is seconded by his Brother in malice that hocus pocus and jugler in Divinity and Policy Dick Baxter Too many Congregations have none but insufficient or scandalous Teachers or no preaching Ministers at all And then bravely bids his friends at Kiderminster never to join themselves with the Episcopal Government but to stick close to those destructive and seditious rules he taught them Let none draw you from Catholick unity to a Faction though the declaming against Faction and Schism should be the device by which they should accomplish it Is not the world well mended when Episcopacy must be call'd Faction and Schism and Presbytery only held to be Catholick But this is just like the other actions of the same man who used to call Rebellion Loyalty and Loyalty Rebellion with such fury doth his distempered zeal make him continually run counter Nor is this all but they impudently tell the Bishops to their very faces of their cruelty pride and covetousnesse uncharitable censoriousnesse unmerciful opposition and such like And then declare to the world of strange Persecution of many hundred worthy men laid by and that conformity is the means to strip these Nations of the glory in which they have excell'd all the rest of the world even a learned able holy Ministry and a people sincere and serious and understanding in matters of their salvation And also that the readiest way to bring the Gospel into contempt in the World and cause all Religion to dwindle away into Formality first and then to barbarism and brutishnesse is to let in an ignorant idle vitious Ministry Thus do they vilifie all that are not of their Gang really making it their businesse to make the people believe that none can be good but a Presbyterian though I hope in this Book that their knavery is sufficiently made visible In another of their ridiculous Pamphlets they perswade the Nation again to believe strange things that some hundreds of able holy faithful ministers are of late cast out and not only very many of their families in great distresse but aboundance of Congregations in England Ireland and Wales are overspread with lamentable ignorance and are destitute of able faithful Teachers Thousands of the Servants of the Lord that are either deprived of their Faithful Teachers or in fears of losing them And that there are few Nations under the Heavens of God as farre as we can learn that have more able holy faithful laborious and truly peaceable Preachers of the Gospell proportionably than those are that are now cast out in England and are like in England Scotland and Ireland to be cast out if the old conformity be urg'd This course of unmerciful opposition is the greatest wrong to it that you can easily be drawn to unawares while so many truly fearing God are cast or trodden down and tempted to think ill of that which themselves and the Church thus suffer by And when so many of the worst befriend this way because it gratifieth them it tends to make your cause judged of according to the quality of its friends and adversaries Well said self-conceipt And in another place hints to the world that if the Presbyterians be turnd out there will not be honest men enough in the Nation to supply their places And having thus told the Bishops the wickednesse of their party and the honesty and goodnesse of a Puritan they boldly appeal to the King and after a great many good morrows thus pittifully conclude And shall wait in hope that so great a Calamity of your people as will follow the losse of so many able faithful Ministers as the rigorous imposition would cast out should never be recorded in the History of your Raign Thus these simpring Brethren are highly against liberty of conscience in others yet would they have it themselves Though they will so farr comply as not to be against an unimpos'd Liturgy yet are they expresly against our Common-Prayer Book Nay were it alter'd according to their own desires yet would they not be obliged by the Laws to use it Though in Queen Elizabeths time they amongst themselves having compos'd A Book of the form of Common Prayer c. they presented it to the Parliament earnestly desiring that by Act of Parliament that Book might be confirm'd and used all the Kingdome over Yet about 1585. four Presbyterian Classes made complaint to the Lord Burleigh against the Liturgy though they would not have it all taken away his Lordship bid them make a better upon which the first Classis fram'd a new one somewhat neer the Geneva mode but this the second Classis dislik'd and alter'd in 600 particulars that again had the fate to be quarrel'd at by the III Classis and what the third resolved upon the fourth would not Thus would these men have somewhat but they cannot agree amongst themselves a sufficient sign of their inconstancy altering this way and that according to the weather sometimes they will have a form impos'd anon they will have it at liberty and another time they will have none at all of whom I shall say with a late Characterizer That they are bold Gentlemen that cannot speak to man without notes and yet prate to God ex tempore The African Scipio conquerd the wild and heathenish Spaniards by his courtesie St. Francis if you will believe the Legend brought a mad Wolfe to such civility that he could behave himself a la mode and live friendly with his Neighbours A furious Buck and a pack of Hounds were miraculously brought to devotion by worshipping a Sea-toss'd Relique And an Elephant at Adsmeer in Indostain in the height of his fury remembred the courtesie receiv'd from an Herb-woman as St. Hieromes Lyon requited the cure of his foot by the keeping of his Masters Asse which being lost by his negligence the meek Lyon did penance by bearing home the wood 'T is said that a Wolfe at the command of St. Blase restored the hogg which it had taken from a poor woman Nor would the birds depart from the same man till he had laid his hands on them and blest them A sheep is storyed to have bleated in the Thief 's belly at the command of St. Patrick and the stones to have said Amen to St. Bedes Preachment as the Marble yielded to St. James body and an high Tower at the command of the same St. bowd down its Top equal to the ground to let a Merchant escape Thus monsters and stocks and stones if you believe the Legends can obey but no courtesie can win over these Non-conforming men still they will be opposite still seditious never complying to Authority unlesse that submitt to them first and as men neer drowning still catching hold of any thing for a pretence to cover their obstinacy When the Parliament and Queen inact conformity they deny obedience to that law when King James by Proclamation
court the Continent for self-preservation where they must provide for a rainy-day And what is become of all our Gold I know not unless it hath travell'd too XIV Another means to overthrow England Campanella thinks is to set them and the Dutch together by the Ears The fulfilling of which is fresh in every ones memory XV. After all Campanella's pumping to undo England and root out the Protestant Religion he can imagine no way more conducible to such ends then the reducing of that Kingdom into a Common-wealth Of which Observation there needs no Remarks but Experience not yet forgot CHAP. V. The Original of the Commons in Parliament That the Clergy is one of the Three Estates and the King Supream above all WHen I find God himself calling Rebellion the sin of Witchcraft for me to speak against it by endeavouring to aggravate the Iniquity would be to as small purpose to an Ingenious man as the pains and expences of Calvisius Sabinus to attain to the height of Learning since his memory was so weak that it could scarce retain the Names of Ulysses Achilles and Priamus Yet were it neerer allyed to Hell then it is it would not want both daring and knowing Patrons which doth something mitigate my admiration when I consider what Paper Time besides too much Bloud hath been spent by some men of late dayes to Apologize for the greatest Wickedness and thereby to strengthen themselves through their Actions in the Peoples Affections These though they had the worst Plea yet came off with the best Success by which they clamourously declared the Justness of their Cause hinting to the Royalists that it was owned by a Supernatural Power But Careat successibus opto Quisquis ab eventu facta notanda putat Let him ne're gain applause That from th' event states th' goodness of the cause And how Orthodox such Arguments are is obvious if we do but consider the often prosperity of the wicked who are sometimes permitted to conquer more for a scourge to others than any justness in themselves And I dare be confident in our case it holds the unlawfulness of these late domestick Commotions being rightly more appropriated to the Parliament than his Majesty as in it's due place shall be shewn But first to make the way more plain and easie to those who call themselves the weak Brethren the first fomenters of this Rebellion we shall in brief consider the Antiquity Subordination and Priviledges of Parliaments as they now stand whereby it is plain they had no power given them thus to raise Wars against and imprison much less behead their Soveraign For what I here speak is intended chiefly against the Long-Parliament The most ancient Government in this Island that Records can instruct us of is Monarchy and that in its Antiquity the most absolute the higher we go finding our Kings more free and powerful That reciprocal Compact between King and People so much boasted of by our Common-wealths-men and others being but a meer dream and Chamaera as that great Soul of Reason and Divinity the Reverend Bishop Sanderson hath compendiously and fully evinced That the ancient Kings of this Island had Meetings for Consultations reason prompts me to believe though I do not remember after what certain fashion yet since Christianity was setled here the Kings used to imploy the Archbishops Bishops and Nobility by way of Advice and Counsel Ethelbert the famous King of our Kentish Saxons being converted unto the Christian Faith about the year 596. some nine years after viz. 605. summons a Council in which were not only the Laity but the Clergy also After which time the Reverend Archbishops and Bishops have sat as a part of those grand Meetings till the late Exclusion by the Long-Parliament as the well-read Dr. Heylin who though under a great decay of sight sees more than a whole Nation of Presbytery hath sufficiently asserted These Lords Spiritual and Temporal were the only Parliament known to former Kings and so but one House However sometimes upon great concerns the King would when himself best pleas'd have some of the Commoners joyned with them but then they were not as now elected but particularly chosen according to the Kings desire and these were of more than ordinary savour and discretion and therefore call'd Wise-men The first time that in History we can meet with a Parliament consisting of the Clergy Nobility and Commons is in King Henry the firsts dayes at Salisbury Anno 1116. and so the Clergy were 500. years before the Commons in Parliaments But why this King should be the first that threw this favour so generally upon the Commons was as some are pleas'd to affirm grounded upon his own Usurpation For he being but the younger Son of William the Conquerour following the President of William Rufus seized upon the Crown in the absence of his eldest Brother Robert and afterwards most cruelly put out his eyes This they say moved many Discontents amongst the Nobility against whom to strengthen himself he thought it best to pleasure the Commons which was done by calling them to this Parliament at Salisbury whereby his Usurpation became more formidable against his Enemies But though the Commons were call'd to Counsel at this time if at this time since Prynne denyeth it yet were they not thereby made or esteem'd necessary since in several Kings raigns successively after Parliaments were held as Prynne their chief Patron doth acknowledge consisting only of the Spiritual and Temporal Barons And when afterwards they did really sit is as uncertain as after what manner or when they had their first Speaker The first by that Title upon Record being Sir Thomas Hungerford Anno 1376. though the year before John Stow calls Sir Peter de la More their Prolocutor And before these two but three viz. Petrus de Mountford Scroope and Sir William Trussel the first of these viz. Mountford being in the 44 th year of Henry III. that are known are supposed to officiate as Speakers for in what nature they were of is not yet known though for certain if the Commons sat by themselves they could not want some such like Officer It being many years afterwards viz. Anno 1401. that the King Henry IV. required the Commons to choose a Speaker before which time no such Command being recorded Thus we see the small Antiquity of Parliaments as they now stand with us representing the three Estates the Clergy Nobility and Commons This I write to shew how strangely confident the Commons were of late dayes who if you will believe Prynne one of themselves had really no such Power and Judicatureship as they did in the least pretend to Nor would I be thought in this or any thing in the sequent Discourse to invalid the true and real Authority of Parliaments or to lessen the Credit of the Commons House holding it now to be an Essential part of Parliament but yet not so much as some of
