him and that not onely in high and criminal matters concerning his Crown and Dignity the life and honor of his subjects the original due object of the power of the Court now called the Common-Bench or of his Treasure the object of the Court now called the Exchequer or the Court concerning matters of the Income Profit Revenew or Treasure of the King But also of the differences betwixt party and party the object or subject matter call it what you will of the power of the Court now called the Common-Pleas which for ought I can finde authentique to convince me had all one officers which were not many all one Process which was a special Writ for appearance and a trial before the King or such as he appointed in his Court for the King was to be always present and there was also help in case of Equity by the Kings Chancellor in matters of the Summum jus of Law according to the common Lawyers phrase or severest opinion according to the rule of pure conscience that is do as you would be done unto or like a good Christian according to the Episcopal and Church-mens equity in the times of their Regiments now this foundation laid which offered benefit as well as Law to the people who had hereby remedy against the greatest oppressions of great men or Judges in the Courts of the Sheriffs or Lords Courts or Hundred Courts which all at first submitted by way of gradation to each other all to the Kings and so the Courts in Cities and Boroughs and other places incorporate as also Franchises and Liberties which were the evident marks of conquest and granted larger or stricter as the King pleased Now the King plots his own setlement first as being a Norman that is French he wills all our pleadings to be in French for he being as chief Father of the Commonwealth to see to all ought to understand it Next he ought especially for offences criminal or trespasses of force voluntary to have the punishment of the offender as a disturber of the peace of the Commonwealth as well as the particular party to have reparations and therefore he brings in together with Appeals the ancient usage of England which was the challenging of a man to have committed an offence as of treason murder rape felony and the like a kinde of suit in the name of the King called an Indictment and truly all the reason of the introduction that I can see was to advance the end of the Kings gain for here the King hath all the gain all the goods of the party at first from the day of the offence done truth now he hath it in appeal but it was not so for this the old true tale of Kents freedom will be known Evidence for they opposed this part of prerogative and then the father to the bough that is to be hanged upon the arm of a tree the usual and ready way then of dispatch and the son to the plough that is to the improving the inheritance left Concerning the common Law Prerogatives of a Prince or what the Laws of England anciently as by the right and light of natural knowledge granted to their Kings a certainty of land of the Crown Mines of gold and silver Royal fishes lands deserted of the sea and of them who died without heir as the prime person in whom the honor and glory of the people rested I omit to speak at present Truly that this William used Parliaments I finde not though others do for it is evident to the world and he that is not blinde may see he to quiet the people pretended Title but his intention was to make it his absolute conquest he therefore calls Councels where his Lords were present they do what his Will is and there is an end So that grant it a Parliament or National Assembly of the Estates yet it was but to grant or enact what the King desired his Normands had liberty to speak their will what English man durst oppose but the acts of his successor fully demonstrate this who destroys thirty towns and Churches to make a Forrest the Monks of the time durst speak but who else So that now it was evident what Title he claimed by pretend he what he will for the King had still his pretences truly the English were now in great streights they saw their Laws utterly abolished and their lives and estates to lye at the Kings mercy there was no remedy to complain who durst The Bishops yet notwithstanding something interpose but their mouthes are stopped by a command from his Holiness for people must not rise against their Prince but at his will and fill his coffer and you have his Crosier at command for Rome was now at the full height of wickedness but God taking away this sacrilegious Prince he soon opens a way of comfort to the almost cowed English giving them some means of revenge by a royall contest or a quarrel for the Crown this and matters of like nature setled there now ariseth a greater quarrel which hath continued even to these times though with divers parties and upon several grounds and that was betwixt the Lords and the King it seems God would have the English free and though he chastised them he would not forsake them for he makes their enemies the chief assertors of their ancient Liberties for these Lords finde now that they had not the same free priviledges their Ancestors had and claimed their births had now made them English of sharers in principallity they were made meer though greater Subjects The King Lawyers belike had found some flawes in their patents it may be they had done some wrong to their Tenants and were complayned of and the King to anger them that they might forfeit their too large liberties did the poor men right the greatest vexation and Soul or heart-grief a proud great man can have but be the ground what it will many of which are evident and arising as before is said The contest grew high there were things called Parliaments assembled to the end to determine these differences and in them divers good Laws tending to reconciliation were enacted but what was the effect of force ceased in execution when the cause was removed and the Lords armed against their Princes and truly their Tenants took part as the rest did they feared the saving of their faith to their King would prove the forfeiture of their lands to their Lords and now what was intended for the Kings safeguard was his ruine the most immediate Lord carrying all the power the superior Lords all along were strangers So vain a thing is the most prudent settlement of men if Divine providence affords not success But this still remains a sure foundation good Laws are ever the same though the badness of men may enervate and weaken them yea oft times invert them but still as differences grew higher and higher Parliaments were the means of quieting of all which doth
remedy against an evil present and emergent by act it is the knaves work to converse with a quick brained little conscienced Lawyer and crafty Attorney to find a loose from the Law which is too oft allowed and the Judge excuses himself by the letter of the Law Therefore I shall now generally declare that the whole frame and foundation of Englands Government was loosed rotten and vanished which I thus manifest Look at the Lands and its evident that had Noy lived or but the Parliament been deferred the most considerable part of the Kingdom had been Forrest upon the claiming of which what quick work was made in some places few but know that which had not been Forrest to the King would all have been secured to him by Office as holding in Chief or forfeiture otherwayes either upon the chief Lords or some inferiours want of Service And as the King had dealt with his great men so would they with their Tenants whether Knights or Soccagers but especially the Copy-holders should have suffered without remedy for it was grown to this that as no Jury durst find against the King if a strong contest were that is if it were a matter worth the striving for and supposed to be or might be a flowre of the Crown so neither durst any find against the Lord nor indeed well could they tell how to do right either to the Lord or between the particular Tenants for the Copies were generally brought to this course only to name so many c. of the Tenants R. or B. c. the Rent they denyed to set down so that the Bailiff cheated the Tenant but especially the honest or ignorant one at his pleasure and exercised more power rather Tyranny then a Prince for the Fines they generally drew them to the meer Will of the Lord and in that were absolutely illegall and although it was pretended the Chancery was the moderator that was but to help the Lord for not one man of a thousand would contest if rich seldom but he was a Lord for every Peasant was now become the purchaser of a Mannor if poor the controversie ruined him Now let us a little here look at the nature of Copyholds Which I conceive came in thus at the Norman Conquest upon the setling of his Commonwealth as he had laid his frame that is that all held of the Crown mediatly or immediatly that is they by greater services as Dukes Earls c. and the inferiour Lords of them so all these Lords had their inferiors under them that as they served the King in his Wars to preserve the publique so these might serve the necessities of the ptivate Families as Soccagers to plow sow and cut down c. and Villains to carry muck and do all drudgery or meaner work and were both but a kind of servants the one yet more free as having his Land only paying his Rent Corn c. the other absolutely bound over whom he had at first power of life and goods and all both yet of which as the Nation grew civilized and religious got more liberty and priviledge so that they became absolutely free and their present conditions are so diverse from past though the names remain that a man will hardly believe such things were Yet from these divers harsh villanous Customes and usages are still continued all or any and every of which are unreasonable and unwarrantable for the villain or bondman his Land was his Lords as was himself his wife and children After it was given him under a Service but he could not give nor grant then Services were turned into Rents yet he had no power to dispose all was in the Lord after the policy of the Kingdom being depraved and these villains being grown too numerous taking advantage of civill dissention among the Masters the Servants gained the priviledge of inheritance but not to pass it by free Deeds or grant or sell but to descend at last they came to sell and usage only regulated all this and then were used as free Lands all but the way of passing it which matter of form is most highly penall even to forfeiture and indeed these forfeitures are the sole end of most Lords Now these evils of forfeitures and the like though for small causes are grown exceeding penall mostly from the difficulties and delays of Law but enough from the rigorous unjust and cruel principles of the so called Lords of Mannors which now each greedy griping rich man is purchaser of and the value according to usage set accordingly Now these evils arise thus First all the Jury who enquire of the forfeiture are the Lords Tenants and those that are pannelled are not able or rich or commonly of any great reach and the Steward most commonly an Attorney he is the meer pentioner of the so called Lord and his improvement of his fortune is to improve his Lords Rents or estate and that is by searching out old antiquated Evidences for original Agreements Compositions or the first or primitive Custome and then pinch a poor weak Tenant upon that Custome and he submitting another and so on till all or the most be buxome and who is able to withstand If it be quaeried why some rich man opposes not it is answered few rich men but are either Countrimen and then either are or expect to be Lords if Citizens their gaines are great and are not desirous to spend their estates to inrich Lawyers and thus Lords and Clowns got into things called still Mannors broken divided and shattered no way retaining their original constitution through the baseness of Kings Judges and Officers and the interest of Parliament men few of them whose cause it is not the subject especially the poor is kept in a base unworthy vassalage under the constitution of the Norman Conquest and free men engaged by the tenure of lands and by prevailing and unregarded Custome to a slavery which was abhorred in the King yet usurped by fellow subjects upon each other and that with Prerogatives higher then in any the Princes Courts for the common priviledges of extraction and profession are no way pleadable against their Fines and Amerciaments so that I have known a professing Esquire take of a Christian a Knight and Barronet his neighbour fourty shillings for Amerciaments for not attending at his Court which was paid by him onely with this protest by his Steward that that fourty shillings should get his Master twenty pound per annum and where they may call a Court as oft as they list and too often as some widdows so called Ladys of Mannors holding it but for Life do it must be as burdensome as unjust Besides there is nothing certain in any Court either for the Ground or the Rent or the Fine or the Custome but the legal pated Steward can to wreack his spleen finde a flaw in and laying his land onely by so much in such a place if any ground be wood or rich that is the Lords
malice of the enemy subtil to deceive they generally drive at two things Community and Parity the one against the Tyranny and Oppression c. of great men in power the other against the covetize selfishness luxuriousness c. of rich men Now these things O you great and rich men do most assuredly as you rightly conceive tend to mutiny to nourish feuds and envyings betwixt the multitude and you All that I say is remedy not these evils by worse you know what Beast you have to deal with it s of such stomack and force that Prudence must have the honour of the management if you subdue know its but by a part of the Beast you must admit the Allusion and what in the winding up hath been the issue of these things the Pretorians at Rome the Mamelucks in Aegypt and others now testifie Consider therefore what you have to do God hath set all these as signs and tokens to you if you fall the evil is of your selves your improvidencies lightnesses and instabilities your odd and incertain followings of providences evidence your fears those your doubts those the error of your principle all things work contrary O that every interest now could lay it self down at the foot of Jesus and say I part with all for thee and then take up all it hath as from him and of his gift and be ready to part with it to morrow Should we then live as we do now How many would then give to the poor to day lest they should have nothing to give to morrow How would they then not delight in luxurious Apparel Housholdstuff c. wherein multititudes of riches lie dead and buried lest another should enjoy them to morrow I know this to some melancholy spirit may give occasion to think I aim at or give too great footing to Community and Parity for they should in such contemplations cast away all but I speak to the setled Christian who knows its lawful to use the world but all in due order and as its lawful to recreate but spend more time in prayer then in playing so it s lawful to rejoyce in and to have that we may rejoyce in outward blessings but glorifie God with a greater portion to the poor then thy superfluity amounts to I intend a due and just reproof to excess and prodigality Keep not all horses and doggs some poor not all in cloathing thy self some to the naked and thy self with moderacy and yet if thou dost these things thou meritest not Heaven but thou avoidest the scandal of men Now that this is not done is the fault of the Magistrate O Watchman its thy duty but thou settest up for favor and by-respect lazie idle and ignorant and some evil Watchmen therefore the work is not done and that thou mighest trust these thou madest thy Law to extend to each matter or so intendest and this was for two reasons one that fools or any might not err for the Letter was their guide the other that they that would abuse their power might not and by this not having each week a new Law as occasion grew Justice and Government is lost for act by these particular Laws who can in one hundred thousand things justly requiring remedy The poor are thus sold for less then a pair of old shooes If you would give a remedy to this authorize some few or many who shall examine and determine all actions by or against any person not worth an hundred pounds for no Tryal can be under twelve pound and the eighth part of all a man hath indeed of the thing in controversie to be spent in trial of whether my horse be mine or thine my knife nay the sheath of that knife is a woful thing in a Christian Commonwealth I shall not declaim against it but onely say its contrary to the worst of Heathens proceedings I intend not to make the wound wider while I desire healing the difficulty seems to be onely to perswade men this is a wound I have been as lenytive and gentle in opening this Orifice of the ulcer of the Law and its practise as may be I acknowledge it my Profession not my Practise and I account this according to the Head Rule of Englands Law rather the Practise then the Principle the error of Custom and interest from men then of the Law I hold forth nothing for Law which is treated of in the Laws of England but according to the general rule of that Law holding nothing contrary to the Law of God or just reason to be its Rule all which I am ready to all or any particular to manifest when ever called thereto And now I come to speak one word to the people You are of many sorts and many interests you have but as I find the worst and wickedest as educated professing Christianity I advise you first to labour as such to approve your selves you have its probable been most of you Baptized the Covenant is indelible after once you have I say not been Rebaptized or Baptized with the Spirit but owned that Covenant in the name Baptism you are a debtor to the Lord Christ of all the duties of the Gospel This then O poor Christian goes far it s the Magistrates duty to rule well so 't is thine to obey well 'T is the same with you as with the people in Christs time when the great and powerful men speak the Law and hold forth duties of Righteousness do as they say however they do It s the Magistrates duty to hear and receive in a right way just things from you and by the implicite Reason of power onely to vote them unreasonable and scandalous is unsatisfactory but if they do so remain you in your integrity break not out against them untill the Lord shall open a way he will do it in his due time go on and satisfie thy soul in thy own righteousness I say so Comfort thy self in the mercy of thy God who hath given thee to see others failings and though thy condition be poor and needy yet break not out This I say of this great scarcity which hath faln upon us wherein I believe many have perished yet the evil hath light on the rude stubborn disordered poor against whom mens bowels have been shut up walk therefore according to the condition wherein God hath set you exalt not your selves against great men no nor against rich men they will be too mighty for you poor and proud is a high judgement it brings misery with rejoycing I know many of your souls die within you when you see the wicked full their eyes stare with fat you wait upon God and your children famish yea many hence think God regardless so unjust at first at last deny him Fools know 't is his Wisdom he punishes or tries or both he punishes the body in the want of temporals for breaches of duty to thy brother neglecting the creature or abusing it and the Creator in it He tries
thee for his glory was he unjust in his dealings with Job then note that poverty is no shame Christ hath sanctified it no nor death no not on the Cross if as Christ the Captain of our salvation thou beest made perfect through sufferings not so if thou blasphemest c. And now one word to the Teachers of the people Take heed to your selves lest while you preach to others your selves become not castawayes Some of you call your selves still the Clergy I pray evidence by what special right or title next you claim special Ordination pray agree to what end we are jealous of a many among you that would ingross all knowledge of the Gospel by as gainful a Trade as others did and do the Law Briefly thus If you have an infallible Word shew it if but a humane and that that be attainable meerly or more especially by Learning and that by disquisition knowledge shal encrease then shew how parts and graces are distinguishable and whether you wil quench the spirit altogether or allow it altogether or what or how tel me why a brother a member of the congregation by them approved may not improve his Talent to the edifying of his Brethren as well as a Batchelor of Art or Master before ordained as you call it Common Place as you call it and that often more sorily then an honest Bibling brother that never came at the Colledges though at the Schools of the Prophets I cannot disallow Pastoral designation and so in order from Pastoral or Teaching abilities but to rest in designation any more then in ordination is incongruous I know this opens a gap to fears of maintenance but I see none justly I pray God your standing off open not wider ones If you be not the chief you are none what is the cause of your contest I profess I am not prejudiced against any person I have been inquisitive into intendments and I judge the tree by the Fruit may not man do so is it not consonant to reason When do you leave your Parishes generally but to get better greater Livings you have made the notions of the Religious a call from one people and assent of the other call but stales to your additional maintenance I agree maintenance necessary but I dare not boggle with the things of God speak right out eight score be it so is but sufficient by the year to maintain any Family and till I come at that I will not hold me to any call you dare not do it abuse not your selves many see it say not else you can have so much in another place This is the beautiful Harlot your hot and eager disputes are the Alarms to our continued feuds I cannot speak this to all for there are some who imitate as much as this Age will permit the example of Christ their Master and what ever their opinions be in Politicks they submit to the Powers for conscience sake and what ever they may think they unrake not the coales of dissention much less will they blow them to a flame here are all our griefs here is one wound so long kept open hereby is all obedience in all degrees lost and extinct no respect of Magistrate in any degree the truth is the unfitness of some Magistrates in not having abilities and of others in misimproving them and so of Ministers hath heightned by a just judgement the evil of contempt on all sides the retaining and so eager seeking unwarrantable interests will make the Callings I fear suffer by bringing all into question my reason is This hath been Gods way here now and before As all things necessary to salvation are through the goodness of God plain and evident so all things necessary to righteous Government what Magistrates stumble at is the perversness of people in pursuing unjust ends to or against their fellow-brother but especially in cutting short or tying him up too strictly in the requisites of honour order and maintenance and that for the Publick The people stumble at the Magistrates evil using and greatly abusing his Trust and power to self-interests professing for the publick but intending and visibly bettering self It s a received Rule The disease is more then half cured if the true reason be known O you Magistrates and Law-givers you have the first part to act be you righteous evil and disordered people are the manifest tokens of a loose negligent Magistracy It s evidently easie to settle a Nation more numerous more disordered from ignorance and will then this is in the time we are discoursing how far the Magistrates power extends in Religious things or in a Politick consideration what shall be done when the Nation is setled before the settlement be made or agreed upon let 's not to avoid the evils of the worst of Levelling so called give advantages to their designs or proposals Let 's walk so that we may by reason as well as power maintain our proceedings before we undertake le ts resolve to prosecute or surcease upon evident and publick reason the want of this hath disobliged more then ever the Covenant or Engagement bound And as I begun with you in Supream Power Civil or Military or both so give me leave to end when you first engaged when first you began this great work of Religion and Publick Liberty how hot and spirituous were you when great oppositions and many designs were on foot how watchful when you were running for the Goale and striving for the Mastery yea as your selves said venturing for your own Lives and Liberties how regardless of bare forms how then could you look at publick good in the nighest safest way you could then lay out your way besides the common Road without the formality of suing out an Ad quod damnum yea what strength of reason could not untye the Sword did cut Thus are the burthens snares and vexations of truly religious people gone as to the conscience Thus far you have been sincere in your Obligations to God be also as faithful in your Trusts to the Nation I would not have Judges taken away root and branch Judges are found in Holy Writ yea such in power and Authority as we desire to have we desire Justice should flow like streams and Righteousness like mighty waters the want of this impoverishes the Nation I am in such place that I see and know it yea I beleeve let it be rightly scanned it will appear most costly more ruinous and more enslaving then two such Armies and as now practised more intolerable then an universal Toleration so often charged upon you Now the Lord God of hearts lay what is written to all your hearts and grant that you may go on as you have promised namely according to the great Trust that is upon you from the people you proceed in procuring common good which is the true and ultimate end of all just Government and by a right aim at that direct all your actions and not cease to improve
