-forward Judgments But the secrets of the Divine Counsels lie hid from all the living and yet the long experience which the Oeconomy of the World offers us may justly convince us that we are not to pass sentence hastily and that often those things which did look most cloudy and threatned some dismal Consequences did by the secret Governings of that Supreme Mind produce Effects very different from those that not without great probabilities were feared This therefore must clear the Melancholy of our discouraged and dejected minds and dissipate those thick mists of fears and jealousies which might otherwise damp and dishearten us He that gave the Laws to Day and Night and can reverse these when he will that taught the whole Frame of Nature those Motions they observe and yet can force the Sun both to stop and to give ground when he will and can make the Sea to rise up in hills is able to extricate the darkest and most involved Ravelings of Second Causes We are therefore secure knowing That all things work together for good to them that love God believing that his Providence watcheth over his Church and all that trust in him so that not a hair of their head falls to the ground without his care and that he hath given his Angels charge to encamp about and Minister to the heirs of Salvation and this may well supersede our fears and throw off the anxieties of all perplexing thoughts and compose our minds to an humble Subjection to those God hath brought us under I know some may think I plead here the stupidity of Fate which must needs dishearten and slacken all good Intentions and Designs but we are to consider the Order God hath fixed in the Government of the World and the particular station wherein he hath placed and posted us out of which we are not to stir on the pretence of heroical excitations which when examined will be found the heats of a warm Fancy or the swellings of an elevated Mind that distrust the Providence of God as if he were not able to compass his designs and therefore he must stretch out his hands to help him labouring under too great a load which is indeed the language of all those who pretending zeal for his Service do step out of their station and meddle with matters that are too high for them The fate of Uzzah should have taught us both more Wisdom and Religion who seeing the Ark of God shake and considering how dismal an Omen the overturning that sacred Repository had been and how disgraceful and impious it would be to see those precious Symbols of the Divine Presence laid in the dust and not remembring that none but the Family of Aaron might touch those holy Mysteries put out his hand to hold them but was struck dead on the place We are rather to look on and adore the hidden Traces and Methods of the Divine Counsels and patiently to wait for that Issue of things which notwithstanding of all the disorders may at any time appear in humane affairs