he threatned them that drew the sword well for him you dare not adde and against him is not doubted nay suppose it had been against Peter attempting his personal deliverance it had given you no advantage since he also rebuked him as Satan for desiring him to spare himself he blessed likewise the peace makers entituling them the children of God and our hearts desire is that God would raise up to us a true peace-maker to reduce you unto wisdome whose wayes are wayes of pleasantnesse and all her paths are peace The incendiaries of warre are indeed no where pronounced happie and the boutefeus of rebellion are certainly the children of him who was a murtherer from the begining but Sir is this fair dealing The question that you move and have to prove is that my friend is an incendiarie and boutefeu and behold without any reason offered you not onely conclude him but condemne him it were undoubtedly as easie and aboundantly just for me to inquire where perjurious persecuters are pronounced happie c but I will not so much as retort or retaliat with such expressions such as breath out warre and crueltie know not what spirit they are of and our prayer to God is that they who breathing out threatnings and slaughter against us terme just defence and necessarie resistance war and crueltie may at length have their eyes opened All in the Gospel-dispensation is truely gentle and peaceable and yet of all things in the world it hath been most reproached for tumult and sedition but the great consolation of all its followers is that its author the God of peace will one day make known all false pretenders and its Lord the Prince of Peace for their persecutions here will in the end blesse with everlasting peace all its true lovers when according to the excellent order of the Gospels rule of peace the Kingdome of God shall be fully revealed in righteousnesse first and then in peace and joy in the holy ghost But you say that all this viz a non-resistance of and submission to persecution was signally confirmed by our masters unexampled sufferings and yet you know so well that the free and voluntarie sufferings of our Lord are in themselves no lesse unexampled then unimitable and that it is the manner and not the matter thereof that we are to follow that I cannot but doubt your sinceritie Christ not onely refused the aide of the sword but came into the world willinglie went up to Ierusalem stedfastly exposed himself knowingly and lastly would not aske the assistance of legions of Angels readie at his desire that the Scriptures signifieing how that he ought to have suffered might be fulfilled and is it possible that you can think that these specifick acts are for our imitation But you say that he entailed perdition on these that should draw the sword to wit all these that are not warranted to doe it by the Magistrat How long will you love vanitie and seek after leesing Our Lord in that place doth most plainely for the averting of Peter's unseasonable zeal and the comforting of all his Disciples denounce that all these who take the sword unjustly shall perish by the sword and. Rev. 13.10 we have the parallel place more fully set downe he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword spoken of persecuting Magistrats aswel as others Here is the patience and the faith of the Saints And yet you have the confidence to smooth it over as if this sad doome had been pronounced not onely against Peter but all such as shall be by the force of oppression constrained to their owne defence You adde that he witnessed that good confession before Pilat that Caesar needed apprehend no hazard from his Kingdome since it not being of this world was not to be fought for And doe you indeed think that this is the emphasis of that good confession viz to satisfie Cesars unjust fears O perverse flatterie The excellent goodnesse of our Lords confession cannot but be sweetly relished by every serious Christian to lye in these words thou saiest that I am a King to this end was I borne and for this cause came I unto the world that I should beare witnesse unto the truth how then are you not ashamed not onely to wrest it unto the pitieful interest of Princes but to misconstrue the whole passage as if our Lord in purging himself by a voluntarie and free forbearance of the affectation of a worldly Kingdome did in effect disowne all defensive armes to the incouraging and strengthening of the most bloudie tyrans You think it strange that through the whole Gospel we should meet with repeated blessings on these that suffer but never one upon such as fight but if our Lord having declared that he came not to destroy the Law of righteousnesse did accommodat his incouragements to his Apostles unto the dispensation fo his providence under which for the greater glorie of the power of his free grace he thought good to gather and traine up his Church should you or any else be thereat stumbled for my part when I reflect upon both the sufferings and grace of the primitive times and how the Lord did order them I rather wonder at that admonition by you observed that they should sell their coats to buy swords but you say had the Disciples understood this of the material sword either their practises or writings should have had some vestiges of that sense by the which very argument a man may as easily deny that the Purse there spoken of is to be taken for a material one but seing the tenor of the context and relation made by