this Blake is summon'd before the Council which so incensed Andrew Melvill that he labour'd to make it a Publick Cause and did so much That they declare it would be ill to question Ministers and boldly told King James who asked them if they had seen the Conditions of Huntly's Pardon That both he and the rest should either satisfie the Church in every point or be pursued with all extremity so as they should have no reason to complain of the over-sight of Papists And as for Blake they gave him a Declinator affirming it was the Cause of God whereunto it concerned them to stand at all hazzard and this Declinator was sent to all the Presbyteries in the Kingdom who were desired not only to subscribe it but to commend the Cause in their private and publick Prayers to God by which means they fancyed themselves so strong that they deny the King to have power to judge a man for speaking in Pulpit and that the King in what he had already done had so wronged Christs Kingdom that the death of many men could not be so grievous to them And therefore they ordain a Fast for averting the Judgements then threatning the Kirk This action so vext his Majesty that he forbad all Convocatings and Meetings but they little cared for him or his Orders for Mr. Walter Balcanquall did not only forthwith rail against the Court naming several of the chief Courtiers but desired all the well-affected to meet in the Little Church to assist the Ministry who did accordingly and Petition the King in behalf of the Kirk But the King asking them who they were that durst convene against his Proclamation was worshipfully replyed by the Lord Lindesey That they durst do no more then so and that they would not suffer Religion to be over-thrown Multitudes unmannerly thronging into the room the King departed and they went to the little Church again where Lindesey told them No course but one let us stay together that are here and promise to take one part and advertise our friends and the favourers of Religion to come unto us for it shall be either theirs or ours Upon which great clamours shoutings and lifting up of hands followed some crying to Arms others to bring out Haman for whilst the Lords were with the King being sent as above-said from the Little-Church Mr. Cranstone read to the People that story others cryed out The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon and so great were the Peoples fury rais'd on a sodain That if the Provost by fair words and others by threats had not tamed them they had done some violence These actions of the Kirkers makes the King leave the Town go to Linlithgow whereupon they resolve for Warr the Ministers agitating them Amongst the rest one John Welsh in his Sermon rail'd pitifully against the King saying He was possest with a Devil and compared him to a Madd-man and affirmed That Subjects might lawfully rise and take the Sword out of his hand In this fiery zeal they write a Letter to the Lord Hamilton desiring him to be their General telling him in it That the People animated by the Word and Motion of Gods Spirit had gone to Arms. But all came to nothing Hamilton refusing such rebellious honour carryeth the Letter to the King who orders the guilty Ministers to be apprehended who escape by flying into England and the Magistrates of Edenburgh are pardoned The overthrow of this one business strengthened the Kings Authority mightily which was also confirmed by the Assembly at Perth now better known by the name of St. John's Town The Ministry being now pretty quiet Ruthen Earl of Gowry conspired to kill the King but to his own ruin His Majesty for this Preservation orders that Thanks should solemnly be render'd to God but in this he found the Presbyters cross-grain'd denying to do any such thing for such a deliverance whereupon they were silenced yet afterwards shewing their willingness were restored In this year was King James his third son his second viz. Robert dying young Charles born afterwards King of England The next year was kept an Assembly at Burnt-Island whither Mr. John Davidson wrote a rayling Letter checking them for their cowardise in not opposing the ungodly telling them that the King was not sound and that Warr was more commendable than a wicked Peace But the graver sort rather pittyed and smiled at the mans madd zeal then troubled themselves to vex at him And now Queen Elizabeth dying King James the undoubted next Heir to the English Crown is at London Proclaimed accordingly whither he went to receive his Crown having thus happily united the two Kingdoms And here I shall leave off from prosecuting the Presbyterian Story in Scotland any further though I might tell you of their calling against the Kings consent an Assembly at Aberdeen to rant against Episcopal Government nor would they dissolve at the Kings command till they were proclaimed Traytors and yet did some of them scorn to acknowledge their Error and were by some of their Brethren vindicated to King James face in England the next year And many more instances of their Waspish humour in denying the Kings Authority might be shewn out of their own Historians who abound in such examples but if Symmetry will tell us the stature of the man by the proportion of his foot these may serve so much at this time to satisfie that I fear they will rather nauseate And really those who thought it a hard case that Mr. Blake should be punished for affirming in a Sermon 1596. That all Kings were the Devils Barns that the Kings heart was treacherous and that the Devil was in the Court and the guiders of it That the Queen of England was an Atheist and a wicked Woman That the Nobility and Lords were miscreants bribers degenerated godless dissemblers and Enemies to the Church That the Council were Holliglasses Cormorants and men of no Religion And in his Prayer for Queen Anne he said We must pray for her for the fashion but we have no cause she will never do us good Nor did he word it only but also rais'd Arms both Horse and Foot against the Kings consent These men I say who thought it unjust to have him questioned for such rebellious actions may also for ought I know think it strange with Buchanan that our Laws do not provide ample and honourable rewards for those who can boldly murder their Prince And yet must this Buchanan and Knox be cryed up as valiant noble bold and publick-spirited men and this present world scorned because we have no such fire-brands And whether this title is rashly thrown upon them let any ingenious man judge not only by their fore-mentioned tenets and actions against their Kings but by the answerable nurturing up of their Disciples who at the University of St. Andrews instead of Divinity Lectures had these Political or rather a ruine to
the perfidious hot-spurr'd Presbyters THE HISTORY Of the Wicked PLOTS and CONSPIRACIES OF OUR Pretended Saints BOOK II. CHAP. I. The mischievous and impudent Contrivances and Innovations of the wicked long-Parliament 1. Their slandering of the Court and Church 2. Their Affection to the Schismaticall Incendiaries 3. The Impudence and seditiousnesse of their Lecturers 4. Their designes to alter the frame of Civil Government 5. Their Plots to overthrow Episeopacy 6. Their stirring up the people to Tumults 7. The small esteem the Commons had of the King and Nobility Whereby it appears that it was not the King but the Parliament that occasioned and began the Warres HAving now and that as succinctly as I could somewhat discovered the peace-consuming zeal of our Presbyterians I shall come to the subject intended to wit our late unhappy Distractions The seeds of which was not only before sown by the Nonconformists but began a little to take root and sprout forth through the temper of our English Parliament 1628. and the after actions of the Scottish Covenanters by whom the King was cajol'd to call a Parliament to fit November the third 1640. A day ominous to the Clergy by a former president upon that day the 20. year of King Henry the Eighth that Parliament beginning which began the ruine of Cardinal Woolsey the power of the Clergy and the dissolution of those famous Monuments of Charity the Abbeys and such like hospitable buildings England hath afforded us many Parliaments yet but one of them honoured with the Epithet of Good and that some hundred years agoe though since his Majesty hath been pleas'd to memorize one with the character of the healing and blessed Parliament as many of our former Representatives have had several names added to them as the Parliament that wrought wonders The great Parliament The marvellous Parliament The Laymens Parliament because no Lawyer was to be in it The unlearned Parliament either for the unlearnedness of the Members or for their malice to learned men Barebones Parliament The short Parliament and in the same year 1640. did our long wicked Parliament commence and I have heard of a Mad Parliament No sooner did the long Parliament sit but their proceedings were hurryed on with that fiery zeal that if distractions had not followed thereupon it would have been as strange to the discreeter sort as Margaret Countess of Hollands year-like birth at Lusdunen to our Country-women or the story of the womanly girle who at six years old was brought to bed of a son in Indostain For instantly they fell upon grievances abuses in Religion violation of laws liberties and what not Concerning which their speeches flew plentifully about and releas'd the grand Incendiaries Prynne Burton Bastwick and Dr. Leighton and giving them great rewards Some of them being triumphantly guarded into London by many thousands of horse and foot with rose-mary and bays in their hands and hats Novemb. 28. which was not only an high affront to the Kings Authority but a political glass to the Nonconformists through which they might see the strength and unanimity of their own Faction who were grown so valiant that a little before this upon the fast day Novemb. 17. where Dr. Burgess and Marshall preacht above 7 houres before the Commons and before the Lords two Bishops but as the second service was reading a Psalm was struck up by some of the Brethren which presently disturbd the Divine service to the amazement of the civill and orthodox Auditors who could little expect any such thing without an express order by authority But this is no great matter in respect of their after actions which are so many against the King and Kingdom and that too before his Majesty's horrid murther that it is impossible for me in this Compendium to decimate them into a relation their very printed Acts and Ordinances in that time amounting to above 530. Besides their Declarations Petitions Remonstrances Votes Proclamations Messages Speeches and such like passages and all stuft with some worshipful thing or other by which their pretty actions were confirmed Yet as farr as brevity will allow me I shall endeavour to speak out and as plain as I can yet must I not accuse all nor half it may be of the members many of them spur'd on by their Loyalty following his Majesty and sitting in Parliament in the Schools at Oxford after whose departure the House at Westminster seemed like Pandora's box from whence all our future mischiefs and diseases flew over the Nation The Parliament a little after its beginning having triumph'd over divers persons of quality whom they knew to be opposers of their intended Presbytery thought it fitting to seek some absolute way of security to themselves for the future And to this nothing could be thought more conducible considering how they had gul'd an odium of Reverend Episcopacy into the simple people than by the certainty of Parliaments for which purpose they procured of the King who dreamt nothing of their after-games and fetches an Act for Triennial Parliaments And that their own actions might appear of more grandure by the stability of their own foundation they also obtain'd from his Majesty who was never wanting to grant any thing to his Parliaments pretended to be for the good of his subjects an Act whereby themselves should not be dissolved prorogued or adjourn'd but by their own consent By which means they were fancied by many of the Kingdome to be of such high Authority that neither King law or any power else could have any influence over them let their actions be never so treasonable or wicked And so might Phaeton suppose when his Father had given him the command of his refulgent Chariot though his indiscreet authority brought ruine to himself and destruction to some parts of the world And well may any one in this turn their own weapons against themselves and yet not be deem'd too medling Such a continuing-Commission is freely given yet cunningly procured to the Captain of a ship But when this Governour falls so farr distracted as to indeavour nothing more then the ruine of his Vessel by their own popular consequence his Commission is void as being no more able to govern his charge to the best This instance I quote more because oft alledged against Regall authority than for any similitude it carrieth unlesse upon our perpetual Parliamentary account And therefore the reviving of this long-Parliament by a modern Writer seems to be to as small purpose as Don Quixot's martial endeavours to retrive the I know not what Knight-errantry by his paper helmet his wind-mill and claret-butts encounters or Hortensius the self-conceited School-master in du Parques Franchion to obtain the Crown and Kingdome of Poland The King having as he thought pacifyed his Subjects in England having granted them what they desired thought it likewise expedient to settle all things in Scotland in a peaceable temper for which purpose he put himself to the