Nimrod who notwithstanding he had elder brothers yet took the power of government upon him yet it s conceived he went no further then the government of his own family the heads of families appearing in the same age with him in the offspring both of Shem and Japhet and t is not probable that in those times the government was mostly such for they might have enough in one family for one man well to govern considering the many hundreds of years those ancients lived and the mind of man might well then be contented with it the profit was care and the honor duty and the end only safety against brutish invasion which course is as most natural so most conjectural untill the contrary be proved And most assuredly as their families increased even after the dispersion so divided they the land as well as in the dayes of Peleg and though it may be conceived that in this dispersion and confusion of languages the seed or occasion of future Discords Wars Jars and such like was sown yet it is probable that the earth in the fulness thereof being before them and the remembrance of kindred being fresh they did not immediately break out into blood by forcing a disseising or putting them out of possessions who were in but those unprovided sought out habitations and their numbers in their respective progresses increasing they sent out what we call Colonies The chief leader or Colonel of which was as is most likely the most Ancient who also gave forth to them the general law of their fathers whether traditional or otherwaies and the next in degree of age as the fathers of many children were accounted as chiefs next that cheif or King and these by Scripture according to that phrase in the time of Moses writing when now the world was grown to some setlement in disordered order were called Princes But these soon wax out the remembrance of their neerness of blood for surely where God was not regarded man was neglected forgetting God and his Law and private interest increasing the issue was divisions Wars and Jars The just might separate and divide as did holy Abraham and just Lot but the wicked fought for it and by power obtained their will and that law or liberty of blood-letting once admitted there was no stint of strife they renewed the Wars as the season of the year gave opportunity and with this strife out of all question came in against the law of nature the servitude of man to man and therewith also a confusion of families as to pure discent But let us pass on and hast the Lord makes now his family in the houshold of Abraham by especiall Covenant of promise with him and his seed rejecting all other Nations Yet how that rejection wrought is difficult for Melchizedech Abrahams contemporary was a holy man and assuredly kept purely the law of his fathers supposed of Shem though living amongst the accursed Cananites so Pharoah King of Aegypt to whom the Lord communicated his error in taking Abrahams wife and more especially Abymelech King of Gerar who apprehensive of Gods indignation for the same thing prayeth as one and that not only of himself but as of a Nation that knew and kept the Covenant of the Lord Wilt thou also destroy a righteous Nation said he not she is my sister But to proceed This Abraham is called a mighty Prince yet Arms but three hundred and eighteen this confirms what was before asserted shewing what Kings and Princes then were for these were to fight four Kings and manifestly proves the generality to be but heads of families though the Assyrian had now conquered many families mark also Abrahams complaint for lack of an heir urging his power and estate to difcend to Eleazar his chief servant These things are inserted only to lead the weak reader in a plain path way of historicall narration therefore this one example might suffice but this must be more then seconded both in Isaac the child of promise and Jacob and his progeny Isaac was Abrahams heir both of goods and graces yet falls into the offence of Abraham his father and for safeguard of his life denieth his wife And as a King governing his family hath issue Esau and Jacob Twins and although the birth right of divine blessing is by Isaac given to Jacob yet the temporall inheritance was to Esau which primogeniture is several waies and in the right of it acknowledged to Esau by Jacob whose substance was the gift of his God in and for his faithfull service he performed to Laban But le ts hast to see Jacob in his full grown family discended into Aegypt and there continued the time appointed by Gods promise during whose servitude while the yoak of Pharoah gauled the necks of his off-spring the way which God used to perform and fulfill his promise of freedom t is strange to flesh and blood you can look for no other government upon their shoulders then the whips of the Taskmasters untill the time of deliverance from the Lord comes who raiseth up Moses to be their saviour and leader but the judgements of his mouth during the whole course of his government were for the greatest part extraordinary even from the mouth or Spirit of the most high God which although it shews how nigh a relation holiness and obedience can work betwixt man and God yet so far it sheweth not ought as exemplary to us in our present Magistracy either the superior or subordinate in ordinary jurisdiction neither the Acts or judgements of any of those Judges afterwards in such special causes of evident supream either direction or assistance neither during their forty years peregrination in the wilderness nor in their daies of rest untill they called for a King nor indeed at any time That is we are not to take what ever one judges supream or subordinate in ordinary jurisdiction or legall government say as a binding word issuing from an infallible spirit or accompanied with such divine directions But according to the respective laws and customs of the place and Nation wherein we live ordered according to the reason and necessity of intervening accidents wherein those general rules which nature teacheth of self preservation and of preferring generals before particulars and general and common good before particular alwaies presumed nought be done contrary or destructive to any part of Divine rule must by all men as was by them be observed But seeing all that Moses did was not extraordinary let us a little view his behaviour in the course of this narration even of that man with whom so extraordinary a spirit rested for his first actions I leave the reader wholly to Scripture only this he was under persecution from his infancy being then exposed to the mercy of the waters only for what I shall specially aim at shall be and are his acts judicial and those either in referenre either to Church or Common-wealth The first law of Moses mouth was not only
moved justly who was the first and principal Agent the Lord in appointing or the people in requiring a King which being plain on the peoples part it is objected that the Lord in his first laws to his people Deut. 17. 14. c. gave them a Rule concerning the choice of their King namely one of their brethren c. and that Jacob prophesied of the same and that God laid down the duties of the King c. To which it is answered that neither the prophesie of Jacob nor Gods laying down the Kings choice duty and such like no nor Samuels annointing Saul by Gods appointment proves any divine institution no more then the prophesies c. of great sins and defections from God c. warrants them No no the utmost it holds forth is rather a Divine concession then an original institution for the Lord in that eighth of Samuel tells Samuel the people had rejected him for being their King and laying before the people by Samuel the usage of Kings ruling at list or according to their own will and power as it were to deterre the people from it the peoples stubbornness ver 7. 8. and 19. and 20. shews plainly that in wrath as the spirit elswhere expresses it he gave them a King that is yielded to their desire of a King and Saul annointed by Samuel was chosen by Lot and being hidden was sought and by Gods direction found out of the people and saluted King with a God save the King whence if it be thought fit to be objected he was chosen by Lot and so the disposition of that being from the Lord the Lord appointed the King it s agreed but thence to infer that Kings are of divine institution it followeth not This only is properly raised thence that God appointed that person Saul to be King of his own people after Saul David comes to the Throne and though by Gods appointment and special designation the house of Saul contends with him Absolom he Rebels and carries the multitudes of Israel after him and Solomon the wisest of the sons of men succeeding though by Davids appointment yea by divine approbation many waies manifested if not fore-prophesied he so sins that the Lord rejects him dividing the Kingdom and now in the settlement of hereditary succession that special spirit which accompanied the cheifs or Kings of Gods people ceases as to the most if not all of them and rested upon special Prophets whom the Lord raised up in the Raignes of several Kings for the manifestation of his glory and love to his people not only declaring his notice of their especial sins but also denouncing judgements in case of impenitency which accordingly fell out in the several raigns of several of the Kings of Israel Judah which subsequent Kings were either faithful wholly or in the main depending upon God walking in the waies of David their father or else a kinde of formal servers of God not faithfully but hypocritically or openly prophane and Idolatrous one or two especially Jeroboam who made Israel to sin yet of Gods appointment renting the kingdom from Solomons heire to give it him and Ahab that sold himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord for whose outward humiliation only God spared the Nation during his daies Now this is to be noted that even then such as was the King such was the pople generally and for the greatest part at least in outward profession An idolatrous King an idolatrous people a luke-warm King a careless people a zealous faithful King a reforming praying people So far ever was outward splendor and power a leader of outward profession and civil conversation and under the law accordingly as the Lord was served faithfully negligently or prophanely such was his cariage towards this his people under faithfull and holy Kings great blessings both of War and peace under the indifferent luke-warm neuter self-seeking Kings Secureness in peace and cutting short in War But under the idolatrous and openly wicked actual devastations besiegings overthrows and at last general captivities of which the kingdom of Israel so called being of the ten Tribes under the head Tribe Ephraim felt sorely and still feel where ever they were carried by the Assyrian Monarch who was punished as for her own sins so for the example of her sister Judah whose race was yet continued in their own land under their own governors but for sin cut short and the royal race wasted or over-awed the kingdom at last became Mercinary and set forth by the Asian Kings the successors of part of the great Alexanders Monarchy to a publique sale yet sold to the Preists and of the royal blood untill at last in the fulness of time the Romane conquering or Commanding both the Asian and Aegyptian Princes it was sold or given to Herod an Edomite so that now the Law-giver and Scepter departed from Judah The temporal kingdom of the Jew in power royal ceased from all the Tribes of Judah and Israel And now the Jews themselves expected the comming of their Messiah and the fulfilling of the Ancient prophesies according to their received vulgar interpretation of a most glorious mighty powerful Prince then to be raised up of God who should subdue all their enemies under them free them from the Romane yoke now so much feared and should lead them in the strength of Moses and Elias and by his power should consummate all their joyes in reducing their dispertions to an head and seating them freely and absolutely the Commanders of the Universs Thus private interest still led on the people though pretending to God so powerful is nature ever with the flesh Having here drawn into a short sum the Misterious history of Gods dealing with that people which he did more immediately hold as his own inheritance and made a special covenant with them before we pass to new matter let us a little look back and reveiw generally and briefly what this people was the form of the Covenant the nature of the Laws and Statutes given them by God and their execution and such other particulars as shall offer themselves In the first age the persons magnified in holy writ is Abel Enoch and the rest what were they but plain men living innocently Abel though loving God and loved of God God rescues him not from the violence of his brother Cain but he falls and perishes under his hands and Enoch among the Ancients lived no more then three hundred sixty five years and was translated as t is translated that is to Saints taken into the mistery of God but to men ceased to live longer on earth both were blessed yet one dies violently or untimely the other timely he lived not half the daies of wicked men before translated both judgements in mens accounts In the succeeding generations after the flood what was Noah the preacher of righteousness or of the truth which were traditionally or otherwise received as the word of the righteous God
by so many daily fears as the power of the Roman and the Tyrany of their strange King put upon them and the Scripture notes of divers to whom God had imparted a true understanding of the light of prophesy who kept continually in the Temple and served God day and night with fasting and prayers looking for or expecting his coming and no doubt they had disciples abroad who being instructed by them had their hearts prepared to believe him though no outward form beauty or comliness as others thought appeared in him So that their expectation was general but each one after the rate of light and knowledge true or false which was impared to him or he had received under his Rabby who read the Law to him who were of several opinions not altogether dead yet as Pharises Sadduces Essenes and these again subdivided according to the merit or acceptation of the Rabbies or Doctors of the Law The Temple was in respect of the legal strictness polluted the whole law by these interpretations instead of Gods rule become mans Fancy or at best his precept for all was now grown into the vast Ocean of subtilty of conceit and that Rabby was most venerable who could flye the highest pitch in sublime conceits so that the pure Law was made a puddled fountain and the spiritual heavenly meaning was lost in carnal voluptuousness and self-endedness there was great learning never more but never to less purpose much praying and fasting Ashes and Sack-cloth yea and besmearing their faces to suborn humility but all to hypocrisie and yet sure if in Esays time they Justified themselves against God as impotent that he could not see their fasting nor humiliation and soul affliction nor hear their prayers nor answer them by deliverance as in the fifty eighth of Isaiah then much more now when greater mercies were expected and longer time had revealed more light but they did all for pretence this and almes and all to be seen of men to devour widdows houses and enrich themselves though the whole State were beggered eager and strongly contending for priviledges but still to better themselves though greater losses to the publike accrued condemning their fathers and surely the ten Tribes their brethren who were before carried captives by the Assyrian and placed beyond the great River and justifying themselves as holy in that they built the Sepulchers of those Prophets whom their fathers had slain And by this expecting the Messiah and by him deliverance and this was the state of the Jew at the birth of our blessed Saviour born of Mary at Bethlem of the Tribe of Judah of the stock of David yet as not owning inheritance in the world brought forth in an Inn his Cradle a Cribb his consorts the Ox and the Ass the room being no better then the stable yet where God stirred up the hearts there was he worshipped by Kings if not by wise or learned men of great esteem sought to be slain flyes into a strange land and then is brought by his father to a mean village where he submitted himself to all the laws which his servant Moses had delivered not only in the circumcision of his flesh but in fulfilling the whole law and that not only private and domestick in his obedience to his reputed father and his mother Mary So that he was called not only the son of the Carpenter but the Carpenter untill such time as he was called out to his Fathers work which was first at twelve years of age to the astonishment as confusion of the Doctors which was Gods Act of preparation to those Rabbies had they not had eyes that they might not see and ears that they might not hear because the Lord would condemn them but also in the publique administration of the Jewish law appearing by his going up there to the Passover and that not only to his God as man but to his Prince yea though a heathen a stranger giving his tribute to Caesar he had also a fore-runner John the Baptist in whom I must observe that he preached a new doctrine viz. Baptism yet even the rulers went out to him and though he in his preachings shewed the error of the then sort of teachers he was not meddled withall nor opposed much less imprisoned But now when Christs time was come to preach I pray let us mark his behaviour first he goes to John and is of him baptised and then recieving a testimony from heaven to prepare the people to recieve his doctrine he then is carried into the wilderness to be prepared himself by temptation whereto his manhood in it self was subject but by the Godhead sustained and this finished whereby he was approved he now sets upon his work for which he came and as a Doctor of the law he preaches or declares the minde of his Father John he begins in a strange place the wilderness and he cries Prepare the waies of the Lord make his paths straight the Lord Jesus he follows and in the land of Zabulon in the City Capernaum the obdurate people had need of redouble blows he preaches and sayes Amend your lives for the kingdom of God is at hand and then he chooses or calls to help him in this great work of reforming sinners and that of the greatest sort poor fishermen surely as rude and ignorant as the rest in ordinary and these he makes his partners in the work and now instead of expounding Moses law according to the order of the Scribes and Pharises in the Synagogues of the Jews places of publike meetings for that end but alwaies intended for the service of the most high and true God by the Jew he preaches the Gospel of the Messiah and withall healed their bodies no doubt to intimate that what he preached of the blindness of their mindes was not only true but that he would and could heal these also he being for that end come into the world and now his fame of miracles and salvation to the body being spread abroad he hath great renown and glory for such benefits are quickly resented and now this preparation made mistake me not that I think Christ or his doctrine had need of any outward help in respect of his power who could of stones raise up children unto Abraham but in regard of his will it being so by the Almighty wisdom pre-decreed that all things in ordinary course should be so carried that no man should without his Spirit see that good or evill was to man but by means though the wise man saw the contrary he divulges his Gospel full of inward rayes of divine wisdome and magnificence but averse to the then recieved doctrine the interest of the then prevalent party or factions the Pharises and Sadduces who had the trick of this age to count all gain sweet and were not by words to aggrandize that sin which was high enough in it self no better then hypocrites even the best and strictest of them for so our saviour
Christ was and laid The same the Disciples Apostles and others use and build with and upon and in the same way according as they received light which was not all at once I pray observe that they had the spirit all but all nor any of them had all the Spirit they had their portion the grace as Paul saith which was given some in one kinde some in another therefore they first apply themselves to the Jew our saviours rule while he lived was Into the Cities of the Gentiles enter you not but go you first to the lost-sheep of the house of Israel but after a time God manifests by the vision of Peter so God taught him first after by pouring the holy Ghost upon the faithful house of a Gentile that they might be baptized and now after a disputation and satisfaction from Peter of these things they that were infallible in particulars which the spirit gave them were not knowing and sometime erred in what God yet revealed but to Peter I pray note this but now freely they preach to the Gentiles and zealous Paul of a persecutor I say no more made a preacher he goes especially to the Gentiles and with much labor and travile and with many dangers preachers Christ but the Divel is as busy as may be he feared not these men who had received the holy Ghost and had abundance of the spirit he throws his stone and hath Agents enough to roll it now the Gentiles are admitted without dispute the question is if they be not bound to Moses law I finde no question of the moral the scruples are concerning the judicial and ceremonial the first question was concerning some that taught the brethren circumcision was needful to salvation this controversie which hath filled the world so called Christian so full of controversie from that time to this present day as namely whether we be saved only through the righteousness of Christ apprehended by faith or have need also as to salvation to observe the Law that by the Jew was meant of the visible law ceremonial by the Christian moral c. The wits of the world saw not then the evidence of the spirit nor would acquiesce in the resolutions of the very Apostles themselves so that the congregation at Antioch being hereby in great disturbance were enforced to send Paul and Barnabas to congregate the rest of the Apostles at Jerusalem this upon a full meeting was to receive its end and determination where being recieved of the church Apostles Elders and brethren who were called together and the matter publiquely debated before them the result of which Peter declares to the Church or multitude of believers evidencing by the letter of scripture and that of the old Testament which surely is one of Gods witnesses That the Lord in calling the Gentiles who were uncircumcised which before was the visible condition of salvation declared and testified That salvation was in Faith without any Oblation to the Law But mistake not I intend not here as if the Question were of abrogating Moses Judiciall but that Salvation was not tied to the obedience to that or the whole Law but only through the grace of the Lord Jesus which being allowed by James he gives his sentence that the believers of the Gentiles be not yet till further instruction tied up too close to the severity as their vain liberty will account it of the Jewish rigor but in those things which will cast too great an odium upon us with the Jew as participating in Idoll Sacrifices whoredome the great and ordinary delight of the Gentile and in eating any thing strangled or bloud as being a precept highly esteemed with them le ts in these write to them that they abstain to which all agreeing it seemed good to the Apostles and Elders with the whole Church to send this their resolution in letters by certain of the Church at Jerusalem together with Paul and Barnabas the stile phrase and order of which holding sorth still the pattern of Christ their Master and Teacher's meekness gentleness and lowness the Lamb dumb before the shearer and testifying their unity in Christ their head take notice of in the parts the Inscription whereof was The Apostles Elders and Brethren unto the Brethren not the Elders nor Officers but Brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antiochia Syria Cilicia send greeting in the body Forasmuch as we have heard that certain of the Church of Jerusalem or Jews have troubled and cumbred your minds saying you must be circumcised and keep the Law to whom we gave no such commandment to testifie which we send eminent men in the faith to you for it seemed good to the holy Ghost and to us to lay no more burthen upon you then these necessary things that to the end no offence be given to the Jew you abstain from things offered to Idols bloud things strangled and from fornication from which if you keep your selves you shall do well fare you wel Here was no charging willing and commanding from the sacred Synod no Authorrity of the Church urged more then the note of intimation that what was done was by them who had received the holy Ghost The issue is also considerable for these Commissioners of the Churches both of Antioch and Jerusalem comming now to Antioch I pray consider their carriage they assemble whom the Elders or Preachers no they would not tie the people to believe implicitely therefore they assemble the multitude all the believers and there they deliver the Epistle which is read with joy for the consolation This done Satan is at work again raising strife and contention betwixt Paul and Barnabas so that they parted company wherein I pray note the children of God nay the chosen vessels yea consecrated by the actual operation of the Spirit are subject more or less to humane frailties consider further Paul after this decision of that great controversie at Jerusalem yet by and by he circumcises Timothy to give content to the blindness of the Jew and was never called to account for it either at Jerusalem or Antiochia and though himself at the same time delivered the decision of the Apostles and Elders at Jerusalem to those converted to the faith of Christ in the Cities about as they travelled to establish their minds in case either the controversie concerning the Laws necessity were there raised already or might right rise afterwards by this humane Wisdom labouring to prevent a further increase of that controversie And if it be queried why they did not miraculously do it as well as heal diseases and such like Know O man that it was contrary to Gods Ordinance he appointed preaching to convert the world and miracles were Trumpets to call the people together and prepared them to receive the Word and with the Word God gave grace as he pleased and that this must be so is plain for all that saw the miracles attended not to the Word and all that did both were not
