a truth that it is plainly ratified by the unanimous consent of all mankind Nay when a man has demonstrated its certainty from that unavoidable influence that Religion alwayes has upon the peace of Kingdomes and the interests of Government and from those intolerable mischiefs that must follow upon its exemption from the Civil Power from the natural tendency of Enthusiasm and Superstition to publick disturbance from the boldness and insolence of Fanatique Zeal from the nature and original of Government from the practice and prescription of all Ages and from all the topicks of Reason and Experience and when he has stated and confined its exercise within easie and discernable bounds and has prevented all cavils and pretences of dislike unless only such as dash as fiercely upon the very foundations of all Civil as well as Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction After all this pains is it not a sad thing to see all blown up with meer confidence and presumption and if a bold man will but say Tush 't is false without any proof or reason for his dislike away it all flys in fumo I have insisted the longer upon this because as it is the Grand Thesis of my Books so it is the first Essay of your courage that by this first Specimen of your Wit the World may take a true scantling of your parts and abilities But having thus nimbly dispatch'd this general Thesis you proceed to your particular Exceptions where you summ up your Charge in Six Heads which you sometimes entitle Playes sometimes Hypotheses sometimes Aphorisms and why not Plots and Scenes and Walks and under-walks c The first is the Unlimited Magistrate or as you eloquently express it pag. 246. his unhoopable Jurisdiction A Metaphor taken from a Tub I suppose because you find Power in your Book of Apothegms compared to liquor for a certain Reason known to every body though no body has exprest it so happily as your self viz. because if it be infinitely diffused or extended it becomes impotency even as a streight line continued grows a circle I will leave it to the Mathematicians to consider how it is possible for a streight line to become a circle by being infinitely streight But however for this reason it is necessary to hoop up the Authority of Princes lest they too soon weaken themselves by too great a leakage of their Power so that methinks according to your notion there is nothing so patly emblematical of Soveraign Princes as Dufoy in his Tub or a Pig under a washbole and if you would define them suitably to the conceit they are nothing else but so many vessels of Authority some Kinderkins some Hogsheads and some Tuns according to the circuit or hoop of their Government Though as you and your Puritan Coopers or as Mar-prelate words it Tub-trimmers have been pleased to contract their Power all the Empire in the world might easily be contained in a pipkin or a quart pot and he would pay dear for it that should purchase the Kings Supremacy at the price of a jug of Ale For when you have once exempted Conscience out of the circle of humane Laws the greatest and most absolute Monarchs upon earth will be reduced to as scant a measure of Authority as your Mock-kings of Brentford in that there is nothing in humane nature directly liable to their Obligation but only Conscience and therefore if that must be let loose from the commands of Superiours nothing else can bind them So wretchedly are such bunglers as you wont to talk that only suck in and then pour out your phrases by rote and at random and because some of the Ancients have sometimes discoursed of Conscience in Metaphorical and loose expressions as they do of all things else calling it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Domestick God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Guardian Angel c. you must by all means take them in the literal sense and discourse of Conscience as if it were some little Spirit or Puppet Intelligence within you distinct from your selves so that though you are His Majesties most humble and loyal Subjects yet as for your dear and tender Consciences you must have them excused by the Laws of Hospitality that is to say you owe him Obedience in all things excepting only those in which he does or can require it for wherever the man is bound to obey his Conscience and only that is bound to obey it being the only principle in him that is capable of Obligation and therefore if that be absolved from all engagements of Allegiance and all tyes of Duty the case is plain the whole man is at perfect Liberty And all Subjects may huff and rant it to their Princes teeth as well as your proud Almanzor Obey'd as Soveraign by thy Subjects be But know that I alone am King of me You see then there is no remedy but Conscience you must submit to the Jurisdiction of your Prince if you will submit your selves Yes but you would not have it unlimited and unhoopable as I have stated it But Sir give me leave to tell you that though it should be unlimited it does not at all follow that it would be unhoopable because it would be as you inform us like a streight line continued into a circle Now I will maintain it against all the Mathematicians in Europe Asia and Africa and the Terra Incognita of Geneva too you must bear with me for in some cases I cannot avoid this confidence that all circles as well as all other figures how big soever are hoopable things But for all my jesting my own words are upon Record where I have vested every Supreme Magistrate with an universal and unlimited Power and uncontroulable in the Government of Religion that is to say say you over mens Consciences and that is to say say I that some mens Consciences are concern'd in nothing but matters of Religion Well seeing you are content to give Macedo for a finisht and burnisht piece of modesty now then welfare J. O. for a modest thing for he had the Grace to load me with this Calumny before you but then he had the Grace to take his Answer too And it is possible though it is scarce credible that he might stumble into such an horrid mistake through haste and inadvertency for you know he alwayes writes post But what a Coloss of Brass are you that after I have given him such humbling and convictive rebuke for it persist so obstinately in the very same tract of forgery and falsification The Answer I gave him was easie enough for your understanding as meek as it is viz. That in that Paragraph where I asserted the Supreme Government of every Common-wealth to be Universal Absolute and Uncontroulable in all affairs whatsoever that concern the Interests of mankind and the ends of Government it was only in opposition to the pretences of a distinct Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction here on earth For having first asserted the