trouble of a journy thither yet not without some notable observators No sooner he being departed but our Parliament ordering some members to go also into Scotland in notion of a Committee to inform them of all passages in Scotland Yet when the King went into Scotland the Parliament adjourn'd though appointed a Committee of the Commons consisting of 50 of and over which Mr. Pym was the chief Lord and Maister of mis-rule and him I find nominated at the very beginning of this Parliament with the Emphasis of the great parliament man And the truth of it is that he was so farre the dominus fac totum in this juncto that his words were laws all things being acted according to his desire Here many things of Church matters were by these Gentlemen purely innovated and then prosecuted with such violence that the Episcopal clergy durst not gainsay him as Dr. Fuller Mr. Hutton Mr. Fletcher and others of St. Giles Cripplegate Mr. Booth the Minister of St. Botolphs Aldersgate Dr. Heywood of St. Giles the Ministers of St. George Southwark of Margarets new Fish-street c. could very well testifie by experience Although the house of Lords would not consent in these things to join with the Commons yet did they so farre supinely wink at the others actions that their Authority was now so much intrench'd upon by the Commons that their priviledges slipt from them unperceived though without all question the presbyterian party both understood and smiled at such proceedings About this time there was a great deal of noise and clamour about a Letter forsooth against Mr. Pym with I know not what plaister in it and written God wot when and delivered by no body knows whom but a Gentleman forsooth in a gray-coat on horseback and great searching and inquiring for this man in the moon was made but all to as little purpose as the Northwest passage or the philosophers stone And many times hath it been printed and spread abroad to let the good people see the wickedness forsooth of Malignants and with such chaffe as this have many of our old fools been taken Yet when that impudent Libel stuft with as much malice as either this letter or hell could afford was vented against that great prop of learning the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury Laud no notice was in the least wise taken of it nor did he himself any thing regard it though it thus threatned his destruction Laud look to thy self be assured thy life is sought as thou art the fountain of wickedness Repent of thy monstrous sins before thou be taken out of the World c. And assure thy self neither God nor the world can endure such a vile Councellor or Whisperer to live Than this what more implacable destructive and abominable considering his nearness to the Kings person his trust and beneficial endeavours for the publick good Yet had he been better or if I may say here the best and the designes against him more devilish yet would our Non-conformists have hug'd and blest themselves at this opposition had it been as after malicious experience proved to his ruine and all this because he was an absolute opposer of the Presbyterian innovations who though but of a very little body yet had a soul more large and vast for the good of Church and Literature then a whole Parliament of Disciplinarians But let us now think of his Majesties return from Scotland in whose absence some of the Parliament had rais'd large reports of strange and terrible plots and designs against John an Oaks and John a Stiles by which means many people were endeavour'd to be whisper'd into dissatisfaction of the King and such a jealousie was grown by the noise of this Chimaera that many did according as they were bid think that things were not then well carryed and this was cunningly aimed at the King and his Favourites by those who had their Coy-ducks in such obedience that their Commands was not unlike that of Madam Fame to Aeolus in our ingenious Chaucer Bring eke his other claviown That hight Sclaunder in every Towne With which he wont is to diffame Hem that me lyst and do * hem shame But these Alarums served the Parliaments turn being a Cloak under which they might deceive the People in their pretences for raising a Guard the which they did and it may be to defend them from a Pedicularie disease of which possibly they saw some symptoms then in the House Of these Romantick Jealousies Frights Alarums and unheard of Plots and Designs his Majesty tells the Parliament and of the evil consequences of such slanders in his first Speech to them after his return from Scotland And in his next earnestly desires them to prosecute the Irish affairs and perceiving them considering about pressing of Souldiers with a check at his Prerogative He desires that the bounds of his ancient and undoubted Authority might not then fall into debate however that it may pass with a Salvo jure he is willing rather then such disputes should take up time in such an hour of extreamity for whilest the Grass groweth the Horse may sterve Upon this they clamour against his Majesties dealings professing the Priviledges of Parliament were broken by these his Exceptions for which they demand satisfaction and earnestly desire his Majesty not only to declare the names of but also to deliver up to punishment those persons who had given such counsel Nor was this mode of dealing one of their least Plots upon all occasions desiring the King to betray his faithful Counsellors by that means not only to leave him naked but to the discretion of the Houses But these things carryed no great shew of unhandsomness though like the Apples of Sodem beautiful without yet stuft with filthiness in respect of their after Thunder-claps which like Brutus shew'd their malice in their fronts For the next day after their Petition they welcome him home with a Remonstrance as they call it in which maliciously they endeavour to rip up all the faults and none is good but God of his Majesties Raign and that in as civil a way as their zeal could allow them as you may see in the Paper it self for in it through his actions they tax him with Cruelty Injustice Oppression Violence and what not They out-braid him for putting forth untrue scandalous false and impudent Declarations in it they highly commend the Schismatical Non-conformists blaming the King for punishing them Nor is this all but the Scotch Invasion of England too is extoll'd and defended and the King scandalized as if he endeavoured to root out the true Religion and bring in Popery nor are they silent against the Bishops and their Orthodox Divines by which it is plain the Presbyterian ruled the Parliament nor must the Innocent Ceremonies and forsooth Superstition escape a scouring And yet in this very same mogende-Paper they confess they must acknowledge that his Majesty hath
passed more good Bills to the advantage of the Subjects then have been in many ages Yet for all these good turns done them by the King do they Print though the King earnestly desired the contrary and sedulously spread abroad this Remonstrance thereby to make him odious and themselves as Patrons to the people a fair requital for such large benefits and sufficiently to shew their ingratitude and What more wicked then that amongst our vertuous Ancestours The Heathen Heraclians were more noble to their Athenian Enemies and the savage Lions for their thankfulness to Mentor Helpius and Androdus will be a reproach upon record to these Puritanical Members And Alexander was more ingenuous to his Horse than these to their King Yet never was there any who desired Peace and the Subjects good more than He for the obtaining of which he consented to them in such things that he parted with many Jewels from his Crown as Queen Elizabeth used to call such Priviledges granting them Triennial Parliaments abolishing the Star-Chamber High-Commission-Court Writs for Ship-Money Bishops-Votes in Parliament Temporal power of the Clergy slip'd away Tunnage Poundage and gave the Parliament leave to sit as long as they pleas'd and that they might see he privately acted nothing against them he admitted into his Privy-Council several Lords which were great Favourites and Correspondents with the Parliamentary Party and in many other things besides these hath this King valed his Crown as a Learned Doctor phraseth it Yet could not all this please some men being like the Sea insatiable Though a moderate Member of the Parliament asked what they could desire more of the King seeing he had granted them so much he was answered by Mr. Hambden as a late Historian tells us To part with his Power and trust it to us And that some of them had higher thoughts than the Loyalty of a Subject or the trust of Parliament could dispense withal I could easily be perswaded to and those especially who by their former actions in Parliaments had drawn some displeasure upon themselves and knew well enough that the more Prerogative and Power the King lost the more they gain'd which at last would more then preserve them But this Faction as the King tells us was only of a few ambitious discontented and seditious persons who under strange pretences had entered into a Combination to alter the Government both of Church and State And so that this might be done they did not care after what manner nor who perisht so their own heads were but held up that me-thinks I hear them threat and encourage like Tasso's Tyrant Aladin Purche'l Reo non si salvi il guisto pera El'innocente Sù sù fideli mei sù via prendete Le flamme e'l ferro ardete uccidete So I Obtain my wish let just with wicked dye Come come rouse up my faithful friends and shew How bravely you can burn and murther too And what courses they steered to arrive at their hoped for Authority may in part be seen in these following Observations One of their first steps was to make the Court and Church odious amongst the Vulgar under the Title of Popish and Arminians a wickedness quite contrary to the Laws of our Land which make special provision against the publishers of such rumours whereby discord or occasion of discord or slander may arise between the King and his People or the Nobility or Bishops yet neither Law nor Gospel can have any any sway with these men who had used this knack of reviling in several former Parliaments and may be seen in the multitude of their long-winded Speeches and printed too forsooth the better to spread the Infection about the Nation yet you may take all the Reason amongst them and never grow madd with too much Learning though the multitude of words are enough to choak the largest Leviathan nor could much be expected many of the Members being so ignorant that I dare boldly say that they did not know what the five Controverted Points signified and I believe would have taken and voted too Jacob van Harmine and the Remonstrants for Calvinists though have damn'd Arminius for a wicked Heathen Thus the Priests in Spain told the people to make them hate the Reformed Religion that Protestants were not like other men had heads like Dogs and such like Beasts They also restored into favour all those who had opposed the Peace of the Nation as Prynne Burton Bastwick Leighton Lilburn and such like who were stiff men to raise their Interests as farr as Pen Ink or Brawling could do and that their Interest might be the more strengthened in the Countrey they put into Offices and Imployments of trust all those whom they either found or were by them made discontented against the Court and Religion by which trick they twisted their Obligations so close together that they made good use of this afterwards And to make their Cause more favourable to the People and to blast the Reputation of their Enemies they promoted abundance of bawling Lecturers most of them of no great Learning or Conscience but as furious as Orlando and with throats O heavenly wide who could scold excellently against Bishops and Government and vomit out a Lesson with as much ease as a Matron of Billingsgate both being compos'd of the same materials and to the same purpose viz. strife and for their dexterity and quickness they out-did a Mountebank being alwayes as ready for the Pulpit as a Knight-Errant for combate never out of his way let the Text be what it will like the Sompners Fryer in Chaucer but nothing related to the honest Parson in the same Poet that it is beyond admiration how they can conjure such an Olla Podrida of Sermon-Notes from such good Texts and that of so little coherence that their extraction seems as miraculous as the generation of the Cadmian armed Souldiers from Serpents teeth To raise up Rebellion and Sedition there cannot be a better Trumpet in the World then the mouths of such Hirelings as hath been proved by long experience Wat Tyler and Straw's Rebellion could not want incouraging Sermons as long as John Ball lasted who cheer'd up that Levelling Army at Black-heath with a long Preachment beginning with this Proverb When Adam dolve and Eve span Who was then a Gentleman And 't is observed by Mr. Howell that the Preaching Fryers and Monks were the chief Incendiaries of the Catalonians to their late Revolt And we have it from Authentcik Authority how that Hernando de Avalos and Juan de Padilla in the Spanish Civil Wars against the Emperour Charles V. in the first place imploy'd some Fryers to rail against the Government in their Pulpit and so to incite the people to Warr which according to expectation took fire in Toledo these men being the first thunderers of Seditions into the Castillians and to this purpose the famous Spanish