yea such was his diligent and awful constancie that his Pavilion was his Oratory for divine Service he would not neglect his hours of prayer amid the greatest dangers and troubles of warfare yea such was his zeal that you could not distinguish whether he were the better souldier or most excellent Preacher and who would not haste to be a Convert in this season of blessings and as his care was so wonderful for the soul he neglected not to put in execution good Laws and where need was to make new his care was for the weal of his people he sought his peoples good more then their Goods and approved himself the common father of his Country by his sea of bounty which all pertook of freely the Orphans not onely educated but maintained to which he not onely employed the publike money but out of his private Treasury he afforded largely he would relieve the necessitous begger but caused to be sought out the modest needy wretch and comparing qualitie and necessity he fitted and proportionated his bounty accordingly so that to eminent vertue he hath given entire possessions yea himself sought out the desolate and afflicted and all his Laws now tasted of the radiences which Conversion had generated in his soul and were not onely moral as agreable to Nature but also Christian as savouring of that enlightment which our Saviour in his Preaching had given to the Law and surely here was a glorious Court where the Prince himself gave such examples how did the Nobles the great rich and powerful follow especially when the wise Emperor had fained a little inclination to Apostacie and disgraced the fawning parasitical and hypocritical Courtier and exalted and entrusted the faithful to Christ though not obeying the Emperor and it was indeed admirable all was wonderful the Fathers of the Church were the Emperors Councel not out of their ambition or his necessity but to shew his actions feared no Monitors and his Councels should be questioned by the strictest Christians and what might now be feared was then reverenced Thus did the Church flourish but see here the devil was not conquered though his Agents were he now must go another way to work a wily Serpent he is can turn himself into many folds and therefore he now attemps new ways of tortures afflictions and when the forraign enemies of the Church are beaten down and conquered now he makes them enemies one to another hitherto the common calamities had hindered the growth of divisions the Sword was the Lords avenger he now suffers another nay Prosperity ushers in Pride Pride Ambition and that Envy as well as Covetize and out of all these springs up Arianism the first great and spreading error to usher in that fatall Apostacy so long before prophesied and if we look into the ground-work of it or the foundation it was Philosophy or searching into the secrets of the divine Decrees and the reasons of them the Arcana of the Trinity the extravagant curiosities of able idle and yet active wits set on by the itch of vanity and singularity from the ignorance which they see in others and the applause of novelty from such as count all things wondrous that is above the sphear of their own capacity and this was the first comet of the kingdom of darkness which in its growth threw darts of plagues and poisons insensibly into the hearts and veins of the professor of Christ in its glorious condition which to remedy there is by the Emperor a general Councel called note that was the then unquestioned remedy wherein though condemned by the power of mans Vote yet nevertheless continued his strength and was not vanquished for the Emperors and all at last submitted unto this rage of the flood of error untill God in his time who orders the rise and fall as lasting of all things turned the stream into another channel after by the Synod of Jerusalem that heresie was tollerated by absolution of the Patron which the Councel of Nice had condemned and by this tract of time sin growing speedily the Papacy began now to lay another step to the grand defection for the pride of the Pastors was now grown so great and the revenue so eminent that the Fathers of the Church fight for the Papacy and if the man-childe born the Church went into the Wilderness that is no sooner did the Lord cease afflicting his Church and gave riches and glory and honor but the purity and integrity of Ordinances ceased and if you would finde Christ anywhere it was among them that were either in the Wilderness those holy ones that were through acerbities past so taught the vanity of the world that nothing could bring them to the trial of the world again or those that though they were in the City were yet as in the Wilderness such as over whom the glories of the world had no power Then surely now the Church was not to be found except the two witnesses of the Lord I mean the two Testaments were his Records for if the Pastors were thus changed how might the people err And surely from this time I count the Prophesie of Antichrist began to be manifested and the Apostacy and great defection to appear for immediately under the reign of Theodosius the younger when Alarick the Goth subdues Italy and takes Rome Sosimus then Bishop of Rome affects the title of Oecumenical and claims as proper to the Bishop of Rome That nothing in Ecclesiastick affairs should be ordered without his consent the first linke of the chain of perdition A non after rises the Nestorian heresie then the Eutichian and thus the Lord punishes his Church now before the evil was the Sword now Error the greater plague of the two then purity increased now prophaneness yet I cannot say so much prophaneness for even the lives of the then Heriticks are a shame and condemnation to our present Christians yea even in the defection of the Saints how many humane excellencies appeared what austerity what voluntary poverty singular chastity admirable constancie unparallel'd charity And thus grew the glory of Christianity so that the Barbarous Nations who were the scourges of Christians sins were the admirers and in some kinde the imitators of their piety and it pleased God there was yet some wheat amidst the field of the Church excellent in all the qualities and ornaments needful in a disciple of our Saviour by whose industry and faithfulness great part of true Christian purity was not onely continued but also propagated as well as errors and heresies in great part vanquished so that the splendor of the Church of Christ was great and powerful and so much the more as for that the Church-men had now made some Quaeries concerning the power of the Emperors over them as being the servants of Jesus Christ And also of their power over Emperors the Emperor being but a believer they officers he set apart yet but for civil ends and Government they for sacred and
that but with a reflex upon the matters of the Church as being not to be neglected in respect of their own nature and also for their necessity to the explaining the matters treated of and I the rather chuse to pitch upon that time because the histories are more clear and from that settlement do all the grand Quaeries flow which are now discussed by so many wits and so many pens wherein yet I shall be brief as formerly though laying the plot to the generality of the succeeding matter William the first commonly called the Conquerour being the Bastard son of the Duke of Normandy having indeed no title at all to the Crown of England I cannot say usurps he fought against an usurper yet layes claim to it only under a pretended and invalid promise of Edward late King of England and with his Comrades to whom he had promised shares in his purchase He from Normandy and with Normans that is Frenchmen of the Country Province or County of Normandy lands in England fights the then King and slayes him in the Field and the English distasted at former Kings and it seems doubtfull to whom the Crown belonged and no one publikely laying claim whereby it is probable the race was wom out or utterly disheartned William soon settles himself and by agreement with the English to keep the Laws or rule them according to their Laws he is accepted as King but as to avoid war the strengths of the English being yet in no considerable manner broken by the one battel with the slain King he pretends his Title of Donation Adoption or what you will call such a pretence yet he as he found occasion and opportunity not only strengthned himself but weakned the English and that insensibly deposing all Bishops of whose fidelity he was not assured and for setling a new form of Government upon yet exceeding prudent grounds which was the so called Tenure in Capite or of the Crown he by cutting off the Males of the chief Nobles as Traitors disposed the Females where they were in marriage to his Normans and the other upon seisures he granted to hold of him as of his Crown thus he wrought his own ends every way for now he hereby takes the power of the Kingdom and the adherences of the ancient Nobility into the Norman Race his Normans now as by agreement and according to the rule of their Nation take all from him who is Lord paramount Thus all the land in England is holden of the King and by the equity of the judicial he holding all of God onely and so the land was absolutely enslaved and the title of warlike conquest is atchieved by a quiet bargain for this marriage of the inheritrix all other objects taken away cast the tenants eyes solely upon the enjoyer of their Lady now this way was prepared to before the kingdom being formerly divided not onely into Counties under an Earl Consul or their Sheriff but each County into their Hundreds and those subdivided into half Hundreds and those again into Tythings the most admirable Law that ever was in point of prudence directed even by the infinite Wisdom to the Jew and approved by these men as obligatory to Christians or so pretending these in their gradations all had their law from their Lord and held of him most under an oath and that according to the nature of the Tenures whether by homage or fealty onely with a saving of right to the King and other Lords and that Lord he held of the King nay the wise Bastard had a further reach for these Land-tenants were his Militia and none else were now suffered to have Arms so that his Normans being conveniently disposed into all parts of the Nation and the Nation thus engaged by these courses aforesaid being more warlike then wise few then knowing more then the Priest told them the work was readily effected and so much the rather because the Nobles had Knights held of them by the like service of attendance in the wars some holding Honors and some Mannors in subordination and these again had Freeholders for the provision of their houses which was called the service of the plough And thus all being distinguished into their orders and ranks there was nourished by these mutual dependances love and duty service and sustenance the Noble man being at Court the Lord or chief Knight in the County the Patrons of the Yeomonry and all yet held in chief of the King This prudent settlement holding a correspondence with the ancient Jewish and no difference from the later Romane Government both here by severall Governors and Governments made native was very facile to be effected and the rather because that our rocks of offence now were no stumbling stones of offence then but the foundation-stone of the ladder of the highest preferments for the Kingdom being settled upon a Military frame yet wisely observing the rules of humane Arts Wardship and Marriage the now or late Bugbears were thus laid and reserved by that discreet Prince following so justly and evenly one upon the neck of another by them accounted demonstrative reason that truly his enemies approved at last what his friends denied that is the English admitted what the Normans spurned at for as I find the Kingdom being put into this Sword posture it was thought meet that the Tenants of the King who were not fit to do him service should be under his tuition and who would and could so carefully provide both for their training in warlike exercises or dispose them in marriage for his safety and their well-being as the Prince whose strength and securiry they were to be both in war and peace so that Lords to their Knights and they to their Esquires and all to their Soccagers so that Soccagers or Freeholders sought a Tenancy in Knights Service and they by Knights Service sought to hold of the King not in Capite only but by the greater services of Petite and grand Serjeantie being so much the more or less honorable as they were directed more or less immediatly to the person of the King And I do not finde that King William did create more Lords then there were Counties for he observed his plot of Government as I may say once for all intermingling the old and his new with such a fit contexture as the first glance or present witnesses did not easily discern it Now as he laid his Military part wisely so did he not indiscretely settle the Civil part for that he also ordered that as the Commonwealth was but all one great family and though in regard of the multitude of subjects or children it was necessary to see and hear by others eyes and ears and so to answer and determine differences yet it was of necessity that all should yield obedience to him and render him a final account and therefore he disposed not from himself the ultimate and last determination of all or any cause but that they might appeal to
clearly evince that those national meetings were and are not only the most natural and prudent means of composure of civil differences but also proper to this Nation the due rights of which were alwaies contended for This contest wrung away from the King those two great Charters of priviledge called Magna charta charta de foresta being the express limit and boundary of the Prince that he might not upon occasion fly out after upon his title of conquest the subject matter of them are evident to each mans veiw they are generally consonant none contrary to right reason they are restraints of the Princes absolute will or of Governing according to his own lust and declarative to the subject what he might trust to establishing indeed the right of property meum and tuum against that high point of levelling which the Princes of this Land as of all other Nations sought after not only the great men Mountains Lords but even the Mole-hills the meanest Subjects to the nod beck word of this man God the King The Lords and others saw this wherefore they bound the King by oath but what coard is able to hold a covetous much less an Ambitious spirit first therefore they plead duress or constraint and I must ingenuously acknowledge there was force against force another King confirming it in his minority or under the Age of twenty one years he thinks this a loose to his oath as if he were old enough to vow but not to perform and to these refuges of the Princes the Lawyer could give excellent colours and now the master-piece was to set the work afoot in a legal way and the Judges of the land were to determine this part they were sworn to the King and therefore they must give their advice and afford their best assistance to him the histories publike say it was an enforced opinion whereby they annihilated all the principal priviledges in the grand Charter putting at once the sword and purse of the kingdom into the Kings hand upon necessity making him to be judge of the necessity for the great trust reposed in him as King for the benefit of the Common-wealth and of this faithfulness there must be no doubt this was in the time of a weak wilful yong Prince so that the Lords in Parliament for who else durst budge or stir question the Judges as betraiers of their trusts and the liberties of the people and make them examples by hanging them at the common Gallows There were then men whose judgements and opinions were as absolute for this King and his actions these men and their determinations as might be who cried out upon the Lords and the Parliament as Rebels Subverters of the Law the setled Law and that by the opinion of sworn men the Judges magnifying the King as one that did but intend to take away the Root Spawn and seed-plot of Rebellion for while a power of contest or visible cause thereof remained which these Charters had often manifested themselves to be there would be no visible security for a setled peace if the Lords might judge of one right or privilidge of one part of the Kings prerogative why not of all if so as good be no King this was the Court dialect and of their dependants and this controversie ceased not till at last the King had ruined all the power of the Lords and now all was safe the Kings therefore to divert the stream of affection in the people from seeing into the invasion of their liberties propound Wars in France wherein being successful they please the people with smal things and take away great but especially curtail the Lords of that absolute dependance which was upon them by their under-Tenants granting the use of Magna Charta and the other Charter as Law but breaking it upon all occasions in times of War and then complying in times of peace and truly this was the State of England for the space of about three hundred years after the Conquest But you will say why did the Pope suffer this why did not he as the common and spiritual father of the whole Christian flock use his power both over the great Ram the King and the lesser cattel and younglings of the flock what such devastations murderings perjuries and other evils as must of necessity follow so many Warlike conflicts under Christs kingdom the Lion and the Lamb were to feed together and the Wolf and the Kid to lie or couch together Truly the Pope had ever an Oare in the Boat of the Common-wealth But know Rome was now the Princess and Queen of Power she raised up the people to scourge Princes disobedient to her not those obedient they should whip the people to the bare bones and this juggling appeared and there were open complaints even to Princes against the Vicar of Christ But as the Princes to appease their Subjects propound War against a neighbour Prince yea though Christian for now great men and Princes being become Christians it was hard to know whether Christians were Christians yea or not their actions were so far different from their professions So the Popes to take the Christian Princes off of their intentions to look into his Court and customes propound War against Turks and Infidels a holy and specious pretence to redeem Hierusalem from the hands of heathens still the Jewish pattern by this he hath a double advantage for his chief Enemies gone that is the most active and most zealous Princes for reformation he propounds the same to others but discharges them of their oath for they that went did so for many others he employed against his private Enemies that is Enemies of his leudness wickedness and apostacy from the faith of God the Kings of the earth making a league with the whore and drinking of the cup of her fornications and shall no doubt of her destruction also so that they who should and ought being taken off from punishing her God raised up poor despicable Creatures yea taught Babes and Sucklings to vindicate his truth as the so called Waldenses Albingenses poor men of Lyons in France and boundaries of Italy Wickliff with us John Huz and Jerom of Prague with the Germans and others with others thousands of which the Pope in the teritories of France caused to be murdered by souldiers sworn for Hierusalem Now as the Popedome was corrupted so was the generality of all the Bishops Doctors and Priests in all places they had an abundance of riches fat paunches and lean pates they had now found out an easie method of serving Christ they were in the years of the Churches prosperity that themselves agree and we believe that was the great reason they took so little pains The Kings had reserved donations of Bishopricks to themselves and riches and honor the nourses of ease were what all strove for these dependances held the generality close to the Kings if any opposed it was pride stirred up anger that they were omitted and
civill State where the Kings as I tell you still laboured to maintain their Prerogative so called by which they intended the absolute rule of their will holding all that was yielded by the Law not as datum or given but debitum therefore they refused it not but laboured to encroach and therefore there was no immunity granted to the Subject but they paid for it no right cleared but bought at the hardest market yet upon these chaffers the Kings settle the Courts of Judicature both of the Common Pleas Kings-Bench Exchequer and appoint Judges and salaries at Westminster a certain place and at certain and appointed times whereby the great and arduous causes the difficulties of which could not be determined by the ordinary Judges of the County might by these eminent and most learned or so esteemed receive a period with less charge to the Subject and to these were appointed Officers and Fees After this the Chancery was setled and the chief Judges of all these Courts I have read the Parliament were to appoint and they might if Annuall but if but every seven years as by after agreement was established it was requisite to admit the king the choyce once and then to be sure he was like to keep it for ever there was a president out of these Courts the kings raised large supports for all the Officers which were now multiplyed went all along with the Crown and yet these Courts the kings liked not but laboured to introduce other Courts the settlement of all these Judicatories by way of gradation admitting a finall appeal to Parliament in course therefore the Court of Wards is erected and that upon a good colour but a bad cause for the latter kings having seen the issues of things before as is related now neglected the warlike education and the preferment of their Wards as at first institution indeed the cause which was then that was the putting by degrees the whole power of the Land by Marriages was now ceased and now none bare less affection to the king then the race of Normans the issue being like in condition with the English ill brooking the service and vassalage which themselves laboured to lay upon the English After this Court came up the Court so called of Star-Chamber intended still as a bridle to curb the head-strong humours of the Lords and great men There were erected Courts of Admiralty and all these Courts were bounded had their Rules in all circumstances the defects of which were still as I said lyable to appeal that is to be questioned in Parliament the Law Courts and Statutes Courts of course the other agreeable to their own nature by supremacy of power neither were the Spiritual Courts so called that is the Courts of or under or by or from the jurisdiction power authority of the so called Clergy from the highest Bishop to the meanest Surrogate of other settlement yet in these the Kings were chary for they appealing to the Pope a curse might follow and who that hath a due consideration of conscience can blame the Princes Judges Magistrates and Officers of those times seeing they pretended to beleeve the Popes Supremacy of power and all other things conducing thereto But now we shall see a stronger opposition to the Pope then ever for he sending out many prophane Indulgences as for pardoning of the greatest offences and tolerating the highest wickednesses Luther a Popeling opposes and that openly before the Emperour at the great meeting or Parliament of the Princes of the Empire many of which took part with him he thus upheld and the Pope scorning the check by a paultry Fryer he curses and excommunicates him Luther writes against that and seeking and searching the Scriptures to find out how to assure the truths he had declared God manifests many more Now here I must observe that Luther broached no new matters it was the old Scriptures and the old truths of the Scripture but the men that then lived thought it then strange and novelty as being contrary to what they had been trained up in Of all the forreign Princes to Germany who stickled in this business none so hot as the king of our England then called Henry the Eight a Prince not esteemed so Religious as Warlike nor approved so Warlike as fierce every violent spirit not being for the management of Military Atchievments and to speak the truth the ease and delicacy of Court breeding imbecillitates the mind and enervates the body for the pains care and danger of War This king nevertheless had sure some design in his head to gain his Holy Fathers good will in as other Princes he therefore writes or causes to be written which he fathered a Book against Luther in maintaining the Popes power yea even in the unjustest matters that is That Luther a Vassal of the Sea of Rome a Child of the Church ought not to judge the Fathers acts nor censure much less controul matters allowed by him much less authorized nay commanded for the bearer of the Indulgences had his Letters missory or Bull so called Luther bears this shock and all and alone stands the dint of the whole so called Christian world a few men and one or two inferiour Princes with an university excepted but this notwithstanding Luther teaching and holding forth the Doctrine of Christ and his Apostles fears not and multitudes are converted I may say to the Faith from the Pope to him he appealing to a general Councel but the Princes oppose with the Emperour as well as our Henry and good reason as I before declared set the Councel to order the Popes matters and a Parliament or Dyet will by Analogical Rule argue at least rationate at first and at last determine of the rule of Princes let a Fryer question the Pope and any Subject may as well altercate with his Prince and at last appeal to a Parliament as Luther to a Councel truly all the irregular Interests of Popes Cardinals Bishops Priests and the rest of that rabble and of kings and Princes Judges Advocates as Lawyers and the rest hang upon one thread and I presume that one sword at one blow cuts at last both asunder assuredly as they have stood so they will fall together but mark Gods way our Henry was a dissolute young Prince and he married young and to a widdow nauseous to such a spirit vain though Heroick or magnanimous to give it the best among such epithites he was desirous of a divorce which he at first at least sought not so much as is most probable for conscience as humour sake for this change he seeks the Popes dispensation she was a daughter of Spain the elder son of the Church that is the most ambitious among the so called Christian Princes which now stood ready at all assayes to act the Popes pleasure He was nigh and potent and must not be displeased the Pope dallies puts the English king desirous and hoping of a divorce upon an injury to