the Lord to their former mission doe exhibit the meaning with that evidence as cannot be convelled for want of an unoccasioned confirmation I go on to examine the rest of your glosse upon the place and taking notice that the Disciples at the time by presenting two swords did shew that they understood the Lord to speake of a material sword you say that by his answer it is enough which cannot relate to the two swords produced no wise enough for eleven persons he corrects their error breaks off their purpose as if he had said enough of this or no more of it since he sawe they misunderstood his former words of a sword Thus rather then to assent to truth you would have our Lord by such a stop tacitly to acknowledge his own inadvertency but the passage is too obvious to be thus abused in asmuch as our Lord having before both signified and prepared for his owne imminent departure forewarnes them by the necessitie of a purse and a sword of the straits and dangers that would ensue whereupon they its like out of their blind and forward desire to have him delivered from the hand of the jewes lay hold on his words and shew him two swords probably with a confident remembrance of his former miracles and this their precipitancy our Lord according to
An ANSWER To the LETTER Directed to the Author OF JUS POPULI By a Friend of the Authors Printed in the Year 1671 An Answer to the letter directed to the Author of JUS POPULI By a Friend of the Authors SIR At the first view of your Letter to my friend I begun to apprehend you had transformed your self into an Apostle of Christ borrowed a mantle of light and perceiving you so cunning as from a plausible misapplication of the gospel precepts of charity meekness patience the like graces to study your advantages against a just and zealous indignation occasioned by provocations which might almost excuse the greatest excesse the least I could expect was a non-contradicting practice but how quickly am I releived of these apprehensions And how much more happily have you your self detected that which though by me evinced by clearest arguments yet could not have been so much as named without your complaint of reviling and persecution if your insinuation of a brotherly respect and fair professions of Christian charity freedome from wrath malice and bitternesse pity compassion a deep and affecting concernment for Gods glory and religious advancement high pretendings for humilitie meeknesse and true holinesse a tender reguard to the union of Christs body and daylie panting for an escape from the contentions and confusions here below unto these regions of peace and joy above even unto the undervaluing of Episcopacy aswell as Presbytery had been followed with an uniforme straine in all other parts they might have proven very pernicious deceivings but seing that beside the slee and scorneful mixtures which obviously bewray themselves through the whole tenor of your Letter yow are often transported to the very rudest and foulest eruptions accusing your opposit as a scurrilous bouffon bloudy incendiary agent of heel equal to Beelzebub guilty of the crime of Cham and in hazard of Canaans curse unjust malicious and cruel in reproaches nay in the gall of bitternesse and finally whom in the first page you accoasted as your brother representing him in the last as guilty of rebellion and treason worthie to be made an example to all such desperat incendiaries sure I am that he who cannot in these variant methods discerne your hypocrisy must yet acknowledge a strength of malice above its subtilty However Sir in returne to the acceptable deliverance you have given me from medling further in such naughty stuffe all the use I make of this observation shall be to let you see that you are but a man of like passions with us and that though the insolence of the Surveyer did in effect constraine my friend to some heat and sharpenesse yet we do also know in its exigence how to cut off occasion from them which desire it and to redargue your vaine glorying in the mylder calmer graces so to speake by a more consistent imitation in which resolution I addresse my self to a short review of your Letter And first taking God to witnesse of these groanes and teares which our furious distempers doe draw from some of you whom we so much persecute you fall into your heavy regrates to see the great designes of Godlinesse and piety suffering so much from some who pretend so highly and yet are more concerned for a few inconsiderable opinions and niceties then for charity meeknesse unity and obedience to Authority or for carrying on the great end for which Christ died c. Sir though I may not directly call in question your truth and sincerity in this appeale yet seing that all men know how that you or at least most of that party whereunto you associat did with hands lifted up to the most high God engage sincerely really and constantly to own and mantaine these things which you do here plainely disowne and blaspheme give me leave to remember you that though deceivers may deceive themselves aswell as others yet God will not be mocked If these furious and unchristian distempers the object of your groanes and teares and the persecutions that you mention be indeed nothing else then the zealous dissent and testimony of such who in the feare of the same high and holy Lord God whom you attest dare not comply with the present manifest bakslidings and for which they have been greivously