then the latter they thought as it fell out accordingly afterwards would fall to their obedience with the more ease To bring this great thing about all their art was imployed But the chief of all was their old true friend and souldier Calumny by this to make the orthodox episcopal party odious to the people a way which Contzenus the Jesuite looks upon as so excellent that it is very fitting it should be endeavour'd And in this trade of vilifying our Nonconformists were so expert and sedulous that in a short while they had innumerable lying pamphlets and reports spread about the Nation that in the first year or two of this Long Parliament the hearers and believers with the relatours of these slaunders were so many and all performed with that care and celerity that Dame Report in England out-vapour'd Queen Fame in Chaucer who Had also fele up standing eares And tonges as on beest ben heares And on her fete woxen sawe I Partriche wynges redily Yet are these fictions against our reverend Church-government quite contrary to the sound and true Law of our land which will thus tell us For as much as divers questions by overmuch boldnesse of speech and talk amongst many of the common sort of people being unlearned have lately grown upon the making and consecrating of Archbishops and Bishops within this Realm whether the same were and be orderly done according to the Law or not which is much tending to the slaunder of all the state of the Clergy being one of the greatest states of this Realm c. Yet let the Laws say what they will these men will oppose and that in Ritaing waies rather then not get their end above 2000. of this faction making a tumult in London crying out they would have no Bishop nor no high Commission a bad omen to the peace of the Kingdom but a great incouragement to the Long Parliament who first sat within a fortnight after this hurry And had presently a sympathizing Petition brought them by Alderman Pennington loaden with the scrawling hands of 15000 Londoners and this forsooth against Archbishops Bishops and our Church-ceremonies though I believe if none had been subscribers but those who understood what they set their hands to that neither the Alderman nor 15000 of the rest had listed their faith and themselves in that paper which the Lord Digby call'd very well contemptible irrational and presumptious Yet did the Presbyterian faction in Parliament joy themselves thus to have brought that great City to the subjection and reverence of their new found Disciplinarian slavery and perceiving themselves thus back'd by such riches and so many men went boldly on to pull down our Reverend Church and set up their golden calves in its stead And all this pains hurly-burly alarums and warre must only be like Caligula's Army to fight for empty cochle-shels in respect of the truth glory and sincerity swaying in the English Church The first imployment of note against the Church that the Commons put themselves upon was against the Convocation contemporary with the short Parliament which they condemned as seditious dangerous against King Law Subject though the King acknowledged no such thing and one of their main reasons against this Convocation was because the clergy therein assembled perceiving how the Scots did covenant and swear against our Church-government and that our English Non-conformists were grown strong and not only corresponded with the Scots but tended the same way which would ruine our Church at last as experience proved did frame an Oath for the maintaining of our Church-Government against all Popery and its Superstition And this was called the Oath c. though the words following this c. to wit as it stands now established makes not the Oath so contemptible as our Presbytery clamoured Against this Oath the Cornmons ranted affirming the Clergy though assembled by the King's command had no power to make an Oath the which whether they had or no I shall not now dispute Only I shall have leave to think that every one thinks the best of themselves And so I suppose did the Commons when they framed the Protestation and ordered all in their own House to take it and did also recommend it to be taken all England over though the King did never consent to it nor as then had the Lords and whether the Commons by themselves have power to impose an Oath I shall not determine though report speaks the Negative And as for the Protestation it self 't is composed of such uncertain jugling materials considering the Presbyterian Notion which imposed it that a true understanding Conscience would never embrace it for these following rational Doubts waving the dispute of the Imposers authority I promise vow and protest to maintain with my life the true reformed Protestant Religion expressed in the Doctrine of the Church of England against all Popery and Popish Innovations within this Realm Dub. 1. What the Presbyterian Imposers and Framers here mean by the Doctrine of the Church of England If the Thirty nine Articles why do they not subscribe them if any thing else why do they not mention it that men might know what they swear Dub. 2. What they mean by Popery If their Articles in what sense they meant the Points held against the Calvinists by some learned men of our Church and Holland Dub. 3. What they meant by Popish Innovations within this Realm for their Writings affirm our Church-government by Bishops and Innocent Ceremonies to be so The which if they meant then none but Schismaticks would take it if otherwise why did they not explain themselves that people might not swear ignorantly As also the power and priviledges of Parliament The lawful Rights and Liberty of Subject and shall never relinquish this Promise Vow and Protestation Dub. 4. What are the power priviledges of Parliament and Rights and Liberty of Subject As for the Parliamentary priviledges they themselves never yet undertook to declare what they are And for men to swear to defend they know not what is not unlike that Messenger who swore to observe his Masters Instructions in his sealed Commission which when he had opened he found no command but to hang himself Dub. 5. Whether it is lawful to swear never to relinquish this Protestation though the King and State should afterwards have some reasons to revoke or alter all or any clause in the said Protestation as none can question their Authority in such things And then eight dayes after was a piece of paper as if dropping from its Posteriors joyned to the rump of this Protestation wherein was declared that nothing in this Oath was to be extended to the maintaining of any form of worship discipline or government nor of any rites or ceremonies of the said Church of England By which the Hauntghost of Presbyterie is easily perceived to be there domineering and 't is the humour of these men to love
who neither cared for them nor their sitting nor any else that would not dance after them and Geneva For they are resolved for Jack Presbyter and therefore being informed that the Lords Order for the Common-Prayer had been read in Churches and not their Declaration they drew up an Order and sent it to be printed enjoyning that their aforesaid Declaration should be read in all Churches And so severe were they in this point that they put Dr. Haywood of St. Giles to some trouble for not permitting their Order to be read though he had not only his own Conscience and the Lords Order but the Law of the Land to testifie his justness And what more ridiculous then to astonish the people into discontents and sidings by reading to them at the same time two contrary Orders and that of the Commons being quite against the Laws of the Land Thus did the Commons batter down Religion as Captain Jones in the Poet did the Jesuites more by strong hand then reason yet had they left one thing undone which was the extirpation of Episcopacy root and branch to bring which villany about they Voted them to have no place in the House of Lords nor to meddle with any secular affairs But here before they went any further they were somewhat troubled at the King because he being then in Scotland had sent Mr. Warwick Orders to draw up five Congé d'Eslire's for five new Bishops there being then so many Sees vacant but in this strait Mr. Stroud thinks it fitting to Petition the King to stop these five till they had dispacht the charge against the other Bishops Yet what need they care whether the King make Bishops or no since they are resolved never to acknowledge them to be so for they can with the same ease cut off all as one Therefore seeing the King for Bishops they bend themselves more resolutely against them and so prepare their charge against those formerly accused and for the Champions to mannage this Combate Pymme and St Johns by the commendations of one another are chosen The death of the first is noys'd by report and the honesty of the latter is not unknown to any The Parliament was something stopt in their proceedings against Bishops by the Irish Rebellion yet having taken some breath they sent a message to the Lords desiring that the 13. Bishops might speedily come to answer And not long after as an incouragement to the factious they released Simmonds a Printer who had been in custody for printing a Book against the Common-Prayer yet the very same day was Walker the Iremonger imprisoned only for Printing a Book concerning Mr. Prynne though the first deserved as much hanging as the latter Imprisonment and from these men the Bishops might well expect good justice But still they sit and Vote in the House of Lords which vext the Sectaries to the guts because they could not tell how to get them out handsomly for they had no great confidence in their Articles of Canons and Constitutions and whilest they Voted there the Orthodox Party would still exceed At last some ill spirit or other put it into the noddles of Isaac Pennington Captain Ven and such combustible humours to raise such tumults against the Reverend Fathers the fear whereof should either keep them from the House or bring some ruine sacrilegiously to be acted upon them And accordingly up cometh the Rabble of London to the Parliament House crying out No Bishops no Bishops And at last got the Bishop of Lincoln then going to the House with the Earl of Dover into the midst of them where they had like to have squeez'd him to death And having thus begun many hundreds of them come again the same day with Swords and Staves causing great uproars both in Westminster and London not only to the affrightment of the Bishops but the King and Queen and the next day also assaulted Westminster Abby These Tumults obtain'd the end of their Contrivers keeping the Bishops from the House pelting of them with stones as they endeavoured to go By which they drew up a Petition to the King how that the Tumults kept them out and therefore protested against all things that should be done in the House of Peers in time of their thus violent seclusion Which did trouble the Parliament so much that one Mr. Weston of the Commons House thought he had spoke bravely when he moved that the Bishops might be sent to Bedlam But Glyn and others were cleerly for High Treason which accordingly was done and ten of them sent to the Tower and two to the Black Rod. And thus their businesse being don the great tumults ceas'd the Presbyterians sang Victoria whilst the reverend Church of England lay in the dust miserably trod upon by a Schismatical zeal yet had they they nothing to accuse the Bishops of and so were forced to release them all but two against one of which they could say nothing for if they could they would and whether the cry of the others bloud be yet stopt I know not How were the Country cheated with swarms of Petitions against this Ecclesiastical Order yet in this none more ridiculous then the Londoners One troup of Tradesmen petition against Bishops and their reason was because their being was the decay of trading and in the clause of all gave a notable lash at the House of Lords Nor is this all but the very Porters 15000 said to be in number Petition too and affirm that they cannot indure the weight of Episcopacy any longer and therefore must have redress Nay the very women by the pushing on of their hot-headed associates thought themselves so much concerned in these Church-affairs that they must petition too And these as fit persons to apprehend Chuch-government as the simple Cockney country-businesse who thought a bush hung about with black moles skins to be a black pudding tree yet these sort of Fanaticks are apt to have abominable discretions for thus the Scots some years before in their Petition against the Common Prayer Book begun it thus We Men Women and Children and Servants having considered c. Most miraculous Children Born like Adam at the top of understanding O the happiness to spring from the loins of a Covenanter who as it was said of the Lady Margaret can bring forth men instead of children Certainly these children were akin to that boy of Cracovia in Poland which had not only teeth but spake the first day of its birth but when he received Christianity lost that faculty And probably had these covenanting Children women and such like known more of Christianity then these did they had never acted so violently against Church-government Or it may be they were somewhat related to that other child born in the same City which spoke distinctly at half a year old yet nothing but mischief was by it uttered distruction to all Poland and that