that he found not absolutely buxome that is without any scruple to yeild compliance to his absolute will he by his power removed and displaced to this end after one contest with one he changed the stile of the Pattent this raised an odium and at least he must bear the blame for by whose insinuations or abuses so ever it was done Yet while no man can force a resolved man who can force a King and the last and great Act being his the whole was adjudged to him yet not alone An other Act of great judgement to his end was the constant use of proclamations declarative not only of the Law but his pleasure in other lands called Edicts or Acts of the King alone or his saying or will resolved into Law these were at first put out upon things benificial for the Subject and were as it were a temporary Law of exigency or provision by the King for what the Law was either being antiquated and now revived or els that for which there was no Law in the case yet necessary to be provided for and so was a time of Tryal or an Act of probation against the next Parliament And these powers were never denyed Kings formerly or but seldome being but seldome used and generally upon good grounds so that no disobedience followed but at last his proclamations were divers of them though carrying a colour of Law slighted But he being of a very quiet spirit could not enter a contest but sought to work his end an other way and that was to call Parliaments And to create new Honors and so over-vote and consequently over-power the Parliament debasing Spirits by dependance and this having a strong influence upon the Gentry dulled now with long peace a natural politique of this Prince and not the least conducing to his end if he could or would have known when to have taken up the sword as he supposed they would for they were generally so besotted of these Court bables of honor that upon his or a great mans letter who their Lordships pleased was made a Parliament man and the House of Lords and Commons the Bar or Clyff against the Torrent of Tyranny was become an inlet to that Ocean but there was one great jealosie still which was a bar and this was the Kings excessive prodigality to his own Nation who were as greedy to aske as he to give so that the English grew a little I may say a great deale discontented especially the understanding sort But more upon the judgement so called given concerning the naturalization of a Scot ipso facto by the Union of the Crowns in one person as if all the rights priviledges and immunities of the free-born people of England were become hereditary to the Scottish Nation by one born in Scotland being next of blood and so inheriting the Crown of England And though great and wise men had their hands in this work and saw no evill in it yet they that were as wise though not so great and more uninterested and so less questionable were otherways minded supposing that this extraordinary favour to that Nation the seconding and approving of it by so many wise men and supposed affectionate patriots zealous of the liberty of the English Nation though it seemed to them as but a wise and civill policy and Act of munificence not much to be supected of danger carried hay in the Horn namely by this and such like plots fitted them to introduce and continue quietly what they all thought fit of necessity to be done the order of episcopacy in that Church and with that the whole liturgie of the Church of England with all those rites and ceremonies thought requisite as in the Church of England which the King upon petition of some Ministers at his first coming to the Crown was fully resolved in I mean in the conference at Hampton Court and the consequence of it By which he was resolved not to alter what the late Queen Elizabeth had established But these men believed that as this was indeed aimed at and this aime publikely allowed so that there was an other intention which lay hid and undiscovered and that was to force Scotland in case of opposition by English Armes and to provoke each other to these several works by a short kind of policy the Scot was engaged so as he must yeild what was his chiefest glory And if he yeilded not the English thus disrellished would be quick to the quarrel This I say not to be the Kings aime No I believe he might see no more then the plain surface matter and never be able to discover either this intended by some or that other politique which I now relate intended by others who yet drove on the same design but as supposing that it was a certain way to involve the two Nations in a War which their conditions required but his resolution was to keep all quiet and truly knowing of the Scotch temper he urged but inforced not commanded but compelled not and though he better approved Englands Hierarchical order he would not utterly reject the rigidity of the Scotch Presbytery though he had found some cross dealings at their hands which in England would have been called the scandal of the Crown and were not altogether savouring of a Christian modesty and humility were it but for the Kirk to command a Fast on that day the King had appointed a solemn Feast of State and that after the Feast was publikely known and divulged I mention but a peccadillo and that under a supposition because I would not apply that to things which may be was and will be only the errour of persons during the reign of these two princes Elizabeth and James notwithstanding the many complaints of the excess and defects of the Laws in their several respects yet nothing was done truly worthy the supream powers by them claimed there were some particular streams or rivulets of errour amended or at least pretended by particular Statutes both in giving Laws where none were and amending what was amiss but out alas the Ocean whence all these had their rise was still the same Three special Statutes I must here remember of James one to punish with death him or her that had two wives or two husbands but not made death to commit Adultery yet as I have heard canvassed at the same Parliament this Statute severely executed The second as rigidly which was concerning them that were or are delivered of Bastards pretended dead born and having no witness present to be taken as murderers The last was the regulating of the number of Attornies for good cause there specified which never was so much as in the least observed nor a Judge ever questioned for it yet this as to the world and in carnall respects of as necessary concernment as the other I shall not progress further here concerning ought being now come to the portall of the Theater of all Quaeries in the multitude of questions
stirred up in the Raign of King Charles who succeeding his father with all the expectations that might be of the vulgar his entertainment to the Crown was with all congratulations of a high joy such as the high condition of his estate required in a setled Kingdome having enjoyed a continued peace for almost 140. years whereby riches abounded exceedingly but with them pride increased so that spirits grown high they were ready to kick at the prick and the rather in respect knowledge abounded and they were not ignorant of their own strength And what the Romanists foresaw was now held high time to provide for for whether it were the advice of King James or the disposition of Charls or the natural jealousie of Kings or the supream over-ruling decree intending by degrees to fit things to the determinate end I here discuss not but this bright day was soon ore-cast for in the first Parliament which I suppose was called in or about the third year of this King after some order taken for the regulation of evils against the civil peace and some kind of care taken for punishing the great prophaners of the Lords Day the King not well liking the Petition so called of Right being indeed a strong limit to dreaded Prerogative yet grants it and continues the Parliament untill he had obtained seven Subsidies of the people distinct and eight from the so called Clergy and then dissolves it But there was another special reason namely the people were grown exceeding high and fierce against not only the special Favourite of the King the then Duke of Buckingham but secretly taxing the King himself as at least an Abettor to him in the too soon speeding his Father out of this world I beleeve it is evident to most that the Duke committed a crime notorious to all that the King did by dissolving this Parliament hinder the tryal of him but this doth not evidence his guilt though it gives matter of surmize but this may be handled fitlier otherwhere if need requires The breach of this Parliament gave a great disgust to the people the rather because it plainly appeared the King wholly and almost only sought himself for although he had acknowledged by Act the necessity of continuing the Parliament to settle fit remedies for many notorious grievances yet before ought expedited but his own business as it was justly called of the Subsidies He of his so called Royal will annihilates all by nullifying the Parliament as he was said to do and indeed it amounted not to much less for he did at least by his instruments which he owned almost with the same breath he assented to the so called Petition of Right or due Rights of the Subject break it and proceeded so far to aggrandize the power of the Prince that he made the Subject a slave having a speaker fit for his ends a man of as mercinary a spirit as could be for upon some incivility as it was called of some members zealous for Reformation who loth to have the Parliament so fruitlesly dissolved held the Speaker in his Chayre to Vote a Remonstrance to the King he imprisons them seizes their Trunks searches their not only chambers but pockets most of which dyed in restraint being accompted the Martyrs of the peoples Liberties whom the King thought the greatest means of subverting of them as intending still to drive on the contest betwixt the King and his people which was begun in William so called the Conqueror and surely he could not but espy that notwithstanding all endeavors to the contrary the people had still gained upon the Crown and surely what he expressed in full Parliament and which is printed among the Statutes at large more then cleared his jealousies of encroachments upon him which is a sufficient cause to a Prince to stretch his power and surely was as before is said in part with those other reasons annexed not only the cause of that Sessions prorogation the then Parliaments dissolution or rather by not keeping his so called Kingly word annihilation but the not calling of Parliaments till necessity enforced as if he had seen or foreseen the fate which hath since ensued I cannot beleeve him ignorant of all those not onely so called prophesies but of those conjecturall observations of those grand Mathematicians so called which how his wisdom might prevail over I know not but assuredly Princes of all are most easie and subject to be entrapped at least the inquisitive part of them neither shall I here treat of the power of the Stars if at all although I must profess little have hapned in the notorious part of his Reign which such Artists did not more or less foretell But because out of his Reign is as it were raised the fountain of all controversies both divine and humane let us shortly run over the state of the so called Church and Commonwealth and begin with the Church which though not so furnished with large Territories nor multitudes of Religious so called Professors as before those nests of Monasteries Nunneries Fryeries Fraternities Colledges c. being dissolved and confiscated yet to the remaining Arch-Bishops Bishops Provosts Deanes Deanes and Chapters Vicars Vicars Charols Chaunteries Cathedrals sub-Deanes Arch-Deacons c. pardon that short enumeration of many glorious beasts of Babels forest there was a sufficient maintenance to perform the duties required in a Bishop by Paul without any by-encroachment but these men were now grown civil Lords and having contracted Marriage with the world they lay with it and neglected their duty to their Lord and husband the Lord Christ Jesus They had large Palaces of old Babel the same seats in their several Provinces called Diocess the same structures or great Churches the same Attendants for their Courts Juridical were not taken away these all required maintenance and that by reason of worldly pomp in great measure but they had enough for this had not the itch of the flesh brought them as other men to avoid fornication to betake them to their own wives and the same carnal prudence which before prohibited Marriage lest the care of the world and love of children c. should cause imbeselling the Churches so called Revenue the same now wrought unjust seekings of gain by any means to the prejudice of the Church Before the storm in Henry the Eights time many long Leases were made before Queen Elizabeth many more so that to assure maintenance she was enforced the Father of the Church for fleshly children sakes robbing and wasting their spiritual Mother to that prudential Law that they c. could make no new Leases or renew any old but for three lives or 21. years reserving the old rent but as children increased and worldly temptations these Church men could so far dispense as either to coyn old or else new Leases with this blessing from the rule in Law Valet quantum valere potest and these were to their children servants friends or the best friend a
performed or otherways adorning Churches the several Manners Places Times of bowing gesture and order of pronunciation at or in reading all not only discoursed of but applauded and generally practized adoration at the entery of the Church and also at departure and that to the East all for uniformity the great and special pretence of the so called Church that is the Bishops the Fathers of the Church according to their own stile Bowing or Genuflexion or Adorations to at or of the name of Jesus Extream unction Confirmation Pennance all practised yea a Nuntio of the Pope but not so owned yet well known and which troubled the people most of all a raile of wood or other partition betwixt the so called Priest and people at the receiving the Sacrament so called of the Altar and this of necessity and the words of administration purely Popish as yet in the directory But all persons without question in the parish admitted to the Sacrament as by Law was established these things setled they haste for power to the further setlement of the Church in power and purity and by the Kings power they are convened and called the sacred Synod where they Act with large commission and fearing counter-buffs of Providence by them called Fortune they denied the Pope but admitt Popery in its full height and to evidence the Antichristianisme they establish their Hierarchy with an oath with that famous clause of c. labouring as the brood of old Rome to bring all Temporal jurisdiction under ecclesiastick censure and this was the condition of the Church or Churchmen or Clergy men so called I shall now as shortly give you a veiw of the civill State as the necessity of perspicuity will well permit You have heard upon what a politique Basis William so called the Conqueror founded his Empire which yet from evident causes declining even in the space of his own and Sons Raign did evidently shew the frailty of all humane wisdome and therefore might well in the space of six hundred years be brought to nothing and truly once for all to say it I am in my conscience perswaded that King Charles did see the want of Law in this land to govern the Nation rightly and upon that foundation sought to mould the kingdom to the similitude of other Nations for it is a sure and certain principle that States grow old and Laws c. And if not reduced by reformation there is a necessity of a new formation Now the chief thing which a Prince looketh at is the power of War or the Sword and this so far as the power rested in the King which was his Tenure was clean lost and gone for the many transmutations of possessions had made many litigious questions partly through the corruption of officers not duly awarding process against alienators without license partly other defects of certain boundaries and partly the evill of time which had through divers discents parcelled great estates into many persons So that there were many Tenants but few Knights and what was at first an honor to hold of the King or by Knights service because the Tenants Son and Heire should yet come to the education of a Lord paramount or higher then the Father and so should be bettered both for Arts and Arms the Kings of late years had made them absolutely but the fees of their Servants and the Heirs of gallant men were as bad as slaves to the will of the Kings Grantee whereby they were yoaked unequally in marriage or their estates were generally squeised of sometime a third sometimes a fourth or fifth part in the Court of Wards so that they that should have been the Princes guard as it were being thus prejudiced in their minority and drinking in hastily the complaints of their friends bewailing their Wardships as an insufferable vassalage could not heartily seek to maintain that power whose subsistence was their ruine to eternity in all their progeny and through the long tract of time it was grown to this that almost any great or rich mens Son must be a Ward all Titles of Lands being so exceedingly intricated that it was almost impossible to clear it and this rigor was never higher then in the daies of this King so that it is evident for a setled Militia for his own defence he had none but had left himself naked to the strokes of any timely opposition Next as he had robbed himself thus of power so had the example of all the Kings in part and the power from jealousie in other part devested the Lords of all power military by dependencies of Knights service The Oathes of homage and fealty the Kings had respited them to enhanse a revenue and the Lords were not willing to urge that which had been so fatall to many their predecessors through their dependencies and being now grown generally loose lazy or worse from the long peace we had enjoyed they had no contests but at Tennis Drinking Dicing or worse sports and sometimes a Law suite These yet sunk many of their estates and they had no waies of raising them but by the Kings sole favour for there were no Lords now that had absolute power in any County this made them wholly quiet and the rather because to be of an active warlike spirit gave cause of jealousie to a Prince especially of any who were not meerly his creatures namely of ancient popular Nobility that is their Ancestors of great repute with the people Many therefore retired themselves lived privately and quietly in respect of the Court but few of them with great love in the Countries where they were resiant carrying too severe a hand towards their Tenants by racking of Farme-rents and otherwaies as Lords of Mannors enhansing fines as all the Gentry also at their own wills enclosing of Commons for private profit and by the evill example both of themselves Servants and Retainers bringing a general Lewdness Looseness ād debauchery in religion and civill manners into all the quarters of the Nation For the Country still at least as far as it may or can imitates the Court and so downward by this means a general almost universal pravity and corruption stole upon and got possession of the English Nation not that I think to speak once for all that England was worse in any respect eirher for civill or Ecclesiastick government then any other Christian kingdom no but that it had departed from that purity of Government which it self held forth and had in some measure exercised yet was then taxed to hold forth little of a true Christian Government at all for first though the Sabboth was held moral yet it was prophaned and that by publique authority as by the book of sports which also gave such a loose to the power of the master of the family that he could not govern by an exact rule that power being before too much broken and this opened a gap to all inordinate walking towards magistracy in other both superior and