vexed and if this your Character of their way as fury be onely either from delusion of interest or delicacy of humor it is much to be feared that he who is the true and faithful witnesse shall one day witnesse against you and not for you one thing I am perswaded of that whoever at present is a true mourner before the Lord and as in his sight doth not more finde the reigning sins of the Land and the desolations and profanations of Gods sanctuary to be his principal motive then the causes which you assigne to be false and deceitful The great designes of godlinesse do certainly suffer much And O that God would as manifestly declare the authors of these sufferring as all men know thier beginnings That we are the men you point at by this overconcernement for a few inconsiderable and disputable opinions is aboudantly obvious but seing you are not ashamed to terme these things in considerable and disputable which yet doe as certainly both by their institution and in our experience conduce to the great ends of holinesse and happinesse as from Scripture and cleare reason they were evidently determined and by most righteous and solemne lawes and cannons and sacred oathes established amongst us it were unreasonable for me to redargue your imputation as for your prejudicial comparing of Ordinances with Dueties and your endeavours by magnifying the ends of religion to vilify its midses as meere nicities it is a peice of art so frequently practised by G. B. in his dialogues and by his antagonist so soberly and convincingly discovered that I need to adde nothing onely let me tell you that he who truely values the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus as he will assuredly dearely esteeme all his purchase for gifts unto his Church so in these bacslidings oppositions and overturnings which we have seen he cannot but judge your comliant charity unseasonable meeknesse easeful peace censpiring unity and excessive obedience to mans authority to be at best the delusions of a lukewarme indifferent you say There is a generation who was once by appearance seriously minding their souls but now are taken off that noble exercise thus you discerne the change but cannot discerne its causes nay of these you are so willingly ignorant that while you referre them to foolish and unlearned questions you altogether dislemble who were the first movers this poor Church was injoying although with some infirmity our Lords pure ministry and Government and then These excellent lessons of charity patience humility meeknesse and true holinesse though not in your perverse application were in some request when behold as if we had been delivered from our civil bondage to commit all these abominations a furious
tempest of perjury violence and apostasy broke in upon us not onely to the subversion of the Lords work but to the laying waste of all religion and conscience what mad and untractable questions and unreasonable and violent disputings a faithful remnant have since been exercised with the Lord knoweth this one thing I am assured of that whatever advantage you may take of failings whereunto you force them and however you may vaunt yourself in empty professions yet by their constant stedfastnesse in midst of so many trials they have witnessed a measure of true Charity patience humility meeknesse and holinesse that shall be remembred for a testimony for God and his truth to all generations passing therefore your groundlesse and childish reflexion of our speaking against Bishops as if what you observe most we were best pleased with and your more absurd and ridiculous retortion as if we had ruined religion betrayed Christ and sold him for the gratifying forsooth of our humors and passions a strange price when as the real mony that your Bishops received for him is to be found in their coffers the blood of his saints in their skirts and under the colour of a name the very scandal and scorne of all religion in their lives Omitting also that most censorious calumny of our censuring traducing railing forging and publishing of lies which you cast upon us without the least verification and contrary to the evidence of that profanity falsehood and perjury on your part that iâ— sufficient to justify the highest accusation I wish you could yet consider and lay to heart that it is not by the non-compliance and testifying of our Lords faithful members against corrupt bakstiders that the ligaments of his body are dissolved but by the breaking of his bonds assunder and casting away of his coards from you that your party have rebelled against the Lord our Head and King and laboured for the very destruction of piety and true religion among us If with these things you were rightly and deeply affected your soul would rather abhorre the wicked who have marred and removed our true peace then testify an aversion for such who at their own cost dare not joine in your sinfull confederacy in place of precipitating an escape from the contentions and confusions here below by your aiery aspirings to these regions of peace and joy above you would preferre for a time that warfare of faith and patience against the wickednesse stander and persecutions of this evil generation whereunto the Lord hath called us Sir this is the path that these have trode who out of great tribulation are arrived and do stand before the throne in white with their palmes of victory singing a new song Your excessive charity towards anungodly world