Middlesex who by Order had commanded those men to keep watch but sent one of them viz. Justice Long to the Tower This favour of the Commons so animated the people that they thought sedition was then lawful and those tumults a glory to the City because they shewed its strength And therefore many thousands of them run crowding to Westminster crying out No Bishops no Bishops and having thus ranted it in the morning they come again in the afternoon armed with swords and staves and other weapons and then they domineer to the purpose running up and down Westminster inquiring for the Bishops protesting they would pull them in pieces whereupon they were desired by the Marquess of Hertford to stay in the house all night the people vowing to watch their going out and to search every Coach with Torches it being then dark that they might not escape And when the Lords sent down to the Commons that an order might be taken with the tumult and care of the Bishops lives they would do nothing in the business laughing in their sleeves that they had thus brought that great City to worship them and Villainy Yet were the Bishops some way or other cunningly stoln out of the house to the great grief of the blood thirsty Rebels that they had thus lost their sacralegiously intended sacrifice Yet what they mist then they hoped to obtain the next day and therefore away they hurry again to Westminster having Sir Richard Wisman for their Captain And being thus spurr'd on they assault the Abby where the Archbishop of York was then but the doors being strongly lock'd and barr'd and good opposition made they gain'd nothing to boast of and Sir Richard's head was so broke with a tyle thrown from the Leads that he dyed of it nor did John Lilbourn one well known depart without the loss of some rebellious bloud being with some others pelted with stones to the purpose This repulse did something discourage them yet the next day they were coming again but at White-Hall were stopt by the Train-Band and forced to return back some of them being well cudgell'd which action was highly resented by the Parliament who therefore ordered that those who stopt the Londoners coming to Parliament should be found out and examined before a Committee which Order was a good New-years-gift to the seditious Schismaticks Such is the malice of Presbytery against Bishops as if they were all inspired with the same spirit of venome and hatred that he had who long ago cryed out Short red God red shea we the Byshop And accordingly was the Bishop with a hundred men murthered And not inferiour to the former was he in London when the Tumult was railing against the Reverend and Learned Bishop Morton some crying Pull him out of his Coach others acting so violently that the Bishop believed he should never have escaped alive if a leading man amongst the rabble had not cryed out Let him go and hang himself words wicked enough and vomitted with as much malice though by Providence they saved the good Bishop's life The chief men tamper'd withal by some of the factious Members to stirr up these Tumults were Alderman Pennington and Venne two King-Tryers and Manwaring nominated one of the Kings Judges and other such like Instruments they could not want Venne pleading to the people That the worser Party was like to have the better of the good Party and used to imploy his Wife as a Mercury to run about and stir up the people And it is an old Note that Sectaries used in the first place to tamper with such soft-hearted Creatures The truth on 't is the audaciousness of these men was intolerable being like one of their Predecessors Constantinus who is branded for a lover of Tumults and then confidently to glory in such villanies Yet had his Majesty but stript himself of so much mercy as to have eas'd the Nation of the Ring-leaders of these disorders by some meritorious exemplary punishment it may be the rest of the rabble would have learn'd better manners by the Precedent of such an execution But the Kings tenderness made them more audacious so that they never left murmuring and tumultuating till they had terrified the King from White-Hall where he could neither stay with safety nor honour having his power so much scorned that when he went into London the Rabble rung nothing in his ears but Priviledges of Parliament Priviledges of Parliament Alderman Fowke one that went under the notion of one of the Kings Judges as long as the Times were accordingly but they no sooner change but then he denyes and publickly clears himself this man made a worshipful Speech to the King taking upon him to vindicate the accused Members and to give his Majesty advice concerning Fears and Jealousies Nor was this all but that City also protects the accused Members and brings them again to the Parliament-House in the greatest triumph that their wit could imagine with Guns Trumpets flying colours and such like bravado's which was not only an absolute defying but contempt of his Majesty So that Hugh Peters that scandal to the Pulpit spake no false Doctrine when he affirm'd in Alhallows Church in Lumbardstreet That If ever this Kingdom was brought into slavery this City would be the cause of it These Tumults though confest by the Common-Council of London to be the great trouble and affrightment of his Majesties good Subjects and experience also proved it yet must they not be supprest though the Lords earnestly perswaded the Commons to it because as they affirm'd They must not discourage their Friends this being a time they must make use of their Friends Mr. Pym saying God forbid that the House of Commons should proceed in any way to dishearten people to obtain their just desires in such a way The favourablest construction of which words must be by Petition and yet this way was not then acted without Tumults it being then grown to a custom as their own Historian confesseth for a Petition to be backt by great multitudes to Westminster or White-Hall As that was from Kent which was brought to Westminster by about 5000. all a Horse-back and all this noyse was to thank the Lords for their acting so bravely against Bishops And with such like Presbyterian trash were most of their Papers stuft and in so plentiful a manner that if Visions had been then in frequent use that as the Priests formerly saw St. Peters Church in Rome full of Serpents so might England but London especially have been view'd cramb'd full of Devils But where the Albertus Magnus would be I know not And yet the simple people are easily drawn to fancy that Tumults are the only way to make a Nation happy though the ingenuous Tasso will assure them in the contrary Quando sia poi di sì gran moti il fine Non fabriche di Regni
leaving the Government of all to the Lords of his Parliament Which impudence of theirs hurryed them on so farre that they never left fighting till their King was murder'd but how uncertain Thus are the best men violently opposed by the wicked though the vertue and patience of the former might in reason mollifie the latter to obedience How wishedly will some pitty the case of Argalus and Parthenia the patience of Gryseld in Chaucer the misery and troublesome adventures of the Phanatick Lovers in Cleopatra Cassandra Amadis de Gaul Sidney and such like Yet all these as meer Romantick as Rablaise his Garagantua And yet with an unmoved apprehension can peruse the lamentable murder of Edward the Second of England and James the first and Milcolumb the first of Scotland the cutting off the head of good King Alpinus the poisoning of Fergusius the third by his own Queen and her stabbing her self the strangling of Malvinus by his own Queen and the throat-cutting of King Fethelmachus by a Fidler and besides these the martyrdome of old Queen Ketaban in Persia The stabbing of Henry the fourth in France The sacrilegious poisoning of the Emp. Henry the seventh in Italy The miserable death of Mauricius the Emp. with his Wife and five Children by the wicked Phocas And can read the fatall stories recorded by Boccace with lesse grief then the deplorable narrative of Arnalte's love to Lucenda And the patience of the good King Henry the sixth who being grievously struck by a murthering Varlet only made this Reply Forsooth and forsooth being his words for most earnest expression never using an oath ye do fouly to smite a King anointed so May be farre out-rivall'd by some with the misfortunes and hardship of some inchaunted Lover in Ariosto Parismus the two Palmerins or Mirrour of Knighthood And for the horrid murther of his late Majesty experience tells us that many have been so farre from contracting grief that they have so much triumphantly rejoiced at it that they have thought an action of so much wickednesse to have been honourable to them and their posterity for ever Thus have we come short to our Ancestors in fidelity and Loyalty by studying all occasions to rebell against our King They rather then undergo the ignominions title of Nithing i. e. a knave or a night-filcher swarme to the Service of their King we on the contrary rather then not be branded with the wicked name of a Traytor will court all occasions by our Rebellion to make our selves meritorious to a pair of Gallows And so to conclude this assertion I shall tell you that the Parliament wanted all the qualifications to make a warre really espousable No warre being lawful unlesse it be commanded by the Supream Authority the which the Parliament was not but the King if the Laws of our Land be an authentick Standerd And secondly the occasion of the Warre must be just which was wanting on the Parliaments side all their specious pretences being false and ridiculons their reasons suggested to the people to beget a Warre being to as small purpose as the Duke of Burgundy to quarrell for a cart-load of Sheep-skins or the two Brethren neer Padua about the disposal of the Starrs and Firmament And suppose their jealousies had been true yet it was Treason in them to warre against the Supream Authority the King according to the Laws of our Land and damnable according to the word of God Let Buchanan and such as he by supposing the Apostles and the Spirit to deal with us like Hypocrites evince to the contrary For if the Apostle Paul commandeth the Christians to be obedient to their Heathen and Tyrannical Kings who made it their sport to persecute Christians and that for Conscience-sake telling them that their power was of God certainly we are bound to obey a Christian Prince whose authority can be no lesse If we perceive our selves grieved resist we cannot but by Prayers and Obedience To which purpose the ancient Chaucer instructs us who certainly in this sung according to the rule of his time and therein neither false Law nor Gospel Lordes hestes may not be fayned They may wel be wayled and complained But men must nedes unto her lustre obey And so wol I there nis no more to sey The primitive Christians when collected into great Armies were honoured for their obedience never rebelling against but fighting or quietly living under their Heathen Kings as Tertullian will satisfie more at large But now we are so farre from being peaceable in a Christian Government that if occasion of rebellion cannot handsomly be pluckt by the fore-top yet we can create reason to our selves though upon a serious reflection we acknowledge such endeavours to be unjust Thus the Army when in obedience to the Parliament it had conquer'd and ruin'd the King and Kingdome and by the assistance of the sword and Satan had made themselves Lords and Masters over their Betters then I say when they were at the top of their prosperity they do seriously professe that the Parliament did justifie many extraordinary strange and doubtlesse in respect of the letter of the Law very illegal actions viz. Their taking up Armes raising and forming Armies against the King fighting against his person imprisoning impeaching arraigning trying and executing him cutting off his Head banishing his Children abolishing Bishops Deans and Chapters took away Kingly Government and the House of Lords broke the Crowns sold the Jewels Plate Goods Houses and Lands belonging unto the Kings of this Nation erected extraordinary High Courts of Justice and therein impeached arraigned condemned and executed many notorious enemies to the publick peace when the Laws in being and the ordinary Courts of Justice could not reach them These were strange and unknown practises in this Nation and not at all justifiable as is conceived by any known Laws and Statutes Thus have you the judgment of a ruling Army against their Masters and themselves though this their repentance was but to vindicate another infidelity But here after all this it may be objected that though some factious spirits of the Parliament have been too incroaching upon the King and the chief Incendiaries of these Warres yet why should I lay all this upon the Presbyterian account To which there needs no tedious reply if we do but consider that these factious people were all Non-conformists from whom if examples may be held for proofs as Schismaticks a self-conceited giddy hot-headed zeal and by consequence Rebellion is as inseparable as pride from Menecrates or Children when gallanted up in new cloathes For my part I am apt to believe that the Bloud of many thousand Christians shed in these warrs and before cryeth loud against Presbytery as the people only guilty of the first occasion of quarrel And that they have been the chief occasion of other slaughters may be credited not only from forraign stories but the authentick judgment of the ever great