forty shillings to the Judge otherwise to the Gaole without mercy of which Gaoles a word after Next this is an ordinary course at least so reported in petty trespasses they declare of course meerly to get Fees upon agreement though they assign no place others having liberty to proceed as they see good and make an end or do any thing which is generally the course of quiet poor people there is favor promised to either party he draws a judgement from his adversary the defendant yet sues on still and brings it down to Trial Per Nisi prius then stops proceedings with saying he will confess a Judgement and enters it the Term after others enter up Judgement without Warrant I have known worse abuses yet but no punishments oft for want of entring a Rule they suffer Judgement Per nihil dicit whereby great and extraordinary Charge accrues to the Client and but small gain to themselves but hereby they pleasure the Officers oft times they plead or confess a Non sum informatus and this without Warrant and then comes out a Judgement unexpected and this dealing is justly suspected of false dealing It was ordinary to enter false Orders false Affidavits imbezle depositions pack Juries draw Witnesses if not make them I know the labour and pains of a faithful and honest Attorney is great and very painful and laborious in running from Office to Office from Clerk to Clerk Officer to Officer Councel to Councel Judge to Judge Court to Court neither do I here question their proceedings who make either Law or constant practice their rule But these rude ignorant young heads who think and make it their way to gain practice to over-reach c. though I in my opinion am as Mountague said of learned Selden an Heretique in the faculty as to the whole managery of the Law who although the Law doth sufficiently provide against which were by the carelesness or faithlesness of the Judges in their trusts through dependance as aforesaid grown to an infinite number beyond what they were I beleeve in the time when by Statute of 33. Hen. the 6. they were limited in Suffolk Norfolk and Norwich where they abounded but they are now bound apprentice to the Trade as well as to tapping whether of wine or beer why not as well to Brothelling and it is thought unjust to put any by his practice though they ruine the Nation by it at least bring a deluge of poverty upon the people Yet these put the Lawyers also upon hard shifts for now the Office of an Attorney is to practice all the parts of a Lawyer he drawes all pleas or generally all but some speciall ones upon some difficult point and in that some one old beaten book-man in a County is famous but for making of Wills and drawing all sorts of conveyances or Covenants with strange niceties of form and cautelous qualifications limitations provisoes and such like none like them they not so much looking at their first trading into reason and solid causes or grounds of things as into the superficial niceties as the readiest way to purchase practice with cunning knaves and most affecting wit and youth and so are drawn into a way of evill before they be aware and after it is hard to reclaim them and for keeping of those pestilences off of England Lords Courts they take all the work which was heretofore the way of educating and bringing into practice the young Lawyer And in these last times there sprung up first under the wings of Noblemen and men of great estate for the help of the Attorney in Judicial Courts but as Attorney in the Prerogative ones a creature called a Sollicitor these men rob both Lawyer and Attorney and all the Subjects They are oft declamed against by the Lawyers but no course taken to restrain them many of them practizing as Attornies under the wing or name of an Attorney what fee he hath thus to abuse the Laws and his own fellow practitioners I know not but many faults and errours are hereby committed and where to fix it is not easily discerned and great men love not to take great pains in such discoveries without exceeding great profit few I fear do justice for the love of justice so that having shifted from Sollicitor present to Attorney absent 't is forgotten if remembred the fault is laid upon the Clerk the Clerk he turns you back again to them instructed him which happily is neither Sollicitor nor Attorney but a stranger unknown or a servant gone But it is objected you have your remedy at Law against an Attorney in any cause against Law So say I but he hath his priviledge that spares charges he hath councel for nothing and cunning so called knavery to boot And lastly the Judge must as much as may be favour a servant of the Court that is he shall have all lawful favour and the other all lawful disfavour and put any Lawyer to sue an Attorney upon these terms and the Attorney will undoe him To pass over the nicety of going to issue pleading specially when the generall issue would serve the turn or such like nor to shew how many several sorts of delayes the several Courts admit I shall shortly come to the tryal which is either in the ordinary set places as the Courts at Westminster or per nisi prius where there is such hudling shuffling quircks of law unequal hearing and both for honour as the Kings or Queens Councel order as Benchers c. except favour step in and then the son of a Iudge or Kinsman c. must make all the Councel attend till he speaks nothing to the purpose too too often so that I have heard wise and learned men profess they were ashamed to see great men and Favourites manage the business out of all order and rule of law while they knowing in practice as they term it that is versed in the Ministery of the cause could not be heard a word as if they were retained only to hold the paper and cry My Lord 't is truth there is another reason in it which is they have such multitude of Councel that all cannot speak and the great men must speak best reason for have not the Prince the choyce Some indeed either would be heard through boldness or must be heard through necessity as undertaking Cases which others either durst not or could not as Holborn with that noble Judge the Lord Chief Iustice St. John in the Case of Ship Mony and this was a step to advancement if they shewed ability and could turn with the tide or were thought fit of for some other by-respect as to have their mouthes stopped against Prerogative and opened as far as the Law would admit for the Kings advantage Thus were learned Calthorp engaged and the foresaid now Lord St. John though as I have to his honour be it spoken heard it credibly affirmed he denyed to be the Kings Servant upon the Lords day at
Councel Table pardon this necessary digression both here and in many other places purposely done to avoid treating of these things by themselves so that unless the Iudge were very wise and resolute having these so many traps he might ore-slip something how just soever his intentions were and the Lawyer might by the like means be drawn to some errour in point of Legal advice as well as the Attorney in practice for 't is evident or will be hereafter manifested that to gain a certainty of Law we ran into all incertainty that might be To speak of the errours of the Judges servants and their Marshals abusing both Law Judge and Countrey for expedition money and taking what fees they list and new Fees though it be material yet carrying with it the assured errour of his master who ought to know it better then the Countrey can tell I willingly pass it over but must insert that seldome a Jury is legally pannelled or if legally having outward legal qualifications yet not knowing men able to discern into the now used course of evidence for it is pitty to see if not pre-ingaged which is too too often they generally either follow the fore-man or hearken to such a Councellour or else are tyed to what the Iudge seems to incline to when he repeats the evidence which to avoid such leadings might be spared but in the confusion of the Councels thwartings if not false speakings and mis-recitals in their so claimed due of summing up the evidence cannot be wel forborn without a greater mischief then the other possible yet seldome seen palpable inconvenience I might evidence the same course of unrighteousness in all subsequent proceedings till execution but I haste These with hundreds of more common abuses in the Law which did indeed render both Law and Lawyers odious for this was grown usuall to get by any means or having gotten though justly to keep by any means and hold play with the others estate for they could upon a Bond for example drive off with good words a quiet man and fore-handed or a poor man or Orphan in regard of their relyance upon the penalty which in regard of the possible evils was now grown double as 200. l. for 100. l. five or six years or more then plead non est factum that is it was not their deed the Witnesses happily dead and no other or difficult circumstance appearing Verdict is either lost or hardly gained if it be a small sum and the Verdict against the Plaintiff he is not able to get any advantage but by renuing suit in Chancery to put him to his oath where the charges is so great he is undone If the Verdict go on his side then there is motion for stay of judgement to delay if that over-ruled then a Writ of Errour if that over-ruled then the Cause is not sent by the Iudges or Iustices to the Chancery upon a sight of the equity of the cause as the ancient Law in Edward the 3. was or seems to be but of course to delay except the Plaintiff dye in the time and then all is lost without hope of recovery and the Chancery by right is held not to have any cognizance of any case under 20. l. as if no conscience or equity were allowable in lesser matters where the falsity of formal customary surmizes be such that the simplicity that is sincerity or plain righteous dealing of the first Heathen Law-givers severely punished when they first instituted complaints to be in writing punishing him that complained of what he could not prove O the excessive unwarrantable proceedings in false suggestions and surmizes yet by these with such like practize in proceeding as in the beginning the cause may grow to 7 8 10 12 20. years continuance although the late Lord Littleton who dyed in the strife betwixt loyalty so called to his King and to the Commonwealth and was vanquished by personal respects did openly profess at his call to that high and honourable imployment in his speech in the Court at his taking the place That he had heard causes had depended there 12. years but knew no cause they should depend 13. moneths and resolved then to speed an end of all lasting causes and began with Peaeocks But when the Barr began to grow thin I say not he changed his mind but his course pretence of other business drew him like others before him to hasty hearings half hearings references and subitane Orders which with the laziness of Iudges and Masters of the Chancery but especially the wickedness of Clerks and Registers is the squeeze of the Subjects purse for all men know who have had any experience in the world that the Register makes the Order rather then the Iudge A chief means of continuing which evil is next after the want of due care of the Iudges to read the Order fair written before he rise want of a set stipend while he by more work gets more gain The last is want of sharp and speedy punishment of an offender this makes Orders past the ordinary length and infinitely beyond the rule of Justice in Tale above 40 Orders in a case Mr. Noy or I am deceived moved before the Lord Keeper Coventry when he durst say that was Kings Attorney my Lord I move upon the 49 Order to my best remembrance so that the by-word was upon a suit in Chancery you have gotten into a sute of Buff These things never pierced the conscience of these men they followed the example of their predecessors and grew by degrees worse and worse and thus it was also upon all other proceedings at Law in all Courts whether upon criminal causes or other offences against the publike or civil Laws so called or between person and person another evil was both in law and equity the priviledge first of places then of persons That of places partly arising from Order so called Divine that is from the Relative and similitudinary holiness of the Temple And therefore as the Churches were in the time of Popery and now new pleaded for Popery as the Cities of refuge of old and the so called Clergy still as aforesaid Idolatrously continued with us so other places were now priviledged and made the Sanctuaries for offenders which were the shelter for all insolencies tumults disorders and wickedness which places were first of separate or special jurisdiction as Cathedrals Minsters and such other liberties arising from pretended Ecclesiastick Right and Title under the Hierarchie Papal The other was of the Kings Court Lords Houses Inns of Court and Chancery the Seminaries as they ought to be of good Government and singular examples of order the persons priviledged were the King whose person the Laws as lately expounded had generally freed from all censure and purged all taints by the Crown and punishing his absolute Ministers was laboured much against now the reason of this was to uphold what was gained and to gain what might be for the King therefore the Lords as
the King must have their priviledge and as the King must not be sued but by Petition a Royal cheat so the Lords must not be arrested but by prayer a Noble flattery but a most grand abuse arose from this for much cost did many bestow to get the King Queen and Lords into their debt who never gained more then undoing the recompence of foolery by their knaveries and multitudes of debtors and trespassors bearded Law and Justice both Now for Judges Counsellors Attorneys Lawyers of all sorts or pretenders thereto the other persons priviledged they stuck together like brethren so that hard it was to pinch them especially two the Judge for his power and the Attorney for his priviledges but of this before sufficient for the present intention Thus were all matters in distast as to the great and principal ruling part of the Commonwealth and head and heart thus sick the body sure was in a distemper for all the Courts indeed from the County Court to the Court of Pypowder which I think is one at least of the lowest followed the track in proportion of all the tricks quiddities niceties of unjust dilatory and expensive lawing used in the high so called and supream Courts of judicature I shall but hint the abuse in Witnesses there being now grown visibly many more just exceptions against men then the old Laws allowed But the great evil in all Courts was and is that the indeed common and most ordinary questions were not determined and setled Matters of Accompt matters of Covenant which hold partly an equitable partly a legal right determinations of litigious questions in Wills as in case of a name mistaken in case of a gift given to a child payable under age who shall acquit the party that payes it nay indeed the ancient law concerning acquittances real and personal to me seems lost To ravel all and shew the utmost of absurdity error and perversness grown upon our Courts Lawes and Lawyers is not by one pen to be declared all is out of order I will cease to tell what all know and complain of there is nothing sought but riches and honour by what means soever I wish the Seats of Judgement had been clear of receiving moneys so called Dammage clear which shortly is thus A man sues and recovers now by the Law there is a supposall and but a supposall if that be to be supposed which is well known to the contrary that the Recoverer hath his debt or his damage and costs of suit now the first Law holding forth and looking at a kind of equity if the suit were for so small a matter that it exceed not 3. li. 6. s. 8. d. recovered then it took nothing but if it were more then it took two shillings upon every pound Now although I suppose at the original this was or ought to have been a sufficiency to have tryed the Cause and to be added to the Judgement and paid by the Defendant yet now it comes only to the Master of the Office who assigns Costs upon the Judgement and this is paid before Execution which the party happily never lives to see performed this was as to a moity allowed in the Upper Bench. But in the Term called Easter Term 1649. it was as an oppression taken off by the Judges a small beginning to a great work but fit to operate the clean contrary way but is still continued in the so called Common Pleas. In probate of Wills and suing out Administrations to whom it belongs whether accomptable if divers children or the wife to have all or the eldest child all and the rest nothing with a thousand other things are so difficult in Law though easie in Reason as cannot but be the wonder of any one that sets himselfe to consider it Now to speak a little of the Titles by way of Feofment or bargain and sale what a world of difficulty in them I dare say never a Lawyer in England can especially in the most excellent tenure of the land assure to any man a good Title neither Knight nor Lord and all arose First from the want of care in Judges authorized to enact Laws who heard of cheatings and yet gave no stop for this is sure he that is able and sells not for need but for conveniency to better himself otherwhere will not deceive grosly because he knows it brings scandal as much as charge and trouble though his conscience be but loose but the poor needy Prodigal that drinks away thrift and hardly knows and little cares what he does he it is that falls upon this trick and he first entayles then mortgages then sells The entayle is setled by the wives friends to secure the estate to her and her children they keep this secret but to keep their credit they will not borrow the money nor commonly witness the Mortgage Thus hath he all his deeds and the discent appears fair or the bequest 't is sold to redeem the Mortgage the deeds and state all parts from the Mortgage and the buyer thinks himself secure but is cheated and the Statute of fraudulent conveyances shall not help c. and all the recompence he hath is the Creditors body if he can catch it Lands so setled pay no debts Another way of cheat is the Statute of Uses setling of estates in trust to deceive making long Leases and such like This filled the world with infinite jangles and although an easie and speedy remedy were proposed both to King James and the late King yet the interest of the Lawyers being now made subservient to Prerogative all was quashed so that the Land was filled with multitudes of oppressions cruelties cheatings and extortions and no remedy and the Lawyers only enriched thereby with the Officers of Courts upon long tedious and intricated controversies they were also vexed with old sleeping judgements which no time being set unto it was the fashion to keep money in hand upon a purchase to clear incumbrances and that kept was seldome paid for to say there was no encomber amid so many wayes was difficult to swear it to no end but to prove it impossible thus if an honest seller met with a knave a rich and contentious or contentious buyer only he gat it not or so that he had as good have lost it So for Annuities Rents c. Again for conveying there was livery and seisin the supposed absolute strength a fine and the late passage by enrolment yet none of these absolutely certain for the fine though strongest and the five years limited passed yet if the seller had no right at the time as many had not being neither heir purchaser nor possessor the fine wrought not yet this not to be discovered by all the writings produced which shewed good title the livery voided per some prior lease and the enrolment not done in due time Indeed almost all good Statutes are by the loosness of Judges invalidated for so soon as honest men provide
many come from the Parliament to him as well as went with him there he erects or allowes a new Parliament And by their advice as his Parliament at Oxford demands Treaty with his Parliament at Westminster which they reject and at last the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal London indeed stood true to them which by its Vicinity to the Parliament and infinite populacy awed all other parts they had a sence of former sufferings under the power of Kings they had a deep sence of the extremities the godly and most piously affected people suffered in all parts of the Nation and how far the vicinity of the Court and Archbishop of Canterbury had violated their Christian Liberty prevailing over the quiet spirit of their Bishop was though little not forgotten they therefore generally followed the Parliament especially stirred up by their Ministers as having in hand the cause of God The King he brands them all with Declarations of Rebellion and taxing them with seeking his life and the rooting out of his Posterity They answer that they were so far from seeking his life as that they should labour by all means possible to defend and protect the same their just Rights and Priviledges preserved and for his satisfaction cause the Nation generally to enter the like Protestation this not satisfying but it being still urged by the King that the Protestation was but to establish their own power not secure his fears While their Armies were in the field against the King they answered They were only on the defensive part and such indeed was the Generals Commission and that they could not but according to their trusts preserve the Laws and Rights of the Nation Hereupon they open the Law that the King was indeed but the chief trusted person and that for his peoples sake that of this not he only but they also and more especially being congregate into a body were to judge that his failings past demonstrate his ends contrary to publike interest and resolve that even the Law of Nature taught self-preservation and that it was too too visible he intended an usurpation upon their just Priviledges That they desired his preservation so it might consist with the Weal-publick and therefore desired him to leave the company of evill men so called his Counsellors who mis-led him and to adhere to his great Councel and promised to make him on these terms the most Glorious King that ever was in these Nations and now a diverse part appearing upon several grounds and opinions amid the Members of the House the prevailing party to firm the union betwixt the Scots and them more strongly whose assistance they had had all this while in the work they frame a Covenant which held forth security and glory to the King and his posterity in endeavouring to settle Church and State upon the firm foundations of Justice and righteousness which taken in Scotland is transmitted hither and they by Parliament made brethren and this is tendred to the King to sign being first taken solemnly by the principal of the Nation with this condition That if the King agreed with them in it they would still not only acknowledge him their King but make him more glorious c. But this was so penned in such general terms that an absolute Royalist might well take it for it was intended by the some I say not the many by the leaders not the followers but as a measure to try the stretch of every mans judgement opinion or interest many no doubt took it cordially many formally some strictly some loosely but though this were not only taken but urged yet Armies were continued against the King as he said in the field against his evil Councel as they said 't is truth their evil Councel was now his the Lesson of absolute power and to be like his Brethren the rest of the Kings who had joyned interest with the Whore of Rome made him not only hold correspondence with that Beast not only at bed and board but Councel also as far as served his interest who undoubtedly aimed to rule in all things according to his own Will which Will yet should have had Regulations but still with such dependence upon his Judgement that he being the speaking Law would have had no Interpreter that should be able to cross him and his determination and so the Law must have spoken in all things to his lust or he would have made it and this he thought and I am perswaded believed to be the undoubted right of all Princes though their people as his in case of contest between competitors for the Soveraignty might wring something from them of Grants or Charters or so called priviledges or immunities which yet he believed they could no more grant to the prejudice of the Crown that is of the heirs and successors in the Kingdom then things sacred to God could be imployed to prophane uses This doctrine admitted which I dare avow was and can prove sufficiently by Witnesses yet alive That our late King Charls said these words openly upon a Hearing Mr. Hern I have heard what you have said What do you talk to me of Law Justice or Conscience according to all which Mr. Herne alledged the Patent signed by his Majesty to be I tell you said the King there is nothing in England shall stand that is not for my profit There stands one pointing to Sir John Banks then Attorney General who had hundred of pounds many I have heard for the work and drew the Patent shall bring a quo warranto against the Patent and see then what you will do Now take notice this Patent was of the new invention of Salt and opposed the Monopoly at the Sheilds under the favor of deservedly beheaded Hambleton and the Inventor not complying with the Kings Interest against the priviledge of the Subject the King brake not onely his private word with him contrary to particular engagements under his Hand carried by Sir Charls Herbert but also his publike word as King this sentence being so ruinous to the man made the Worme speak and said Sir Dare you be a King and be thus unjust I never read of Tyrant said so what ever he did or words of like effect whereupon Lord Dorcet with a great oath by his Maker as I express it said loe and if it please your Majesty these are your prick-eared Rogues the Tub-preachers and indeed he was a Zealot these are they will pluck you out of your Throne unless you dethrone them I pray take not this Lord for a Prophet unless like Caiaphas This word I could not but insert for conscience sake as a firm Index and testimony of his reall intentions This kept him off from closing with his Parliament and the rather because they insisted to have the Sword in their power for so many years or during his life tenderness of him caused the Parliament to venture far for it could not by this sole defensive way but protract the