and fond and sinful courting of peace on any termes wil but in end deceive you the narrow way of life admits not of your latitude heaven knowes not your comprehension In the next place you are for Jeremiah's wildernesse and upon the wings of the same fancy you flee also to David's retirement why would you so soone leave these assemblies of treacherous men which you did freely choise or doth the not ceding of a smal afflicted party to all your imposings seeme to you so terrible a storme and tempest Nay certainly were there no other argument the obvious easinesse of the execution with your contrair forbearance is eneug he to redargue these your wishes either of a wretched peevishnesse or a worse dissimulation You forbid my friend to think that all this is the effect of your zeal for Episcopacy And I dare affirme that without your suggestion it had never come into his thought the giddie instabilitie of the now-Bishop of Dumblaines weak Fantastick braine dissatisfied with both prelacy and Presbyterie whom neither the smal cure of Newbottle nor the more abstract retreat of the colledge of Edenburrough nor his owne choice the Bishoprick of Dumblaine could formerly sixe and the present accession of Glasgow doth as little please and yet in discourse alwayes longing either for the shaddes of the grave or the rest above is not so rare a thing but you may be tainted by the same or the like maladie But the cause of your wearinesse is your solicitude for the great Bishop of souls whom my friend you say is doing what in him lies to depose from his Goverment and Kingdome which you adde is neither in meats nor drinks neither in Episcopacy nor Presbyterie but in righteousnesse and peace and joy in the holy Ghost what a bold accusation have we here The zeal of Christs government and Kingdome is that which in a manner eats up my friend he asserts not onely its internal and spiritual power but also its external and visible administration consisting in these lawes and ordinances which our Lord by vertue of that All-power given unto him hath expressely appointed and the whole scope of his writing is in defence of righteousnesse and to establish the peace and joy of all its followers and yet you are confident to say without any reason that he is doeg what in him lyes to depose him It 's true the Kingdome of God is neither in meats nor drinks and thereby all the trash of your unwarranted ceremonies is evidently rejected but if under this you judge the usurpation of Episcopacy ordinance of Presbyterie to be equally comprised I really feare that in the temptation the same errror may substitute to you the Messe and the Lords supper or the Alcoran and the Bible with the same perswasion The next thing that occurres is your opinion of Episcopacie and I am assured that as to this whole paragraph you may already finde your self so exactly and fully answered in a little treatise anent the late accommodation that according to your owne verdict all that read it will account you deceived if you let it passe without a reply As to what ensues viz your resolution to forebeare both rallerie and injurie and yet immediatlie objecting dull buffonrie your meen and il phrased boast of causing flashes of a left handed witt rebound your purpose of seriousnesse which yet you onely terme a serious mood and is not indeed more permanent your promise not to raill observed just aswell as you have done other promises and vowes far more important and the prejudice which you endeavour to insinuat from the alledged general dislike even of good Ministers of our owne perswasion against my friends book As to these things I say I shall content my self with the naked observation onely as to this last I may affirme it upon good ground that what ever dislike some good mens over-kinde charitie or civilitie towards you or the temper of their particular dispositions may make them expresse of this book in certaine circumstantial points yet the substance of the work both for acutenesse and soliditie hath the very consentent approbation of all of our way and is also acknowledged for such by many of yours
agent of hell you should by hearkening and fearing beare witnesse to his fidelitie I have not in the foregoing discourse taken notice of these slanders of dislovaltie and ingratitude wherewith you think to make us odious this is a theme so trite and tossed on both hands that though in this matter I might with an hundredfold more evidence demonstrat your flatterie then you can exprobat to us the least misdemaner yet in real duetie to his Majestie I choice rather to wave it Neither as to your Bishops and clergie a companie of men of whom all men except themselves are now wearied and ashamed am I more inclined to medle Onely Sir if the unpassion at and disinteressed composure of my heart either as to their persons or pettie fortunes with all the professions wherewith your self do labour to perswade your sincerity may obtaine from you the beleife that you expect of us viz that I designe not your infamie but your resormation I would say that if to despise the holinesse of God and trample underfoot his truth be to blaspheme him if to acknowledge another supreme and all-determining Governour in the Church then Christ the Lord be to renounce him if to smite his Ministers and scatter his flocks be to destroy his Church if to practise indulge or connive at all wickednesse and repute Conscience the onely eye-sore be to overthrow religion