would weep pray bemoan and call upon God till he had destroy'd him to whom he seem'd most friendly so that in this he seem'd to be typified by Alete in the Italian Heroick Poem Alete è l'un che da principio indegno Tra le brutture de la Plebe è sorto Ma l'innalzaro à i primi honor del Regne Parlar facondo e lusinghiero e scorto Pieghevoli costumi e vario ingegno Al finger pronto à l'ingannare accorto Gran fabro di calunnie adorne in modi Novi che sono accuse e paion lodi Alete from the basest Rabble came From a vile Clown's unworthy loyns being sprung Yet did he rise unto the greatest Name By a dissembling lying cunning tongue His temper to all humours could he frame And by his craft and lyes blanch o're all wrong A great back-biter but in such quaint wayes As whom h'accuseth most he seems to praise Nor may we be branded with want of Charity if we suspect his Religion to be as true as he pretended for that he confided more in the sharpness of his Sword than the right of his Cause is evident from his swerving from all his Oaths Protestations and Promises for the advantage of his own Interest in which he was not unlike Argante in the former Poet who D'ogni Dio sprezzator eche ripone Ne la spada sua legge e sua ragione Did scorn and spurn at God and would afford Nor Law nor Reason but his bloudy Sword Yet for all his Valour and Knavery as Piedro Messia admires the sodain rise of Julius Caesar so may I of Oliver considering he had not only the Royalists his Enemies and Experience tells us and a Venetian well observeth he was the greatest that ever the King had but also the Presbyterians to both which Cromwel's Faction was but a handful yet may this wonder be somewhat lessen'd by considering that the Parliament and Non-conformists had done formerly the main drudgery of the work to his hands Many Articles was he sworn to observe contain'd in the Book of Government which with his Oath were afterwards alter'd by The Advice As he gain'd his Government by bloud and craft so did he keep it cutting off all people whom he the least suspected and toleing the people along to their own slavery and destruction as the Pyed Pyper did the Children and Rats of Hamel in Brunswick some four years he protected it giving Laws to and dissolving Parliaments at pleasure a thing which he and his Creatures formerly judged most wicked But many men commend themselves in that for which they despise others And thus shall I leave Oliver with Nostradamus his Praediction above a hundred years ago Le Roy des Isles sera chassé par force Mis à son Lieu qui de Roy n'aura signe A King of Islands shall be bannish'd and An upstart Jack by force shall rule the Land Oliver being thus wafted away in a whirlwind his Son Richard as the Father had appointed succeeded to whom all the Armies of the three Nations with some others shoal with innumerable Addresses pittifully lamenting the death of his Father whom they profainly honour with all the good titles they could pick out of the Holy Scriptures protesting to stand by him and professing and acknowledging their happiness under his Rule But for all these their Asseverations he had not govern'd prudently piously faithfully to his immortal honour as his great friend and admirer Mr. Baxter saith long but they by the contrivance of Lambert and others having weakned his Party by forcing him to dissolve his Parliament thrust him out of the Throne too by which action as Mr. Baxter saith he was very ill used The Officers of the Army having thus sleighted him command all things by their Consultations at Wallingford-House and from thence issued forth a Declaration to recal the Rump again who the next day accordingly met And this forsooth was by them call'd the Good old Cause but why it should be honour'd with that Epethite I know no more than why the wicked sin of Sodomie should be commended by Johannes Casa These men having Triumph'd for about half a year a great jealousie grew betwixt them and their Army For Lambert returning to London proud with his pretty Conquest over Sir George Booth instigated his Red-coats to Petition the Parliament for a General and then he knew how to act his part as well as Cromwell did in 1648 But the cunning Rumpers smelling the design Voted this grand Office as in a single Person to be needless chargeable and dangerous which denyal of theirs was so farr from danting the Resolved Commanders who knew that if they were now baffled their ruine by Rump-craft would soon follow who made no more use of the Parliament nor the Members of the Army then they would serve for one anothers Interests and so after several Consultations at Wallingford House publickly desired a Chief Commander again in their Representation delivered by Gyant Desborough The Rump perceiving the Army resolute and fearing a change of Government enact it Treason for any to raise Moneys but by their consent and the next day their disease being desperate Vote Lambert and the chief of his Faction out of Commission and appoint seven Commissioners over the Army Fleetwood being Lieutenant-General a man of an easie disposition and so apt to be both cozened and commanded But this hindred nothing the Armies prosecution of their own designs who to requite the good turn done them by the Rump turn'd them out of Authority leaving us without any Government only appointing Fleetwood Commander in Chief whose soft nature made him imploy'd by both Factions wanting wit of himself to do any man any harm yet as a Cyfer could add something to the number The Rump being now defunct and the Army-Lords Paramount are continued some days without any Form of Government but those Ranters at Wallingford-House who at last constituted ten pure Youths to carry on the affairs of the State But the glory of these Decemviri lasted not long being null'd by their Lords and Masters the Army so unconstant were their actions who order'd another Model of Government under the pretty Title of The Committee of Safety consisting of Twenty three Brethren in Iniquity all people of great pretended Sanctity though their villany made some think that Hell was broke loose and sat in Council in a place built for their betters The Committee of Safety who now appointed a pack of Beagles to hunt after some Form of Government from Utopia Atlantis the fairy Country or some Terra incognita or other provided there should be no such thing as King-ship continued not long in any peaceable condition For General Monk hating the Tyranny of the English Army opposed their proceedings which occasioned Lambert with some tatterdemallions to march Northwards the same day that the wicked Long-Parliament
and uprightness of heart Yet all this not half so true as the sea burns let the Country people confide never so much in the Proverb 'T was a mad world my Masters when John of Leyden a Taylor must be made King of the Universe And Robert Kett a Tanner ruin our English inclosers according to his discretion Or Michael Joseph a Black-smith endeavour to correct the King and his Council Naples we may suppose was well reformed when Thomas Anello a poor Fisher-man would there rule the roast to the destruction of many stately buildings And the Kingdome of Spain had small reason to bless her happiness when the sortish Commonalty against their King the Emperor Charles the fifth and Nobility must be govern'd by the basest sort of people as Bodadilla a Cloth-worker at Medina del Campo Villeria a Skinner in Salamanca and such like offals of rationality What prosperity could they expect from their Junta's when in their great Assembly none durst speak but such as one Pinelles a Cloth-worker was pleased to order by the pointing to them with his Rod of an Usurpt Authority And what a Bedlam should we have had in England if the Inferior rusticks of Kent Essex c. under Wat Tyler a Taylor Jack Straw and others such low-born chieftains had prevail'd against King Richard the second who endeavoured to destroy the King Nobility and Clergy extirpate all Learning and overthrow all Government by their levelling humours For which purpose they murdered all persons of quality which fell into their clutches if not of their society burnt and distroy'd the best houses in London And had so little respect of persons that every slave amongst them would sport themselves upon the King's bed and impudently invite the King's Mother to kiss with them whose head they also broak in a Tyrannizing frolick And that their villany might be compleat by a bloudy Sacriledge they took Simon Tibald aliàs Sudbury Arch-bishop of Canterbury and in their devilish fury by eight mangling stroaks cut off his head and for more infamy set it upon London-bridge How parallel or rather excell'd our late Rebellion hath run to this is not unknown How hath our Nobility and Gentry been trod upon and that by the scum of Manhood whose wicked designes were mainly carried on for their utter annihilation And they began betimes witness that confident Petition of the Rascally Londoners at the beginning of the Long-Parliament that the House of Lords might not be distinct from the Commons but both to sit together by which means the King would be forced to descend too And with what applause the Commons received this durty Paper is clear from their swagring with it before the Lords whereas their Loyalty had been more shewn had they burnt the Petition and cut off the Presenters ears but then I believe some of the Composers would have pleaded Protection by Priviledge of Parliament for 't is more then suspected who set such people on work Thus was Nobility struck at and afterwards by the rabble held in real reproach so that their intentions seem'd to comply in wickedness with those dung-hil Rebels in Valentia who were resolved to destroy all the Gentry which occasioned a Hat-makers wife in Saint Catharines-street in the same City seeing some Gentlemen go by to shew them to her children and they asking the reason she replyed Because when you come to be men you may say that you have seen Gentlemen Nor is it the Gentry alone that suffer but how also have our Princes been not onely abused but murthered How hath learning been out-vapoured by ignorance And our Reverend Clergy outed by a swarm of Enthusiastick Schismaticks Nor do we want the loud Cry of a Reverend Arch-bishop to make the story alike Yet how far our modern Hectors are from Repentance I need not tell For my part I have a better opinion for the Tyrian slaves who slew all their Lords and Masters onely one by chance escaped call'd Strato yet afterwards on their own accord repented and chose Strato for their King then I have for those Scythians who though their occasional crime was not great would not be brought to obedience but by force and scourges CHAP. IV. The Grand Perjury of the Parliament and Army OF all things nothing is more destructive to government then Perjury and falseness amongst the retainers of these sins all Laws or Constitutions the foundation of Rule being of no validity Nor is this of it self onely a political fault but a great sin against the Almighty of which the Poet speaks like a good Divine as he might be for ought I know Quid enim magis esse profanum Aut mage turpe potest quà m sacris ludere pactis Vincláque divini violare sacerrima juris Nothing a man more base and wicked shows Then to break Sacred Promises and Vows Yet nothing hath been more familiar with our late Grandees then this which makes me sometimes apt to fancy that our Phanaticks hold all manner of Oaths unlawful though before a Magistrate meerly as a pretty salvo for their Perjury thinking those not fit to be kept which in the Original is unwarrantable to be taken And this reason as Prateolus doth hint was formerly in use amongst Priscillians who though they opposed the legality of Oaths yet had this for a rule amongst themselves Jura perjura secretum prodere noli Swear and forswear But from discovering your designs forbear Thus the Graecian Lysander made so little Conscience of Oaths that he affirm'd they were but to deceive men as false-play children And whether our Non-conformists are of the same opinion or no I know not though I am confident King James tells us and experience makes it not altogether untrue that they care as little for the Observation of Oaths as another Though I believe that many of them at their last hour will be asham'd at their hands either for holding them up at the Covenant or subscribing our late Engagements as Rodulphus the Duke of Schweben by some of our English Writers erroniously call'd Duke of Saxony was for violating his Faith to the Emperour Henry the fourth And without question if many of our Time-servers were to have their fidelity tryed by Ordeal a fashion amongst the Ancient Saxons there is few of them but would either burn their toes or end their dayes by their knack of sinking Or if we had but here some of those ancient Fountains mentioned by Alexander ab Alexandro how many thousands would make as good sport by diveing as Lazarello when shew'd about Spain in a Tub for a strange fish But to return to our late times in which we are first to consider the two Oaths one of Supremacy made in Queen Elizabeth's time and the other of Allegiance made in King James his reign wherein all are sworn to defend the Kings Person Progeny Power Authority and Priviledges and acknowledge him to be Supream over all