otherwise received by the vulgar and multitude The Independent so called being burthened both by Bishop and Presbyterian with all calumnies as the Presbyterian being envied much by the Bishop being as his Opponent and by all their followers and that just as the Papists had in the first Reformation branded the Church so called of England governed by Bishops but denying the Supremacy of the Pope and therefore cursed by them as Hereticks Schismaticks Adulterers yea Heathens for by their rule we had no Ministry no Sacraments and so consequently no Church because not holding of their head the Pope And in the word of a Christian so doth the consequence of the Episcopal and Presbyterian Doctrine brand the Congregational way for they say no Ministry but so derived as by Succession from the Apostles and that admitted they must hold none have power to administer the Sacraments They all differ also about Government in the Church the Bishop and Presbyterian much what alike both indeed making the officers of the Church the Church as Rome doth so as the Church taking the Government solely into themselves count all other Christians as Lay-men they had as good say Heathens if throughly scanned and they onely the Clergy the Priests of the living God so indeed claim a magisterial power by the same Rules Order Arguments and Distinctions and Differences as Rome doth yea over the Supream Magistrate making him their rod of iron to thresh the Nations that is all opposers of their Classical Edicts These men gave the Magistrate no more power then the Pope for as he so they were the Church the holy ones the Saints at least representative To these men at first gave great regard but many wise Heathen Lay-men feared these mens unskilful lording it over the Lords Inheritance for they presumed these rash Novices in civil Discipline would drive higher then the Bishops who had gone before them Surely if the Bishops men trained up at the Courts of Princes after they came out of the Halls of Lords for the Chaplains of great men came generally to Episcopal Thrones or Chairs and so had still had a reflection upon the order of civil Government and had undoubtedly improved their natural as well as so called spiritual Talent if they had lost themselves and ruined Government through error in Judgement c. or dependance what would these who came but from the Pedantical Tyranny of the Universities and foolish idiotisms of puer-putes I intend this to meer Scholars and give them but their own language which I presume they cannot but apprehend These considerations made the Parliament at Westminster while yet unshattered otherwise then by defection base unworthy defection they should as men have had resolutions worthy their trusts but their cause it seems gave no courage at first to declare against these powers of Parishional Presbyteries to this effect that they did not intend to raise nine thousand odd hundred Seats of Judgement or Judicatories that is so many as there were Parishes of England the least of which should have more power then the Parliament of England And I think few men knowing but will agree that the name onely of Bishop should have been suspended or extinguished but the same power yea that so called by the Presbyter unjust being exercised by the Bishop the preheminence being now in the Presbytery the same had been allowed and indeed it pleased God so farto give way that these men were throughly tryed for the Parliament did not seeing all at once constitute Elderships to be chosen and improved some men whether intentionally as supposing that Discipline best or so called politickly to discover their temper I determine not But these men presently fall hot upon the work and what had but just before ruined their predecessors the Bishops and been their stumbling stone namely the Non-Conformity of the now called Presbyter becomes the Presbyters rock of offence against the so now called Independents And to assure this after the manner of the Apostate Church they call for the secular power or the power of the secular Sword and an Act was said to be prepared they talked much of it That Non-Conformists should have a liberty to bear office either in Church or Commonwealth It is truth the rigidity of some its probable seeking not onely the Supremacy of power but an addition of wealth for by them also were sought outward honor riches Lay-power so called and what else was of the old Babels trash to adorn the Church and by them called the Churches Rights bounding it to the so called Priesthood was by these as much eyed as by the veriest Babylonian in the world and the Commonwealth of England still made the Stalking-horse to their lucre and the base men of a rout of people so called also Cleri or Clergy men in whom if St. Paul left the Qualifications right set down were rather the Priests of Bacchanals if not of Bacchus then Pastors of rightly constituted Congregations and these altogether take advantage of an Ordinance made for Tythes to give the denied treble damages they also upon the same grounds get Acts Orders or Ordinances for uniting Parishes and could inform untruths for advantage which appearing the union is for malice not conscience of the complainer dissolved for could the persecutor have had his Tythes but for half value all had been whist but the Priest saw not where such agreement would rest he might undo the Church that is his Successor by that means Wills Probation fixed as they were under an incertain irregular way and illegal till established they continued the Marriage of persons as a Sacrament to be the proper work of the Priests Baptizing Infants the eighth day held if not by the wisest yet by the most of necessity to salvation Yea some held That the Sacrament of the Lords Supper was a converting Ordinance and so to be administred to all to whom the Gospel was to be preached namely the most prophane of any This to many seemed rather an allowance Politick then Religious to gain a party then to give forth a principle untill some leaders were found publickly to avow the Tenent but this licentiousness lost them the best and most considerable party I shall not further wade in these Controversies nor had I gone thus far could I have otherwayes well cleared what is to follow Namely that the Magistrate eyed these Tenets as sorting with or against his interest and accordingly seemed to allow or disallow The Presbyter struck so high at the root of Magistracy making them their meer Executioners and bringing by Text of old Law what was given to the Priests more imperiously into the Cleri and on the other side the so called Erastian giving all to the Magistrate not as of the Church or in the Church but meerly from the Civil Jurisdiction and totall subjection of the whole course of so called Priests unto the meer will of the Magistrate either by doing or suffering not allowing an
of the day in the wisdom and power of mans strength did the Lord give such a signall Victory as being wisely followed and improved the Kings party were never able to make head again but their severall parties in the severall Counties were partly by the Scot keeping them on work by diversions The English Generall neither Winter nor Summer gave any stop till England had but two Armies the mercinary so called of Scots and the other of English And the King Oxford now only left unto him was enforced to try his then last shift namely to betake himself to the Scot having a strong Army before Newark thereby to engage a quarrel as is more then evident to all by whom he is presently upon the surrender of the place carried back to New-Castle and they wisely finding the difficulties attending them in case they should carry him personally into Scotland upon a Treaty deliver him up to the English and what was altogether unexpected return into their own Land what engagements to a return I know not And now the Presbyterian party so called fly high indeed and urge execution to the highest of the settlement of their own Interest having no other publick enemy bandy against their brethren in the Lords War the generality of the English was for them the so called Independents being esteemed by the many as the Christians of old actors of all impurities and their fry of Confederates the Sectaries but as so many legions of Divels sent into the world to give a stop to the erection of the glorious Kingdom of the Lord Christ Jesus and sure some in their zeal would have thought they had done God good service to have killed them I can in my private thoughts compare their condition to none better then that of the Israelites when they had the Sea before them and an Army behind them and were in the wilderness I know the passion of many a soul when after all their travails for Liberty from the yoak so called of the Bishops Tyranny they found themselves ground to powder under the Milstone of the Presbyters Rigidity and all this for conscience sake for the Presbyter began according to the old Rule with Church work and that was and ever will be long work especially where men take it upon them without the Lord the builder builds in vain From this the Commonwealth being still as over-burthened as before the distastes were great against the present Governors still as before the galled back seeks ease let the plaister cover or saddle be not only gilt but gold This opens a way to the oppressed for the righteous and just ends of the undertaking of this war being held forth that the ends of the Covenant as looking at Gods glory the peoples good and the just Rights of the King were not ever intended to be denyed but the pretended ends namely thereby to ensnare the consciences of men by self-ended glosses or the banishing their persons and confiscation of their goods not for neglect of civil obedience but not conforming to the opinion of others when as yet it was professed that grace was the free gift of God that the rules of prudence or earnall policy had no ground in Gods Word if prudence only might rule why not the Popes and Bishops as well as the Presbyters and to enforce conscience with the Sword of the Scot was as evil as the Mace of a German These and the like matters dispersed abroad and especially in the Army some Regiments rowze and head and notwithstanding all possible endeavors of the Parliament both at London and in the Counties the whole Army is fixed and both with life and Armes meet at the Rendezvouz and engage to prosecute the just ends of Liberty or to obtain the just Liberty of the people and hereabout the name of Levellers first arose part of the Army actually seize the Kings person at Holmby and now the active Grandees of the ruling party so called Presbyterian are accused of high Treason The King is under the custody of the Army and all means endeavoured I beleeve to make him instrumentall to the ends propounded to themselves how far their Treaty proceeded or what obligations were on either side were and are to me private I can take them to be but politick Transactions with respects to their mutuall respective or particular Interests and no further carried on but that either party had their safeguard their way and place of retreat But to proceed there was much spoken now of the Scots return and many agitations a great body was enforced to attend the King And he of a politique head was much catching and drawing and it is likely that his great knowledge where he met with true conscience not equally gifted he must prevail for prevention of which and other evils he I beleeve by stratagem and over-reach was brought to carry himself into the Isle of Wight where five hundred could do more then ten thousand otherwhere but see this brings greater preplexities for many now wearied with war and its effects of all sorts or so pretending taking advantage of the Armies opposing of disbanding cry out there can be no peace while there is an Army and though it is truth they were not a meer mercinary Army but raised by Parliament under the notion of engagement as free men for their own just Rights Yet it was plain their Interest was now grown wholly into the Army and that experience shewed there could be no just settlement while the Sword was unsheathed That they intended nothing but to take away property and introduce confusion and were Levellers haters of all Justice so that now the Souldier was enforced to stand upon his own guard London was opposite her Trade was decayed her Assessments great and all places filled with complaints The weaker party in Parliament being sedulous and crying up the Common good got not only many hearts but had enwoven many strong dependants into principal places of Trust and Office both at Sea and Land so that all that the mighty men could do was only to plot but they could not bring to effect The Army was before much admired for complying with the King and who so high against them as the Presbyter O they treated indeed it was the success however carried they maligned sure I am they opposed not the thing for they acted higher in it then ever did the other but to prepare for the work about the eleventh of June 1647. The London Apprentices so called made the foulest breach unto the Liberty of England that ever was forcing away the Speaker and all partaking with the Interest of the Army and the residue of the Members to testifie their contrivance of the fact choose a new Speaker and declare them at Windsor the head-Quarters of the Army whither the Speaker and divers Parliament men were fled or retired a meer Juncto as the Parliament of Westminster and the Assembly at Oxford had before mutually declared
therein still and these successes against him whom God would cast down engaged them the more speedily to effect their intentions and enact a disbanding of the Army lest the Army should disband them This hastens the Armies march to London I am consident altogether unresolved what to do the work which God now called them to was higher then ever and the presages were the ruine either of London the Army or both certainly there were many who would have put it to the Tryal but the Citizens wisely considering that the multitude of discontented persons poor and necessitous were as great if not greater dangers within then the Army without and that lose they what they could by compliance they must lose more by opposition they admit the General The Parliament is now shattered many of the Members being taken and imprisoned are declared as guilty of the bringing in the Scots and might as well if not better of the several mutinies in England on the Land and defection of the Ships at Sea London is now Garrisoned the Arrears which were great there intending by want of pay if possible to dishearten the Souldier are strictly ordered and the Seat of the beast there that is Pauls Church the Cathedral made a Court of Guard and such Members as would avow the proceedings with the King excluded the House Ireland all this while was to the Parliament almost as it hath been with me a thing not regarded but now there are thoughts of that and the Army setled under a certain number with a settlement of pay respectively and order taken for the settling the Navy and Generals sent forth there is great thoughts of the necessity of doing Justice mens minds had run no higher generally then happily to bring a Lord or two to the block but lo God raiseth mens spirits to that height and brings them to it by degrees that they bring even the King himself to the Barr of Justice O that every heart may tremble at the work of the Lord he hath here manifested his power let all Princes tremble Charls of England the best of Kings I may admit but the worst of all other men for none hath such obligations is the example No Nation had the like mercies with England the hand of heaven had planted and watered us we were grown rich our eyes stared with fat and our bodies sweat under the pride of apparel but our Religion was formal and all our improvement of outward mercies were to licentiousness the poor were naked idle and unprovided for the Law held forth righteousness but the Judges and Ministers made it crooked or broken the rich men only were imployed the honour of Magistracy was rich clothes and a full Table but they were too good to take pains Now O all you Magistrates see God hath plucked him out who was prayed for as the light of your life and the breath of your nosthrils the fountain of your so called Honours your Idoll and hath broken off not only the palms of his hands and his feet but by the Sword of the Lord hath cut off his head as an offender against the Laws which he was entrusted to be the chief Keeper of I write it when I still see with grief men great in riches able in parts think scorn to be left out of Offices and places of trust as neglected but put them in and if they have nothing else to do they think that a work below them I avow it just if God should turn them out of all and set the Plough-man to be their Lord but I see yet no Justice for man to do it yet that they should be punished is most just but of this more seasonably afterwards men that will may see God in this and admire I know many pious Christians enemies to this Act who yet adhered to the Parliament in all the Wars and contributions thereto against the King yea in the offensive one but their stick is the Covenant I would have such rest content 〈◊〉 their own innocency in the fact they might have opposed if then they resisted not let them now be silent seeing the Lord is high in judgement That party of Parliament who transacted the affairs of State now still keeping the name of the Parliament though assisted with or guarded by the Army and in that saving to us our due Rights and Liberties of equal Law and property After this fatall Sentence proceeds to the sentencing of others both of high and low estate and enact the alteration of the State of the Nation from a Monarchy the Government being grown wholly confused the due regulation of the Prince the priviledges of Parliament and the liberty of the Subject being rather not to be distinguished then destinguished rather treated on in the Schools then by themselves and our Laws though the ignorance of them excused no man by the Judges or Senate then by the many concerned whether Executioners as Justices of the Peace inferior Judges Constables c. or the poor multitude yea all our Cities and Boroughs lost in their Franchises and Towns lawless in all kinds so that there was a kinde of legall levelling or theevery grown common Was it not high time for the Parliament of England to step up God raised up some spirits and but a few they attempted high matters feared not the frown of a King nor the combinations of all neighbour Princes which was threatned but resolved to establish the work God set them about And I let them to know God hath plained the way unto them there is no opposition but Self they have been Gods instruments for great works and must be yet for greater success doth not always demonstrate the truth God may suffer them in many errors for one good sake What he intends I determine not but may conjecture that themselves saw God Almighty intended an alteration of that frame of Government which was in this Nation What to settle is their work and how to oppose this settlement was now the endeavour some things I fear in the many Counterbuffs which God had given were taken to oppose which were never so intended though they might be tendered inopportunely and under the time of the grand design of Petitioning As namely some Petitions which though not burned by the hands of the Hangman as that was presented to the ungarbled House yet it was for some things it may be justly distasted in the whole disowned and called or rather miscalled as seditious by some interessed persons to render the whole odious Rainsborough is slain and no due enquiry into his death or Sir H. Cholmleys supposed compliance with the Pomfreteers This in an unsetled State where though faith was highly known and pretended to on both sides little was acted by the parties controverting but as men adopted enemies to new attempts and that from grounds given forth plausible enough for the Engagements at New-Market and Triploe-Heath c. were made the outside of the design The matter proposed
of God that Christ had not destroyed this Law he came to fulfill it And lastly they enforced this from the rule of reason If man had no boundary to his Reason no rule to make his Law by reason would be infinite which error had been the foundation of so many dreadful alterations as States had suffered under in such clymaterick revolutions as now this Nation laboured under and therefore they desired the drawing of Englands Laws to their primitive rule namely the Judicials This was objected against by others who yet desired a rule of righteousness alledging that if this were the Rule then it must be all so or but part not all for the Ceremonial Law being the shadow fled away at the coming of Christ in the body and that the Church of Rome had done evil yea that it was the foundation and root of their so dangerous Apostacy to carry the shadow along with the body for from thence had come their high power of the Pope their sacring of Churches as well as persons their Altars Trinckets c. their Jubiles Pardons Indulgences c. Canonical hours holy Vestments and all the rest of their trash and that one admitted all would follow and as the entertaining the amusive or formal part of worship into religious services had under the supremacy of the Ecclesiastick power defiled Church and Commonwealth taking away all sence of inward serious conscionable moral duty as well as religious and resting only in the exterior form either the pomp of the action or the act it self So now in the reformation of the Ecclesiastick power by the Magisterial Civil power the Commonwealth would at last lay the foundation of a new defilement to the Church and that this might be was too too evident by the precedent example So that we should but change the Tables and keep the false Dice still which would never better our game and therefore they said that unless there could be shewed exactly which part of the Judicials by an infallible word and that as given by Moses that is not as confirmed by Christ or his Apostles was the rule of Christian duty they would take none at all as so given for if man were Judge of a part of that Law how agreeable to the Nation whereof he or they were rulers then of all and if so then as good take pure reason not contrary to the Law of Christ and his Apostles but founded rather upon his Doctrine in the general rule though the particular application might vary in respect of circumstances so not rejecting the judicials but not taking them as obligatory as given to the Jew the people of God or typing out all Christian Nations or an Ensign of the faith but as a wise Law yea the wisest as being the dictates of the prime wisdom the same God that the Christians worshipped they not only admitted but desired such as were consonant to Christian reason to be established amongst us There were some particular contentions as first for Tythes secondly Appeals next the Sabboth then Theft not to be death then Adultery and Blasphemy to be death and these were things of principal Interest indeed But the Interest in part which discredited the whole was so visible as I cannot allow it though I may them who sought the thing as afflicted in spirit seeing the want of conscience in multitudes thinking ill of all called Ministers for some evil mens sakes open prophanation of the Sabboth by those professed a Sabboth and by the last Act restrained in part and left in other part as loose as before petty Theft death yet in the same State common and manifest Adultery go without any punishment or question all for want of a rule for we hear of long debates about it and Swearing and Blasphemy almost as ordinary as speaking yet proof made difficult and punishment easie but no conscience of reforming for few thought it a sin for the great men and the wise men were most guilty and gloried in it so that it was evident that as some sought the re-establishment of the old frame of Government and that both in Church so called and State according to the old pattern of the Erroneous Church or Apostacy of Rome founding upon the equity and useful allusion so called of the Mosaical Judicials and Ceremonials some nothing but confusion so others desired one wholly new avoiding all the errors which corrupt interests had introduced and that not only because the way of Error was before tracked and therefore easie to be trodden anew but as being builded upon a false foundation as well as by time and error corrupted and perverted Some of these though holding the truth were by a part of themselvs supposed to be in an error while presuming upon the wonderful mercies the Lord had bestowed upon them they were over-rash in their desires of a change for the evident symptomes of unavoidable ruine say they threaten us the multitude of interests are so divers and contrary how few are there to manage such a work not one to ten if one to an hundred this were to tempt God To expect miracles in a day when miracles cease God bade the Jew not destroy all their enemies at once lest the beasts should prevail against them it may hold forth the simplicity of the Dove but not the subtilty of the Serpent which is requisite in this case for you see say they what a contest hath been with the single interest of the Clergy and the scattered fry of their corrupt Courts but if you engage against all the remainders of them with the numerous off-spring of all Courts as of Judges Serjeants Counsellors Sollicitors Attorneys Protho-notaries Secondaries Clerks of the Crown Clerks of Assise Clerks of the Exigents Clerks of the Papers Clerks of the Warrants Clerks of the Essoyne Clerks of the Juries Clearks of the Pipe Clerke of the Kings silver Clerks of the Seal Clerk of the Peace Custos brevium Chyrographers Fillizer Marshals Cryers Waiters Chancellors Remembrancers Six Clerks Registers Comptrollers of the Seal Examiners Clerk of the Hamper Clerk of the petty Bag Cursiters Serjeants of the Mace Ushers of the Court Clerks in nature of ordinary Attorneys with many more and all these having their adherents for which of these but come in under some corrupt interest or other But generally the chief in Offices at least of profit as Judges Serjeants Councellors Advocates Doctors Proctors Attorneys Six Clerks Clerks of Assize c. are all the younger Brethren or sons of Lords or of their Families however of the greatest Gent. and of the Parliament men themselves and setled by the Bastard so called the Conquerour upon a politick Maxime That the Land in England being appointed for the safeguard of the Kingdom might not be brackled away therefore as all the Land went to the eldest these were the wayes of educating and maintaining the younger make them Lawyers and make the Laws dubious Offices plentiful and there would be as