if to put to death banish and spoil faithful men be to persecut the saints your Bishops and clergie notwithstanding of your few insinuat and seeming exceptions will ever to all discerning inquirers be found even by your owne Characters the just object of all mens indignation how then they will beare the Lords or what they may look for in the end I pray God that both you and they may in time consider Your next attempt upon my friend concerns the matter of his book and you say the whole designe of it is to provoke to rebellion a high charge indeed but as suddenly deserted for you are not for raveling into this intangled matter which you conceive to be without both your owne and my friends sphere how Sir are alleagance and rebellion The common concerns of the meanest and the great flattering and boasting themes of your preachers discourses so great mysteries Or is this onely a declining shift like to that basle which you designe by saying that my friends book is but Lex Rex put into another method an allegation not more contrarie to its manifest tenor then reflecting upon the surveyer whom you would have with so much heat and confidence to have vented things before confuted with very little notice taken of the answers But the things you cannot explicat Alexander like you can cut off by two positions the first that by immemorial possession and a long tract both of law and practise the King of Scotland is an absolute Soveraigne accountable onely to God and not to be controuled by the force of his subjects but more especially that the subjects of Scotland are bound to obey all lawes enacted in Parliament or at least to submit to the enacted mulcts and punishments How plentifully hast thou declared the thing as it as Both first and second viz. that the Kings of Scotland are Absolut and that at least in King and Parliament there is such an absolut power as may in no case be controuled or resisted are indeed the contradictions of the greatest part of my friends book but are contradictions alone sufficient refutations or shall your bare assertions be received against the most undeniable evidence The certaine and cleare constitution of this Kingdome consisting of King and Parliament the expresse establishment by uncontroverted Law I. 6. P. 7. C. 130. of the honour and authority of Parliament upon the free votes of the three Estat's thereof the known restrictions of the Kings soveraigne power who by himself alone can neither make lawes impose taxes nor so much as put away one foot of his annexed patrimony and lastly the frequent approven and authorized resistances and oppositions made against maleversing Princes especially that made by the Nobles against King James the third fully approven by the 14. Act 1. P. Ja. 4. extant in the old editions in the blacke letter as they call it but industriously left out in that of Scheens the tittle of the act is The proposition of the debait of the field of Striviling The words after the preface are That the haill body of the Parliament and ilk an for himself declarit and concludit that the slaughter committit and done in the seild of Striviling quhair our soverane Lordis father happinnit tp be slain uthers divers his Barronis liegis was allutterly in thair default and colourit dissait done be him and his perverst counsall divers tymes besoir the said field And that our soverane Lord that now is and the trew Lords and barronis that was with him in the same field war innocent free and quyte of the said slaughters done in the said field and all persuit of the occasion and caus of the samin These are the words and the act is declared to be sealed by the Kings great seal and the seals of part of the three estates these I say as to your first position are such manifest redargutions that before equal judges I could undertake upon the hazard of my life for the asserting of this one point to obtaine you convict of high treason as a leesing-maker betwixt the King and his subjects and an impugner of the authority of the three Estates but retracting a little as to this head concerning the Kings power by acknowledging that it hath been called in question you say my friend hath the honour to be the first who controverts the authority of King and Parliament as is evidently confirmed by the perpetual practise of Scotland before year 1648. But as it is incontroverted that lawes agreed to by King and Parliament are indeed the ordinarie binding lawes until by the same authority they be repealed so seing its uttermost import is that the same soveraigne authoritie which in absolut Kingdomes is in the Prince alone is with us divided betwixt and subjected unto both King and Parliament it is evident that this doth no more afford us any special determination then it doth conclude my friend to be singular for asserting the lawfulnesse of resisting even the princes who are reput absolute in case of their intollerable oppressions wherein he hath thou sands of concurrents But not to trifle with you my friend alledgeth the Kings limited power and maketh use of the authoritie of the Parliament in justification of the resistances made by us in the yeers 1639. And 40. And 43. whereby superaddeing to our natural and common right these civill and positive priviledges he accumulateth an unanswerable vindication As for other times wherein the hypothesis varying both King and Parliament became our partie what could be more reasonable then to shew that even the most