onely approve of but also protect thereby gaining infinite Proselytes as the Devil in the Northern Coasts doth his subjects by making them invulnerable And these they feed up and nourish with strange fears more fantastical then Lazarellos when he thought the dead man would be carried to his Master's house strongly fomented and agitated by unheard of Plots set a foot to destroy Religion and Nation like the Roterdam-ship which would kill the English under water and all this upon worsegrounds and reasons then the influence of a Talisman Though nothing was more false and impudent then these pretended dangers yet what by the authority and countenance of those Grandees who patronized such rumours and what by the power which the Tubthumping boute-feus had over the peoples inclinations and judgments whereby the Pulpit became the worst thing in the Nation many had not onely a bad opinion of the King but thought very well of the Parliament who in all their actions were far more sedulous then his Majesty but most of all as a hindg upon which themselves and designs hung in sending forth their papers to abuse the people by making the King's actions odious and their own for the best And of this they took special care not onely by appointing a Committee to consider of the most convenient way to disperse them and to give an allowance to their Messengers but also by taking care by Order that every Petty Constable or Tythingman throughout England shall have one of every one of their Orders Declarations c. and to read them publickly to their neighbours And how these flattering papers might work in the Country where they commonly believe all that is in Print is easily to be imagined considering that most of them heard but the reasons of one Party the Parliament taking a special care by Declaration that nothing which came from the King should be received or permitted to be read Whilst the Parliamentarian-papers flew plentiful about the Nation swoln with big praises of their worships the better to captivate the ignoranâ— people to their Lure who are naturally of themselves apt to gape after any novelty or change especially when any gain is like to be had by it as there was in this undertaking they knowing that Plundering would be permitted them and the Parliament assuring them that if they received any damage it should be repai'd them out of the estates of their enemies By these ways the Country was droled into an high conceit of the Parliament and nothing stuck with those of the more wise and honest sort but the word Treason which they knew they should incur by assisting the Parliament against the King But this doubt was presently wipt away in the opinion of many by the Parliaments distinction betwixt the Person and Office of a King as also by their daily protestations at the beginning of the Wars That they fought not against the King but against his wicked Council Of which Protestations in 1642. I shall give you a tast whereby you may the better distinguish between their tongues and hearts And first we shall give you the Vote by which the Army was first order'd to be rais'd which was thus Resolved upon the Question That an Army shall be forthwith raised King's Person defence of both houses of Parliament and those who have obey'd their Orders and Commands and preserving of the true Religion the Laws Liberty and Peace of the Kingdome And to confirm the people in their intentions for the preservation of the King they thus profess and protest House of Commons your Loyal Subjects who are ready to lay down their lives and fortunes and spend the last drop of their bloud to maintain your Crown and Royal Person and greatness and glory And they pray your Majesty to rest assured that they will always be tender of your Honour and Reputation with your good Subjects We seek nothing but your Majesties Honour and Peace and the Prosperity of your Kingdomes Their earnest intentions and endeavours to advance your Majesties Service Honour and Contentment c. Do resolve to preserve and govern the Kingdome by the Counsel and Advice of the Parliament for your Majesty and your Posterity according to our Allegiance and the Law of the Land As if there could be a greater care in them the King's friends at York of his Majesties Royal Person then in his Parliament The services which we have been desirous to perform to our Soveraign Lord the King and to his Church and State in proceeding for the publick peace and prosperity of his Majesty and all his Realmes Within the presence of the same all-seeing Diety we Protest to have been and still to be the enely end of all our counsels and endeavours wherein we have Resolved to continue freed and enlarged from all private aimes personal respects or passion whatsoever Who in all their Counsels and Actions have proposed no other end unto themselves but the care of the Kingdomes and the performance of all Duty and Loyalty to his Person Your Majesties most humble and faithful Subjects the Lords and Commons in Parliament having nothing in their thoughts and desires more precious and of higher esteem next to the honour and immediate service of God then the just and faithful performance of their duty to your Majesty and this Kingdome We the Lords and Commons are resolved to expose our lives and fortunes for the defence and maintenance of true Religion the King's Person Honour and Estate Will really endeavour to make both his Majesty and Posterity as great rich and potent as much beloved at home and feared abroad as any Prince that ever sway'd this Scepter which is their firm and constant Resolution And you shall declare unto all men that it hath been and still shall be the care and endeavour of both Houses of Parliament to provide for his Majesties safety Concerning the Allegations that the Army rais'd by the Parliament is to Murther and depose the King we hoped the Contrivers of that Declaration or any that profest but the name of a Christian could not have so little charity as to raise such a scandal especially when they must needs know the Protestation taken by every Member of both Houses whereby they promise in the Presence of Almighty God to defend his Majesties Person The Promise and Protestation made by the Members of both Houses upon the nomination of the Earl of Essex to be General and to live and dye with him wherein is exprest that the Army was rais'd for the Defence of the King's Person And we have always desired from our hearts and souls manifested in our Actions and in many humble Petitions and Remonstrances to his Majesty profest our Loyalty and Obedience to his Crown readiness and resolution to defend his person and support his Estate with our lives and fortunes to the uttermost of our power We
to have been so abused or had they had ever any reall intentions of peace they would never have permitted these Roysters to have widened the breach by their perpetual prating against Treaties But both of them were well agreed against peace especially the Parliament hated a personal Treaty by all means lest any of them should be convinced of his error as a former Earl of Ormond was He was a Fryer of St. Francis Order call'd Vincent and through mis-information thought our King Henry V to have been the most wicked man in the world and so thought his Warre unjust in France but after a little discourse with the King himself he was so satisfied on the contrary that he thus bespake the Kings Army My Lords and Masters all see ye that ye do to the King your Master diligent and true service as you have till now well done For in your so doing you shall well please God This morning before I came hither I believed that the King your Maister had been the greatest Tyrant among all other Princes Christian but now I perceive the contrary for I assure you He is the most acceptable unto God of all them that be here present this day and his Quarrel is so just and true that undoubtedly God is and shall be his Aide in all these Warres And this is not much unlike the Reply of that great sufferer the Noble Marquesse of Worcester to the Maior of Bala in Merioneth-shire who came to excuse himself and Town for his Lordships bad Lodging Lord what a thing is this misunderstanding I warrant you might but the King and Parliament conserre together as you and I have done there might be as right an understanding as betwixt you and I. Some body hath told the Parliament that the King was an Enemy and their believing of him is such hath wrought all the jealousies which are come to these distractions The Parliament being now in such a case as I my self am in having green Eares over their Heads and false Ground under their Feet Had the Presbyterians been content with the concessions granted them by his Majesty farre above their desert or cause they might have enjoyed peace and liberty and the government to boot but their resolutions to have all was the cause of their losing all by the intervening of the Independents Not unlike the Clown to whom St. Bernard promis'd his Mule whereon he then rode if he could say the Lords Prayer without the interposition of any vain thoughts The fellow very glad of the bargain falls a saying Pater Noster c. but before he had said half there came an idle thought into his head whether St. Bernard would give him the Bridle and Saddle too which making him faulter and confesse the truth he lost all I shall not here trouble my self to rake up all the sedition of that Scotch fire-brand Mr. Robert Bailey but only tell you that he greatly wonders that the Reverend Lord Bishop of London-Derry should deny so grand a Presbyterian Maxime viz. That it is altogether lawfull for the Parliament to take up arms for the defence of the liberties or any other imaginable cause against any party countenanced by the Kings presence against his Laws And of all this who must be judge but themselves But I shall tell you the passages of one or two great men now alive and great Bustlers in London against our true Church Mr. George Cockain of Pancras Soperlane London whence Mr. Eccop was sequestred plundred forced to fly and his Wife and Children turn'd out of doors This Cockain held forth before the Commons and whether or no he did not presse them to murther his Sacred Majesty let any man judge by these his following words Think not to save your selves by an unrighteous saving of them who are the Lords and the peoples known enemies You may not Imagine to obtain the favour of those amongst whom you will not do justice For certainly if you act not like Gods in this particular against men truly obnoxious to justice they will be like Devils against you Observe that place 1 Kings 22. 31. compared with chap. 20. It is said in chap. 20. That the King of Syria came against Israel and by the mighty power of God he and his Army were overthrown and the King was taken Prisoner Now the mind of God was which he then discovered only by that present providence that justice should have been executed upon him but it was not whereupon the Prophet comes with Ashes on his face and waited for the King of Israel in the way where he should return and as the King passed by he cryed unto him thus saith the Lord Because thou hast let go a man whom I appointed for destruction therefore thy life shall go for his Life Now see how the King of Syria after this answers Ahab's love About three years after Israel and Syria engage in a new Warre And the King of Syria gives command unto his Souldiers that they should fight neither against small nor great but against the King of Israel Benhadad's life was once in Ahabs hands and he ventured Gods displeasure to let him go but see how Benhadad rewards him for it Fight neither against small nor great but against the King of Israel Honourable and worthy if God do not lead you to do justice upon those that have been the great Actors in shedding innocent blood never think to gain their love by sparing of them For they will if opportunnity be ever offerd return again upon you and then they will not fight against the poor and mean ones but against those that have been the Fountain of that Authority and Power which have been improved against them Was not this spoke in very good time viz. Just upon the breaking off the Isle of Wight-Treaty and when the Great ones were consulting about the Kings Tryall which may serve for a Comment upon the Author If you shake your head at Cockain I make no question but you will bite your nailes when you hear the plain dealing of one of their Chiefrains his words I shall give you upon the honesty and ingenuity of Mr. Roger L'estrange for I have not the Sermon by me This spruce piece of Rebellion in one of his Preachments before one of Oliver's Parliaments like a zealous Covenanter thus delivered himself Worthy Patriots You that are our Rulers in this Parliament 't is often said we live in times wherein we may be as good as we please Wherein we enjoy in purity and plenty the Ordinances of Jesus Christ Prais'd be God for this even that God who hath delivered as from the imposition of prelatical Innovations Altar-genuflections and cringings with crossings and all that Popish Trash and Trampery And truly I speak no more then what I have often thought and said The removal of these insupportable Burdens countervails for the blood and treasure shed