so used which liberty being much abused the parties who upon the heat of the blood that is while the injury was fresh complained were bound over by Recognizance to prosecute for the King and so were the Witnesses but if the party or the Witnesses should refuse it it might much be scrupled what by our Law ought to be done to inforce them justly but Custome hath prevailed to go by steps The places of Trial of Crimes are either the Ordinary as Kings-Bench or Statute-Sessions or the Extraordinary and yet Ordinary viz. the Commissions of Oyer and Ter. and Gaol Delivery carried down alwayes with the Iustices of Nisi Prius at the Assizes or the legal Extraordinary which were an assotiation of more men then ordinary according to the novelty and exigency of the cause most legally and usually made up of all the Iudges of all the Benches and no other and heard in the Checkquer Chamber Now these are not to be scrupled in themselves the other and which are extraordinary and scrupled as illegal are meer Royal Commissioners consisting of Iudges Lords and other men according to the pleasure of the prime Magistrate and these were rare and but in case of great offences or doubts of imminent at lest so pretended concernment And there were two Causes the one professed which was the resolution of many wise men sworn to do right according to Law betwixt the King or State and the Subject who by concurrent Votes assured the interest of either party and surely were the Law by which they judged as plain and evident as the reason or foundation of their extraordinary judgements there would be no exception but the fear heretofore on the peoples part which is the ground to the present jealousies was in respect that Commissions pretended of that nature were aiding to the inchroaching vertue of the Supream Power to the advance of Prerogative especially after King James had made the Iudges which were the leaders in both these powers his meer Creatures by absolute dependance in altering their Patents as aforesaid from during their well abearing to during his pleasure How the Iudges Patents are now I know not but except the present condition of affairs make that now lawful which in it self is not surely such Arbritrary Patents are introductive of the heights of vassalage for if they in each Punctilio advance not the intendments and interests on foot of the Supream Magistrate be it good or evil for God or against Liberty or Bondage A Writ of Ease is next to be expected and that engages to the slander of every malitious enemy and he now lies open to the lash of every accuser especially if any litigious person hath been overthrown before him O how the man bustles and now is his time for revenge our eys have seen this and this I suppose to be the ground of fears of such Commissions I willingly avoid Ravelling Controversies upon presidents which in our Laws are so many and so diverse each from other and multitudes so contrary each to other as supream or most excellent reason must bear sway and then the arbitrium of the Commission will not be so much the question as the Law by which judged If it be objected against the adjoyning in Royal Commissions that they are nor Lawyers nor Iudges in Ordinary but Merchants c. I say there lies an Appeal to Parliament from any Court Ordinary or Extraordinary which receives Commission under the Parliaments Authority If it be objected they are meerly the States Pentioners then the Argument is against the Supream Magistrate mediately against their Iudges immediately and is remedied by appeal but this is manifest that there is no necessity of these Commissions they were continually declaimed against and denied as one gap to invade the native proper liberty of the Subject and if now inforced can but foment jealousie against the State Having now found out the proper Courts of Trial of criminal persons let us see who the criminous person is and how to be dealt withal the criminous person is vulgarly taken to be him that is accused Legally him that is convicted not differencing where upon examination before the Iustice there is confession of the party full evidence upon oath violent presumptions or barely suspition but all are dealt withal alike except they misdemean themselves and in case the matter be baylable baylable alike few Iustices looking at good bail but all the Clerks at their Fees in which case much error is where the Clerk is Iustice of the Peace or c. and the Iustice not able or too proud to draw a Warrant himself Now by the Law of England and just reason mens liberties being highly prised heretofore men were to be tried the next Gaol delivery I mean at the Sessions for the County but now by a Statute made in the time of Philip and Mary or at least under pretence of it all matters criminal being death that is out of the Rogues City of Refuge that is to which they cannot readily plead guilty of all Felonies within Clergy the still continued shame of England so that some use a hateful Proverb All Rogues to the Clergy and all Clergy to the Gallows they must be tried at the so called Assises This Statute was a great friend to the Clerk of the Assize above the Clerk of the Peace and those Iustices that will not see this Statute the Inquisitive Clerk of Assise can spy his time to fit him if he cometh in his compass which may be every Assises and though present put him down absent so he is fined forty shillings and to remedy it will cost twice so much Now in the Gaols the Schools of Iniquity they are not imployed and if any one will imploy himself he must purchase his liberty to use his Trade at the Gaolers discretion for there is no Law for it no not for Debtors so that having nothing to do the Prisoners confer notes and the older Thief Cutpurse c. still instructs the yonger in the revealed quidities of the Law Vain people think highly of these nice evasions of Law but the serious sees it makes the Law ridiculously difficult the great Rogues scape but the ignorant and unexperienced dye for it All honest men love mercy and are as loth simple Felony should be death as any but they would not men should by Custom abuse just things or endure unlawful ones or connive at wickedness Yet these and multitudes more well known have long and do still pass unremedied or are provided for but in part or for a parcel of the Commonwealth So that it is certain the generalty of men which once come into Englands prisons of all sorts as now used are spoiled for ever both as to industry and honesty yea so notorious is the evil that I have known many Justices avow it was their sorrow to be in place to be instrumental to such evils by sending one for his first offence to Gaol and likely to
fellow creatures Enforce unjust men to cast away the masque of hypocrisie in simulations of Piety and vertue to gain advantage to savage gripings and extortions If you cannot allow the heights of the Gospel-Liberty allow us but a just settlement upon the evident principles of natural equity or ruled by to avoid contests the Mosaical Judicials as the boundary or prescribe your own way this will admit satisfaction to many interests and if rightly regulated none in themselves corrupted else we deny our holy Profession For the grace of God that brings salvation unto all men hath appeared And it teacheth us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and that we should live righteously soberly and godly in this present life Looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of the mighty God who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purge us to be a peculiar people to himself zealous of good works Now these good works are shortly laid down in the Gospel thus in obedience to Principalities and powers c. and that not onely Kings but inferior Magistrates yea Husbands Parents Masters yea to Teachers Elders c. or any sett over them of or in the Lord taking care for all sorts of persons in the relations political both Publike and Domestick and also in spiritual Its truth the qualifications of Magistrates under the Gospel are not directly spoken unto in the Gospel which gives a ground to some to altercate whether Magistracy may be under the Gospel But Generals may sometimes be gathered from particulars the principal scope t is true of the Gospel shews the worlds enmity with the Spirit and the special enmity rests in the Princes Powers c. These are the men with their carnal interest But the Powers simply considered cannot by that be opposed for because I will not admit an evil Magistrate that is a terror to the good shall I not allow him that is a terror to the bad because it was a shame that the Corinthians went to Law before Heathen Judges shall each one do what is right in his own eyes No St. Pauls Let 's not sin that grace may abound includes much And so that qualification of an Elder of a Church those mental excellencies soul-beautifyings of a spiritual Ruler no Mitre Crown Bells Pomegranates Breast-plate Ephod c. are to be allowed no outward blemish Though that was admitted among some Bishops of the Primitive Church is now just exception If such purity in Elders for the Church then surely also for the State by this all the Typed Mosaical qualifications and more also are required Indeed the words are mean and low but the meaning is transcendent I shall therefore shortly according as the grace of God gives me give a short essay to the principles of a Christian Government and resolve most of these Quaeries which here seem but barely controverted without determining I truely faint under the burden knowing my own weakness and the mighty wisdom which I know in some whom I cannot believe think an alteration necessary while they have accepted so great places of honor and profit in what I must think wholly corrupt and the world calls the prophane Commonwealth or Babel in the Magistrate that is they are feared principally to adore the Amusive part of Justice in the formalities of Robes as Judges Caps Furrs Blacks Serjeants Gowns c. the same with Rochets Caps Hoods Gowns Tippets Surplices c. So for Officers of Courts so for Appeals the same for dependances upon the Supream Magistrate in degrees by way of variety of Courts Officers c. as in the Bishops course from the Chancelors and Arch-Deacons Courts to the High Commission So in the Presbyterian way according to the course of the Sanhedrim from the Parishional to the National Assembly All which hath in it but a form of Justice and is delusory necessaries I admit but no more I affect not the Laconick harshness nor the Stoical superstition nor the Anabaptistical confusion nor the Persian pomp and vanity Yet I think it was the more honor for the Greeks that they were learned valorous and free though with little pomp or ostentation then to the Barbarians that they were pompous and bondslaves rich but had nothing their own cowardly and ignorant obedient even to shadows an Ape or Hound of the Kings in the formality should have ruled them as well as the King himself for they were ignorant I would therefore have Order to prevent confusion Obedience flow from Knowledge in civil things as from Faith in divine yet all for conscience sake otherwise the Law will never go further then half way and that will rule and perswade where no Promoter or Officer of State can Therefore I say pretending to a Christian Commonwealth I there explode all bare Forms they are above them necessary Forms are admitted for they must be but Forms of bare interest cannot will not Happily you will say This will put the Magistrate to a demur whether then he should have two Forms to govern by in the same Nation but that Quaere will be useless For it is intended the Christian Magistrate should wave all those Amusions and onely in the power of Righteousness do Iustice keep the Law of God with his whole heart make it his study and due execution of Law and propagating the knowledge of it in an easie civil Chatechistical way will soon shew that Form is a very Idol no more then the Goddess Opinion to which I fear not to say they sacrifice who so much exalt Form Now know Forms are also in delayes as not to give Iudgement in a plain Case of Law the same day it is complained of it is Custome not Form to weep lamentably upon the Bench at the giving sentence of death when this passion arises not from compunction of soul but weakness of Spirit and this weakness is evidenced by no care for soul after sentence past It is then therefore suspected to tend specially to self interest Truly our sweet Fountains of Iustice are imbittered we looked with the Prophet for Iustice but it s turned into mourning for Righteousness but behold a Cry the excessive Fees of all sorts the Selfish formal hearings the dilatory attendances the usual squeesing griping Officers as Undersheriffe Baillffs Registers Clerks c. all continued whereby the poor is sold for nothing and Iustice at the rate of Customs and Clerks Fees which I nor no man can call a bribe O you that sit in Seats of Iustice beware the Lord hath a controversie with the mighty and to pull down those in his glory he doth it in Iustice and his Iudgements are true good intentions so called will not excuse before him that searcheth hearts yea to the dividing of soul and spirit Know this you great men if you seek to uphold any interest against the Lord it will down yea your own hands shall work your own overthrow you may have seen it in
is such that it is one of the most destructive for there is no conscience of an oath with the most and though it be visible there is no due punishment Gentlemen you that are at the Stern whom God hath lifted up in the height of his power and placed in seats of Eminency do not trifle away your precious time let speedy care be taken to settle this poor distracted Nation look not to your own works and let the Lords lie still there appeared in you a strong dependance upon God give not wicked men cause to blaspheme Rowze up your selves and consider God hath a controversie with the Nation and will not be appeased with all Offerings except Justice and Righteousness be done Let the Complaints of the poor afflicted distressed come to your ears who have great wrongs injuries and oppressions and none to relieve them Yea let the cryes of quiet peaceable men come to your ears who are oppressed only because not willing to return evil for evil rayling for rayling stroak for stroak action for action To sue is to perplex their minds ruine their estates if they have it and bring them at least to a wanting condition who lived well not to sue to be sued and forced to compound at the legal Theeves Will. If poor the Law is chargeable equity unreasonable and get a Lord Chief Justice Warrant so called Order of Reference it is derided not obeyed after much expectation loss of time and some expence by the poor Sutor You are on earth in Gods place and must to him give an account let not your eyes sleep till these works of Righteousness be setled There is great complaint of Inns Alehouses Taverns c. encreasing under your Regiment for the Lords sake look speedily about you let not your Officers as the Kings set your honor to sale for the increase of their Fees you are yet in a slippery place the promises and engagements upon you are great and the expectations of the people high and those most considerable of your own party are the highest their spirits breath after just Liberty they see how you toss and tumble all the Rubbish of the Government of the world to find fit stones for your building Truly they dare say among all the Christian Princes practised Rules Edicts Orders Statutes Laws c. you cannot find materials enough to lay one step to the Throne of pure Justice in the supremacy of power and they therefore much fear lest you should stumble at the same stone of offence with them and place the excellency of your eminency in power to do rather then doing Justice and when you get a little strength to stand on your selves to think and by power make good you are as they accountable to none but God there is no clearness in the walkings and actings of men because yours are not so But most will hope as they pray for better things and although they knowing the great burthens which are upon your shoulders cannot desire so much as some do neither will they nor dare they as others think much less say most likely to render your actions odious that you seek nothing but your selves and because you do not all that is desired therefore cry out you sit to do nothing No all may see you have done great things but it is desired that some things of conceived necessity for your establishment be speedily ordered until with the whole they may be in due time established or setled As first for the breeding up of all youth that all Schools be supplyed with able honest and religious School-masters all according to one form and rule setled by the Supream Magistrate And so the Universities where the youth are yet rather poysoned then profited and though the humerous conceit of Caps and Capping and such like be justly waved that such a decency be ordered in the habits of youths as may not adapt the mind to licentiousness many wise men placing much in things of that nature and to that end that all youths habits of both sexes at least may be ordered throughout the whole Nation but especially apprentices and servants of all sorts So as at least to distinguish not shame that of shame only affronting not reclaiming and for all servants to be admitted their services by Testimonial under a penalty to the Master or Dame their wages to be set by the Magistrate or some appointed universality and absolute conformity in these even to unity may be pressed without just scruple of conscience For to speak once for all to make acts of common reason intendment and benefit for particular places by them in supremacy of power because by them asked and not by others is exceeding selfish which who ever hath purchased out a particular act can easily resent Therefore it is justly desired such things to be generally the same For prohibiting of new Inns Taverns c. and ousting those erected within seven or ten years unless allowed by your Commissioners and upon due and set cause to disable the remainder and allow others or fine to some purpose as receiving any to tipple on the Lords Day or dayes of publike either prayer or humiliation And that all things may hold a proportion that all Offices Honorary fiduciary or profitable be so distributed that the work intended may be done or the neglecters punished and that such as are faithful may know certainly to whom to make their addresses for many errors are seen and felt and the State is sensible of them in part as by the careful Orders issued out from the Right Honorable the Councel of State appears But how to execute them and not be caught in the witty springes of our present Cabalistical Law no Justice of Peace can determine and generally the more knowing and able the more wary at least in opening of the fruitless or rather destructively fruitful niceties past whereby the many are cooled to action For if they apprehend men dangerous That live high and yet can give no account how they come by it what should they do To imprison for no cause visible is hard to some not to do it destructive with others to prison in the Gaole chargeable and the place having no labor to busie body or mind fatall in Bridewell shameful and generally work they will not and all this from the want of due Law Next our Lawyers are eminently favourers of nicety of Law and open it to the ruine of publick safety for from an opinion that Lead is parcel of the free-hold of the Church to rob all Churches so called is so frequent that it is feared they will soon come to pull down houses No saith the Learned sue him and he hath nought to recompence the same so there must be visible actuall force with Guns c. to evidence a forcible detainer or the indictment lies not whereby possessions are kept oft times ten years together many seven sue they dare not the Law is so nice dubious and
there is no cause evident but grant it so we must then see whether the Prince be an absolute Monarch or limited If absolute then it iâ— the greater difficulty for there being no barr in such cases betwixt the Prince and lust the decision of the difference must be by the whole community at least the greater part and if they break out wo to the Commonwealth c. It is the difficulty to do just things in such extremities not the injustice of the thing puts so many barrs in the way and the evil truly is so great that prudence hath totally waved a liberty of such judgings finding the dear rate Liberty is in such cases purchased at But some Princes have by renewed Tyrannies trusting to their power enforced the multitude to lash out and great men for safetie to head them but when matters come to this pass it is surely a judgement on both sides Now all Christian Princes held this that they being all Typed out by the Judicials they forsooth were absolute Princes anoynted with holy Oyle and so apply all the Texts of Davids not daring to stretch out his hand against Saul his heart smiting for cutting off the lap of his garment hindering Abishai from killing him in his Tent yet agreeing the Lord had delivered him into his hand and that after the Kingdom rent from him and given by God to himself and he with holy Oyle also anoynted And lastly for his slaying the Amalekite who pretended to have killed Saul ahis request to themselves as anointed c. and upon this they get the heart to trangress Laws at liberty and even do what they lusted yea inverted the just ends of universal good for the enhansig of absolute power to their own ends only neglecting the publike claiming propriety in the Rights of the Nation as in private inheritance though truly to that end alone any power absolute or limited cannot be pretended to Now therefore I said the evil of common Rebellions c. hence arising The Pope the Lord Christs servants servant becomes the decider of the controversies of Princes when the Lord himself would not be a Iudge amongst ordinary men and by this string were the Princes of the Earth drawn to commit Fornication with this Whore and she thereby sate upon many waters but if so be that there be none but the Pope that hath right to depose Princes surely they need never fear But in case they be limited Monarchs such as all Christian Princes were having their estates Judges of their Actions whether they were called Dyets Assemblies Conventions or Parliaments they are to be judged by them Now to know whether they were Judges of their Actions or not it is only considerable in whom the main and principal part of supremacy rested for making and annulling of Laws war and peace and raising Moneys For as these were intrusted so was the supremacy and trust of absolute power more or less visible and if the Estates had the most then no doubt they may call to account yea and for ought I can see can be fetched from any the Texts aforesaid or any other may be punished but not by David no nor Abisha nor Davids six hundred The case was personal as to all Israel so the enmity was private and David and all these were but particular persons private men Now therefore to avoid the danger of general Concussions and Conquassions of a Commonwealth setled in popular order it is requisite so to temper it that the constant acting Magistrate may have a kind of superadvisor and the truly wise and honest will soonest yield Such as would be Tyrants if Kings will only seek unlimited power in Common-wealths let not this seem unreasonable to give presidents were easie but you will say facts prove not I have given reason and if that will not prevail what will the reasons are evident give a divine word and I am silent for all Saint Pauls give obedience to Magistrates and let every soul be subject will bear no more water now to free wicked Magistrates from due punishment how high in trust soever so the punishment be done duly then that of Paul Give not a Virgin in Marriage Force may suppress the opinion but wickedness of Magistrates will raise up their own strengths against them yea their confidents will betray them and if from hence you conclude I hold Magistracie a humane Ordinance then you must agree to what I hold forth for what man establisheth man may pull down alter punish c. But I say Magistracy is Gods Ordinance established for mans good and by man admitted under various names and notions which persons and Offices particular are the Conventions of men either by force which are void or Conventional and by compact which being civil are and may be enforced Now this is to be known that this is intended only still in Civil matters wherein just and good for the well being of men as men is intended not of power or obedience in respect of Religious Duties There are as I have said before evils in all States through the pravity of mans nature so that it is not the form of Government but the men that in Religion and Reason gives forth blessings unto a State and the degeneracie of men was never more then now and never more then among so called Christians Blame us not therefore if we endeavor to beat out the truth we have seen the glory of absolute States and also of limited ones and that both in Royalties and Republiques we know the vengeance of the Lord at the last which he we beleeve will repay upon the heads of highest proudest stoutest yea and their children also in outward calamities whether one or more whither Kings or States all their abominations with judgements answerable to his Mercy and upon this ground we are willing to let the Supream Power loose We have seen the abuses of these boundaries and bars to Prerogative and how they have oft upon unjust grounds engaged people to wars and brought great evils upon the Nations We have on the other hand seen the lawfulness of their Barrs together with their conveniencies tying up the ambitious nature of man and as they were instituted oft-times preserving a Nation from the gripes of a lusting Tyrant yea under them we have seen the excellencies of Order Government Temperance Chastity Humility shine in Princes as in meaner men and in the Chief Magistrates as in the industrious so called Commoner We have lately seen at home and do still abroad that great men in power put the evil day far away and if they have no aw upon them but the general Audit at the last day it is so far off their consultations that they are in a most lamentable woful case who find no mercy with them till that day I come now to the last part of this Question and that is how they are to be punished To which it is generally answered That they who have the
power enforced for though I must agree the Magistrate may enforce an Atheist and so a Non-Conformist for fear of punishment to the Congregation and he may be there converted for some undoubtedly have been Yet we cannot thence infer that the work is of duty he uses indeed a means which reason is capable of but to enforce by pecuniary punishments much more corporal is most assuredly so far doubted that it is not suddenly to be acted for what is for you to day is against you to morrow as the Supream Magistrate varies in opinion which Law is then without its certain Rule and that for which the Magistrate can give no certain Rule is not to be made by him a Rule or Law at any time For the Magistrates making Laws in these things which tend circumstantially to the service of the Lord with Christians I intend the matters so called of indifferency surely therein is the Liberty of Christianity and the glory of it is not to be tyed to the Apish formalities of Superstition conformity and uniformity have been made the great wheels of Satans Chariot to hurry us from the simplicity of unity Christian Charity and Faith and is to be exploded the Congregation of the Faithfull Now to clear the Magistrates power as to his Trust in and concerning both Tables the matter is plain the Offices of Magistrate and Minister are distinct as a Magistrate he cannot intermeddle with the Ministerial proper Duties but with the Minister he may if he neglect his duty and that is no more then that the Minister by his Office is not freed from Civil Judicature And so though with Vzziah he cannot Ministerially dispence the Ordinances yet he may and ought to see the Minister do his duty this is according to the Law of God and of this he may be judge That is he may consult and punish and so inforce and both these Offices may be in one person I shall not enlarge concerning this any further but now proceed in the orderly setling of the Commonwealth by due and necessary Administration of Laws for Civil peace But before I come to particulars I must a little generally enlarge my self concerning the power of the Magistrate and his duty that is that the Magistrate hath all power and is to execute all power in all things of what nature soever conducing to the safety of the Commonwealth and therefore that in some cases conscience cannot be pleaded but notwithstanding all such pleas due punishment ought to be inflicted To give Examples of Murther and Adultery Incest and the like will be plain But for Concubinage and the true Polygamy or many wives at once will be difficult with many men Yet these sure if made general being but the restraining of the natural appetite and most consonant to the hinted Doctrine of our Saviour in those words It was for hardness of heart onely that Moses allowed it it was not so from the beginning God created them male and female The Magistrate may justly and lawfully improve his just Authority but to extend it to death as hath been used was assuredly not so obviously warrantable But to embroyl a Nation in War and blood or lay a foundation to it for not agreeing in the manner of exercising the Ordinances of the Gospel that cannot be allowed Such as marrying with a Ring at the Table with a Communion to receive it sitting or kneeling to administer it in the morning or at night with a Surplice or white garment with all the like that it must be done onely in the publike Place of publike Worship so called Church and this to prevent Heresies c. Surely it is natural to each man to believe his own opinion right and that he is educated in the natural man without further controversie allows however he practises clean contrary Now it is certain being all born in sin and under wrath there must be a work of God upon the Spirit before we understand the things of God this God doth ordinarily by Preaching Reading Praying Conferring Meditating sometimes by afflictions with these sometimes by an extraordinary accident as delivery from an unexpected danger or seeing some great judgement or sudden plague in and upon other men a thousand wayes there are whereby God preaches to a man Now accordingly as the Spirit is affected so usually is the man zealous or remiss and assuredly in such changes God is seen and glorified most as are from very bad to very good as Paul from a Persecutor to become u Preacher and here the world takes most offence It is true the Angel of the Church is not to suffer the woman Jezabel nor the Doctrine of the Nicolaitans to take root in the Church of God but to labour with the Sword of the Spirit not with fire and faggot to reprove exhort admonish perswade convince and the Magistrates ought to exhort the Congregations to their duty that men so qualified be ordained Elders in all the Churches and that they do diligently and faithfully improve the gifts given them to the edification and peace of the the Church and the gifts ceasing to see others appointed in their places And the Pastors are to see the disobedient and perversly refractory to be ejected their Societies And the Magistrate may approve the Rule of the Congregation that no other Congregation receive them ejected without satisfaction to them who ejected first given So that if you take the exhortative inforcing the just duty of Christians from Christians in the Christian Magistrate to be the keeper of the first Table he may be so called But if you take it for the person properly chosen by God to maintain assert and defend the truth of his Service the Magistrate hath a share in it as a Christian if he be such and the Pastors the like a special share in regard of their more immediate trusts but this keeping of the first Table is a Right belonging in my opinion to the whole body of Christians and every member may claim his due The Magistrates even while pretending to it have been the greatest oppugners of it witness the persecuting Christian so called Kings and Princes in the Church the so called Clergy drawing in the same cord witness the cruel Massacres and Persecutions the Pope and Bishops have raised for the same pretences and all we believe against the Truth so that it is manifest these did not keep it who then kept it But they who had no Magistrate among them and seldome a Minister so called to instruct them yet were the rite of Gods Service kept by them as by the seven thousand in Israel when King Bishop Priest and all worshipped Baal I now hasten to the Settlement intended wherein I shall begin with Education of children How Children are to be Educated by Magistrates Authority THe Lord God took care for the meat or nutriment of special children even in the Womb But ordered every Mother to give her own child suck presupposing that
men to be necessitated to it of custome as now seems not just Two belonging to every Court of Judicature is enough let his duty be onely to receive instructions from the party in the matter of Fact and to set down the witnesses names in a paper for the Judge and to what they can speak but not to speak in the Court but to the Judge and let them have a Fee as the Magistrate shall think fit Let both Lawyers and Attornies be sineable by the Judge and all that plead as such in Case of misdemeanor and that without a Jury Whether Debtors be to be imprisoned Surely where there is neither goods nor Lands to satisfie the rational man the Law of Christ of Love will not still engage to satisfie angry revengeful persons in exorbitant and irrational appetites therefore if he will take oath that he is not worth a third part of the Debt that not exceeding sixty pounds or what summ the supreme Magistrate thinks fit let him be freed let the oath be general or particular I care not for he that will swear upon a trust will swear upon no trust but let the thing concealed be forfeit if you will not do this keep not debtors in prison rather make them servants the same for Felons Trespassors and the like Whether servitude be lawful among Christians c. And whether fitting or not SUrely the Almighty wisdome appointed nothing in it self but just and that justly yea above other Law-givers who from want of prudence oft multiplied servants to such numbers as they oft oretopped their Masters and the Laws but the Lord by allowing servitude among his people yet limiting it for a time gave satisfaction to justice every way the proprietor was satisfied by labor where estate failed and the servant had his day of freedom and the danger of multitudes was never obnoxious to them for we see the Lords and great men offended in forcing service but not the contrary service therefore well limited is held by many and those prudent men and godly Christians no way dissonant to the Liberty nay equality of the Gospel wherein by Christ we are brethren and fit to be practised as well as bound Apprentices but with well tempered Laws As first the power not to extend to life or mayme next not work above so many hours in a day then to be cloathed against cold and fed for Natures sustenance that is he shall be better then in a prison the greatest difficulty will be to make servants of wife and children for it seems to some unreasonable that they should be made servants Our Heralds in many heads have made such shatters that they cannot think fit a high-born man or woman or the like which are accidents of inferiour providence as I may call it should be subject to the universal Law of Mankind but certain it is if all Debtors c. pay or serve these men ought not to be excluded but that the women must follow the condition of man is not of necessity no more then to be imprisoned c. she must be miserable but needs not be in servitude nor the Children Now the Law-maker ought to settle something against them upon two grounds First of satisfaction secondly of aw or fear upon this score to make the children and wife suffer would do much as some think but I conceive otherwise for self is generally neerest Next for children it would or might ruine education whereby the publick loseth more then the private gains Lastly for the wife if all parties be pleased let them come and serve together otherwise not But under the Law of mercy to shew mercy and love let the evident poor man be discharged as before with something to begin the world but once more repress idle houses of all sorts vanity in Apparel c. And settle estates and rate them truly and keep strict and just Government and you will not complain of poor nor fear cheating nor need servitude but with content of all parties but above all take off high Covetize and preach by example as precept Magistrates Ministers c. men of all sorts having food and rayment be therewith content But because Usury is supposed a manifest cause of beggery and is so much questioned in the world and so beaten by the Pope and his Councels and Usurers so accursed and our Law present onely wincks tolerates not let us a little consider that and Quaere Whether Vsury be lawful And how compared with Letting of Lands I Take Usury to be a Covenanting for to receive the principall with interest Now the reason of the coming to a setled way of use by particular persons that is twenty fifteen ten eight six or four in the hundred was upon consent of parties to avoid tedious and deceitful accounts and reckonings and the like the Laws settles it to avoid excessive gripings just as in Lands the Tenant hires now at a certain price and puts the gain in his pocket truth is we are a light loose proud lazy prodigal Generation for we have had much liberty educated under no restraint aw nor fear no reverence of youth to Age of people to Magistrates of poor to rich no order all men now Masters all brave all for back and belly this spends fast and gains are decreased and oft all lost and then the fault is use-money I pray what difference between being undone by a cruel racking Landlord or a biting hard-hearted Usurer you will say all one He that gains little by Land or Money cryes I had rather take money and hire Land to give account I am undone some by being unfit to manage Land or Money others by ill managing of it he that thrives will never agree to this no that were to be alwayes a servant Again some will over-purchase themselves and receive four in the hundred in Lands and pay eight and this ruines them others have good Trades in debt purchase pay use and thrive Nay it is certain Money is a more possible way of great increase then Lands and the Complaints even in all Nations much what alike therefore I conclude as to that it is fit to regulate letting out of Moneys but it is also fit to order some proportion for Lands or give a Rule for Landlords that squeaze a poor ignorant labouring creature as we do a Honey-comb let neither be permitted unjustly and for rich Tenants let them not defraud the Commonwealth This premised Usury in it self may be lawful if not forbidden now if it be forbidden let me see where it is if it were Typical it is abolished if judicial generally it is rational that is all those Laws hold forth the reason of commanding or prohibiting plainly and then let us see the reason Now if you take it judiciall specially as proper to the Jew then it must by like reason run thus Take no use of thy Brother a Christian the English Translation hath it poor Brother which to me plainly hints the
to the Mill as the ministers glory was to have a multitude of Auditors no matter how few Christians they would but scan his Doctrine question his life and unless he were more worthy scruple adding more to his former abundance So these mens honor was to have their courts packed with sutors that the several practiser from the Judge to the dore-keeper might have his Fee from these shifts grew the so called prohibitions consultations c. And the poor Sutor was undone while the Courts admitted First with ease the Quaere and then eagerly prosecuted their own dues and rights before his could be determined which was ever slow paced enough This evidences the necessity of setled Fees in all places and that from the supream Magistrate This also clears the case that the supream Magistrate must admit but one Law in practice and proceeding nor one sort of Lawyers he may for the advance of learning order the study of it in Latin and all the exercises But the practise all ought assuredly to be in the vulgar tongue of the Nation and in that tongue to be constantly printed and also all precepts and processes of the Courts whatsoever for the pure executing of justice is more to be eyed then humane learning For as in the Ecclesiastick State when the ordinances of men and unction of men are preferred above and justle out the ordinances and unction of the Lord the Church is Apostate So when interests overtop justice and justice and righteousness are become Nominal Topical heads Hypocritical Colours to wilder the people the State is also Apostate and as long as either of these work in Church or State the Apostacy the fatal ruining Antichristian Apostacy reigns Therefore all the Courts of a well constituted Nation a Nation that seeks the welfare and freedome of her people indeed must have a body of Law proper to the Nation and this must as before be so setled that every Subject may in due just and evident way partake the benefit of it therefore it must all be common and keep that name that weak ones may not be offended what law soever be setled for it is most properly belonging to the Community Lastly admit as little form as may be yet I would settle the habits of Judges and practizers in all Courts but by way of honor for I intend but this one word the glory of form is lost where form is made Common Scarlet the ornament of Judges is the guard of a Groom in these daies Whither offices may be put to sale IN a word this is the plain inlet to all corruption admit this and your setlement must totter to distinguish betwixt judicial places and other is but to hook in a liberty to unlawful things by degrees for all are officers tending to the execution of Justice and it is unjust to pay too much and to stay too long for justice as well as to be denied justice or have false justice Admit such practises and all evasions of Law will be not only studied but practised one evill admitted a thousand follow That just and honest and wisemen have done it and do it is not worth the while the short answer is there is no man but errs And soonest in matters of interest much more where custome signes the lawfulnes of it but a word to what makes it seem lawful Suppose the place be eighteen hundred pounds per annum accompted as the Chancelours was in the late Kings time and Sir John Finch pay so much annually viz. Two thousand pound to Duke Hamilton Two thousand to Lord Au. and at last hath four or five thousand pound a year only to himself So the Prothonotary of the Common Pleas to pay eleven thousand pounds for his place and have eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen hundred or two thousand pounds a year had he not better have had it freely and only five hundred then if he had died within a year left his only daughter a beggar and his Friends engaged only to purchase a more then necessary allowance I could set down who had this money how it was shared unless wise and honest men then misinformed me By this it is clear that there may be a sufficiency to settle the interests of the supream Magistrate if they have wise and honest men to carry on the work upon foundations of certain Justice and pay every officer and the Supream Magistrate to be a gainer however no looser but the people to be surely advantaged in the just procedure and Issue of their litigations Now for the choice of Officers it is setled before both in the qualification honest and skilled and in due manner approved and in places of many Officers where aptness is by the course of succession if no objection bee is most plausible but not to be tied to it Now the way to have good Officers is to settle eminently just Judges and to gain them is not to have too many and in yong States or beginnings this is of absolute neeessity for without it ruine is unavoidable The necessity of educating Sea-men and the way of breeding them and from that of the Politique Law to restrain eating of Flesh THis quere is of great concernment to This Nation and Island God is our support but the means which the Lord affords us are not to be neglected Therefore in the first place we shall look at the way of encreasing and breeding Mariners I suppose it is clear to most intelligent men that by the fishery there by long being abroad in stormy seasons and high Seas whither great gain invites them they become not only inured to the Sea but grow hardned and dreadless their experience being much more then either a Merchant or man of War can atchieve So that where they breed one able Mariner a poor North Sea-man breeds Ten. And indeed from these are your great Ships manned I must therefore be the care of the Supream Magistrate especially to provide for even these The first care is that they may fish safely therefore the convoy ought to be sufficient Next when they come home there must be vent for the fish The obstacle is the old superstition of the Lent or the Forty dayes fast the just and prudent Magistrate can easily remedy this by making it Twenty eight or Thirty daies There is an objection or two against the season First religious or so supposed just before Easter and carries the time of superstition setle it to begin upon a certain day of the Month yearly and that scruple is gone The next is Physical then is the return of the year and our bodies which should then receive best nourishment are filled by fish with cold and flatulent nourishment this may seem much to some but it is not worth the while for suppose there were nor flesh nor fish there is variety of meats to live on for a month in England But I suppose two daies in a week truly observed to have no flesh spent were
Transubstantiation not Consubstantiation for they agreed the whole Law was as it is devolved into Form and Practise the pure streams of Justice were as they fell from the fountain of Divine and Moral Reason drawn by Art into private Cisterns of Profit and Honour But they durst not undertake the VVork I desired then considering my many occasions That they would but impart something to me to help me in my so great attempt I talked with some Attorneys to the same purpose and from two men I received two Papers shewing the abuse of dammage clear and suing out the Cap. utlagats the most ordinary matters I then addressed my self to some men eminent in Honor and places of Trust discovered my minde we argued I saw they were convinced of the truth of the thing and were resolved were the Law altered they should submit yea even to what I then and here propounded But they would have no hand in it they had no time they had spent their Studies in the present Law and to change was a new work Some advised me to leave off these thoughts and fall to Practise they would warrant me I should get as much as any of them After long delayes consulting my own strength and seeing Judges Serjeants Councellors Attorneys Solicitors and All confessed Alteration necessary delayes evident Justice incertain Equity more ruining then undoing Common Law I did partly out of the sence of the unjustness and wickedness of the Law but principally that I might be out of the lash of a credit Ruining frown leave all Practise whatsoever as I had formerly left the most and did consult which way to take to open in the most Christian way the Evils of the Apostate State and Commonwealth and how to offer an expedient sutable to the condition of the people wedded to Laws and Customs called their own This is that which the Lord put me upon I have avoided to my utmost all bitterness and just occasion of offence to any either Powers or persons And to any man shall require a further account of the hope that is in me concerning matter of Conscience or of the matter of Law and the Reasons herein offered so it be with Christian meekness and zeal for the Truth according to my knowledge I shall freely discover my self and yield I hope a satisfactory answer For I assert there is nothing here laid down in any kind as to the civil Regiment not warranted by the present so called Law-books of England I restrain not my self to the so called Year-Books For the scantness of my time I could have wished more and more abilities and that both natural and experimental but you must take it as it is onely an Essay for a Settlement of a Christian Commonwealth I leave the Work to such as Providence shall cull out of the many present Worthies of Englands Labourers Me thinks England labours like a woman in sore pangs of Travel crying out to be delivered I pray God none of the Midwives Juno like set cross-legg'd in the Temple of honor profit power or the like O that every one could banish all interests and all Relatious for Christs sake I know abundance that will allow this project of Resolving this Nation into County Jurisdictions their spirits will be immediatly fancying places to themselves friends kindred c. for the moddle holds forth a due satisfaction even to carnal Interests The opposition will arise from the great interest of the City of London and the Supream Judicatures but it is clear their interest may thus be continued to a just proportion Now they ruine Government within themselves and destroy the whole Nation besides let them live but let not England perish for the Lords sake you that are our Physitians remember your promises when you undertook the Cure Then you stroaked the wound gently you asked nothing till the cure were perfected but our wound is open still more wayes to discourage the poor impoverished subject then ever Take but the many fruitless Acts for poor prisoners into consideration and the forceing an Affidavit of the Engagement notwithstanding a Certificate of the Commissioners can we not easily determine the Reason it cannot be zeal for Justice but the Clerks Fee upon the Oath our hearts are hot in pursuit after the world while our lips breath forth expressions of the new birth Assuredly Englands Allarms to War will not cease till the sins cease You that are in Authority like valiant Chieftains must not onely speak couragiously but Act rigorously you and your just Acts and Ordinances are slighted and contemned First by your selves our Trustees they are not duly transmitted to the Counties then by our selves your Trustees they or some of them deal with them as they list each one interprets as his interest leads Let these things be represented to you and what is done nothing Nay come up to London waite and attend till you be weary the justness of your Cause gives not the quicker dispatch yea I have heard that some spoken to to hasten matters agreed on have been told their haste should cause their tarriance or words to that effect These are sad Symptoms to such Melancholy spirits as mine of renewed Judgements I shall say no more But leaving the whole Work to the Lord address my self to seek his face and pray unto THe Lord our God the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob and of all the faithful the Almighty Jehovah the Father of our Lord Iesus and in him both of Jew and Gentile That he will please to open the eyes of all called Christians and give them hearts to understand his wayes that they may see and perceive the evil of their doings that the precisest professors may see that from their evil walkings the Enemy takes advantage and causes many Professors to fall off vainely thinking all are wholly hypocritical because of some mens failings Let those O Lord who have some beginnings of resenting their duty to seek thy face not give any occasion to thy Enemies the profane-hearted yet among thy people to transgress with more boldness because of their Liberties Yea give the loose Professors to consider that their evident unchristian walkings cause the open Enemies of our blessed Saviour to blaspheme even Jew and Gentile for what people walk so contrary to their profession as the so called Christian Father I pray discover to them that claim to be called thy Clergy as at least indeed set apart for more excellent and eminent services in Word and Doctrine that their lives must be the best Interpreter of their words their conversations of their Exhortations and Perswasions To Preach Love and live in Enmity to Preach Obedience and be Refractory if not Rebellious is not Christs way O let them all see even from the highest to the lowest that its Error evident hath caused Truth to be distrusted and their words contemned Righteousness and Truth carry a Majesty which Satan fears Convince them therefore that as they have