In the preservation and defence of the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdoms In which cases too themselves will be Judges so that the meaning is this as hath been proved before by several examples If the King will not obey the Covenant they are sworn not to obey nor defend the King 3. § By this Oath they commit absolute High Treason by nulling several Acts of Parliament made for the Preservation of the King and his friends For here they swear to bring to Publick Tryal to receive Condign Punishment the Kings best Subjects and Friends under the notion of Malignants whom they thus describe Evil Instruments by hindering the Reformation of Religion Dividing the King from his People or one of the Kingdoms from another or making any Faction or Parties amongst the People contrary to this League and Covenant And that justice may be done upon the wilful Opposers thereof By this they quite overthrow all Government making Loyalty Treason and Rebellion the only sign of a good Subject And how severe they stick to this murthering Article you shall see by one passage In the year 1646. the Parliament remaining Conquerours many of the Loyal Party thought it fit to compound for their Estates better to have something than nothing Amongst those in the County of Chester who were put to this hardship were Mr. Richard Brereton of Ashley Mr. John Wilson and others This highly perplext the Committee then at Chester who therefore wrote several Letters to the Youths at Goldsmiths-Hall desiring them never to take such friends to the King into Composition and one of their great sticklers at Chester Mr. S. C. thus delivers the Opinion of himself and his friends about this business The Gentlemen here conceive they are bound in Conscience and by their late National Covenant to do their duty in their place to bring Delinquents to condign punishment Here they will have no mercy but stick close to their wicked Principles And this Oath must receive no Interpretation For if we endeavour but to mitigate it then some strange curse or other will tumble upon the Nation as Crofton not long since affirm'd His Sacred Majesty and the Kingdom must submit to the plain and literal sense thereof though it seem as sower Grapes unless we will by Gods wrath set our own and childrens Teeth on edge 4. § The Covenant if it were in force would be the cause and maintainer of Rebellion for ever for in it they also swear to assist and defend all those that enter into this League and Covenant in the maintaining and pursuing thereof by which means they oblige themselves to all acts of hostility in its behalf though the King and Parliament as is now done should find reason for its nullity and 't is well known how oft they deny'd and defied their King upon this score O the Obedience and Charity of a Covenanter who like the wicked Jews combine together by Oath to kill those more holy than themselves needs must the malice of these men be so violent that they may be excus'd from saying the Lords-Prayer the very clause of forgiving their Enemies being enough to fright them into Dispair I wish I could say Repentance but that is a thing their zealous fury will not give them so much as leave to think on all of them hurryed on with that bloody rage as to cry out with that Levite in the Poet Blood Blood Blood destroy O Lord The Covenant-Breaker with a two-edg'd Sword Yet this Imp of wickedness the Brethren will not cast off The London-Ministers professing all the power on Earth cannot absolve them from it And Zach. Crofton keeps a great deal of clutter publickly affirming that it doth not only bind those who took it but those also who did not and that the Obligation of this Oath is for ever binding from Generation to Generation And in another of his flaunting Pamphlets he assureth the Reader That he doth and cannot but do it now contest for and assert the Solemn League and Covenant in that Religious part which must be promoted with out-most Zeal by all who wish well to the King and Kingdom though the Devil and his Instruments do endeavour to damp deaden and divert the discharge of duty And then afterwards tells them that Gods wrath will fall upon the King and Kingdom if Episcopacy be not extirpated and the Covenant observed to its literal sense and plain meaning And as they would thus continue it in fury so did they begin it as I have shew'd you before however I shall afford you one other piece of Canting confidence Mr. Andrew Cant the Father for the Son is now as bad in one of his Sermons at Glasgow told the Scots concerning their Covenant That he was sent to them with a Commission from Christ to bid them subscribe the Covenant which was Christ's contract and that he himself was come a Wooer to them for the Bridegroom and call'd upon them to come to be hand-fasted by subscribing that Contract And told them plainly That he would not depart the Town till he got the names of all who should refuse to subscribe that Contract of whom he promis'd to complain to his Master i. e. Christ As for the Obligation of the Covenant they themselves are sometimes forced to deny it unless they will make it a particular exception against all General Rules When the Scots in 1639. were a little troubled that Episcopacy was not absolutely abjured in their former Oaths which many thought binding to them The Covenanters thinking to take away that rub that all men might with more freeness embrace their Covenant declare publickly to the World that the swearer is neither obliged to the meaning of the prescriber of the Oath nor his own meaning but as the Authority shall afterwards interpret it and then by this Heathenish rule what will become of the binding force of the Covenant at this time Which is void also in the opinion of a great Presbyterian under the name of Theophilus Timorcus who thus shews himself Suppose that upon mature deliberation the Ministers that subscribed and took the Oath of Canonical Obedience find that it was an unlawful Oath or Subscription They are in such case only obliged to be humbled for their rash subscription and taking of that Oath and their second Oath against them will hold valid Now if they think this a sufficient salvo I shall only insert these four words Holy League and Covenant instead of the fore-mentioned four words Oath of Canonical Obedience and think the Absolution sufficient according to their own Argument Mr. Crofton tells us that the Oath which the King taketh at his Coronation for the defence of Bishops is of small validity because limited to the Laws of the Land But will this subordinate it to the Covenant Or will he make a little scribble-scrabble of a few perjured Rebels to be the Law of the Land If the
and the Switzers for a Cart-load of Sheeps-skins And if the Antipathy betwixt the French and Spaniards began upon so slight occasion if you believe mine Authours as because the French were not so gloriously clad as the other at an Interview betwixt Lewis XI and the King of Castile If all this trouble and bloudshed for such trifles why may they not stand stoutly to their Covenant But if they be so stiff for that Oath against all Laws and honesty why may not the Orthodox stick to their King Laws and Church-government by Bishops since the swarving from these things is High-Treason and Schism But enough of this perjur'd and condemn'd Traytor since the judicious Reasons of the famous University of Oxford and that miracle of Learning too untimely snatch'd away the Reverend Dr. Langbaine have put it and its part-takers to a perpetual confusion against whom though I think none of them ever yet durst undertake the Doctor nor could the other be answer'd but with Treason of which enquire more of Mr. Crofton their scribling will not be unlike the Pigmies fighting against Hercules and their crying Victoria to as little purpose as Falstaf's vapouring of his own valour at Gads-Hill Yet since they stand so stifly to the literal sense of this Brat I shall leave one or two Quaeries to their consideration I. Whether those who took the Covenant and there sware to extirpate all Schism do not thereby engage to be like Hoyle their own Executioners II. Whether when they sware to preserve and defend the Kings Majesties Person and Authority and not to diminish his just power and greatness they did keep their Oaths by Voting no more Address to him the Scots by selling him the English by buying him hurrying him from Prison to Prison Imposing upon him strange Conditions contrary to his Prerogative taking from him the Militia acting all without and against his Commands c. If they say they did according to the Covenant Then III. Whether such a wicked Oath is to be allow'd in a Kingdom which permitteth nay I may say commandeth such affronts to be done to Majesty contrary to all the Laws of the Land And if these Actions were against the Covenant then are they perjur'd But it may be I have gone too farr against these People who in their Scotch Assembly at Glasgow by Act forbad any to write or speak against their Covenant And the same did the English Leaguers and what danger it may be to write against their Laws since our own cannot be in force I know not And since a man must not speak ill of the dead whose flaming exspiration was a Type of the Reward befitting to the Imposers This I retort upon that Presbyterian who would have all May-Pole dancers hang'd I shall leave this wicked Covenant only tell them that the Lord Ravenstein under pretence of the binding of his Oath ran into a great Rebellion against his Masters the Emperour Frederick and Maximilian as our Zealots have against their King To conclude the words of James II. King of Scotland are worth your reading Could there be any greater surety for you than to rely on the Laws of the Common-wealth and Countrey especially in a Countrey where Laws and not Faction rule and where a man 's own goodness is able to preserve him But such men as you are raise these Factions to the subversion of all Laws and Authority And for Subjects to make an Offensive and Defensive League against all Persons is to disclaim all Government and do what they please without controlement commit Treason in the highest degree and make your own Swords and Power justifie your proceedings which though you first use against mean persons and conceal the progress of your Actions for there are degrees in evil and wicked men begin at that which seems the least of evils or not an evil at all at the first your last aim is likely to be the Robbing upon the Crown Consider you are born under a Monarchy which admitteth of no Soveraignty but it self and it is natural to Princes to hold it in highest esteem and in no case to suffer it to be shaken by their Subjects Take your Prince for your best protection and an Innocent life Renounce that Union and League and let it not be heard any longer that ever such an unjust Confederation was and so wonted Clemency shall be prefer'd before deserved Justice But 't was the wickedness of this action which made the Zealots love it and therefore order'd that in the Prayers after every Sermon the Minister should give God thanks for the Covenant like John Becold a Taylor of Leyden better known by the Name of John of Leyden who having cruelly cut off the head of one of his Wives made others with himself prayse God and rejoyce for such wickedness The Brethren having thus laid their ground-work for a further Rebellion earnestly exhorts the people to stick close to their former seditious Principles and to be resolute in them Then they advise their Associates in the Parliament to be valiant for their Cause and to endeavour what in them lyeth to oppose and overthrow any thing whatsoever Sacred or Civil which thwarts their Principles And for the better carrying on this Rebellion they engage their Ministry to use what Interest they can with their Parishioners for the affecting of their designs concerning which you shall hear Mr. Crofton himself speak If private men and individual persons who have sworn the Covenant will make Conscience of the Oath of God upon them there can be no probability of a Return and Re-establishment within the compasse of this age of the evils we have sworn to extirpate They being lock'd under a moral impossibility of re-admission or continuance by that publick Parliamentary capacity into which many who have sworn the Covenant are at this time resolved and in which they cannot but know themselves bonnd to endeavour in their places and callings with all sincerity and reality and constancy to extirpate the same and for that others and those not a few as Ministers of the Gospel are bound to the same in their Capacity I am sure the Ministerial rebukes and confutations of the one and publick Parliamentary Debates of the other will lay a very great Remora unto their return Here we have a Peter the Hermit blowing a Trumpet to his Holy-warre And that in such an hasty and resolute fashion that our Presbytery seem to stand upon the very brink of Rabicon only wanting some ill spirit or other to head them and lead them over into a Warr against their own King and Countrymen so prone are they to distruction as if they were again turnd to Heathenism and worship'd the spears those primitive Instruments of Warre as their only God And the Reverend Church of England hath little reason to expect peace at these mens hands now that they cannot obtain their ends when they protest that if they had