King that ever wielded the English Scepter But otherwise if he should offer to relieve himself by any extra-Parliamentary courses it was a breach of his sworn Trust and a dissolution of the Government and if any of his Subjects obeyed or assisted him it was Treason against the fundamental Laws of the Land This was as much as if they had plainly told him and the King understood them so Sir it is in vain to expect Peace or Money from us unless you will be content to forgo your Crown and Royal Dignity and to resign all your Power into our hands This was right Presbyterian Loyalty and is I hope sufficient to cap your idle stories of Sibthorp Arminianism and the Scotch Liturgy At least I am sure it is after all your Hectoring and Achillizing about the late War in defyance of the Act of Indempnity and Oblivion another brave cast of your Modesty to upbraid my Insolence for summoning in all the World and preaching up nothing but Repentance and so frequently calling for Testimonies signal Marks publick acknowledgments satisfaction recantation c. For as I take it here are sufficient materials and motives for Repentance They are obliged to repent of casting away an hundred thousand Lives only to dethrone the King and erect the Scepter of the Lord Christ a cause that they themselves now confess by deserting it as foolish as that was knavish And this is at least suspicion of guilt enough to oblige men to look about them and reflect seriously whether it may not lye upon their Consciences Nothing crys so loud either for Repentance or Vengeance as Blood it requires the deepest Sorrow and Contrition to wash it off so that if they were at all sensible of their Crime or thought it a Crime at all they would never put us to call for tokens of Repentance they would overdo enough of their own accord in Expiation and by the Frankness and Ingenuity of their Confessions quickly satisfie all the World of the sincerity of their change But when they will not be brought to take any notice of their former practices or to make any acknowledgment of their former Crimes when some of the most serious and upright of them protest their Non conviction of any guilt and declare themselves so well satisfied in all their actings in the War that they cannot nay that they dare not ask God forgiveness and yet they did not think the Cause too good to be fought for When none of them have been so ingenuous as to beg their Princes pardon or to make any promise of better behaviour for the time to come in short when they have given us all the symptoms of hardness of heart and impenitence and yet notwithstanding all this boast the merits of their party and chalenge their Princes favour and indulgence from the great security that he ought to have of their peaceable and loyal demeanour this I think is a very impudent affront both to the Clemency of their Prince and the Ingenuity of Mankind Especially when after they had beheld all the dire consequences of their rebellious Acts and Ordinances they were so far from acknowledging their folly that upon the Restauration of the secluded Members by the General one of the first things they voted was to vote themselves innocent and to lay all the mischief and wickedness of the War upon their murther'd Prince Thus far the Presbyterians and Independents were equally concern'd but that the Presbyterians were no farther concern'd they may thank the Ambition and Treachery of Oliver Cromwel more than their own good intentions They had stript the King of his power they had imprison'd his person and what had they to do more after all the affronts and indignities they had offer'd him than what the Independents did after they had wrested the Supremacy out of their hands For it is certain there was no living for them in safety if ever he whom they had reason to suppose their irreconcileable enemy were restored to his Throne and Soveraign Power and then if they had behaved themselves so that they could not safely trust him that was an unremoveable Bar to his restitution And though it is possible that they never intended to attempt his life yet they carried things so high through the whole Progress of their Rebellion as at least to make it expedient nay necessary for their own preservation and if they had intended it they could scarce have used him more scurvily than they did They caused his own great Seal to be broken and a new one to be made in defyance to his Authority His propositions of Peace and his offers of personal Treaty were often denyed an Ordinance was made if he presumed to come within the line of Communication to secure i. e. seize his person It was voted Treason and death without mercy for any of his Subjects to harbour and conceal him and when Sir Thomas Fairfax was made General the Clause for preservation of his Majesties person was left out of his Commission And in the Scotch Declaration of 46. all their concern and care of the Kings person was only conditional viz. as far as it was consistent with their own designs that is as they word it the Preservation and defence of the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdomes That is as you may see by their propositions that they made as the only terms of Peace if he would resign his Crown and which is worse take the Covenant they would suffer him to live otherwise they were absolved from all Obligations towards his person and for the preservation of his life And when he was fall'n into the hands of the Independents and so in danger enough the question was propounded to the Kirk whether it were lawful for them to assist the King in the recovery of his Kingdome and it was resolved in the Negative and in answer to that Clause in the Covenant that was objected to them for defence of the Kings person they determin'd it was to be understood in defence and safety of the Kingdomes These men no doubt are fit to be trusted that can think to satisfie themselves and the World with such an impudent and ridiculous interpretation of Oaths as this But however they intended to dispose of his person the Rebellion as far as they avowed it put him out of his Throne and setled all the Regal Power which they call'd arbitrary Government upon themselves And for Subjects to take away their Princes Authority by force of Arms is little less impudent and wicked that after that to take away his life Thus far the Presbyterians and Independents were equally guilty and went hand in hand like dear Brethren they both combined to depose the King though when that was done the perfidious Independents did not only shake off their dear brethren but turn'd all their ownweapons upon themselves And thus as they enter'd into Covenant in defence of King and Parliament so did these enter into an
all my Writings to name but one good Quality that you possess that I have not granted you or one bad one that you disclaim and I have unjustly charged upon you and I will be content to suffer all the Engines of Clergy mens Cruelty the Pillorie the Whipping posts the Galleys the Rods the Axes and the Rhinolabides nay what is a more desperate Penance than all this I have stipulated to write a Panegyrick in praise of the Good Nature of the Presbyterians and the Sincerity of the Independants and I think it would puzzle the Wit of Mankind to invent a severer Penalty unless it were to write another in Commendation of your Wit and Learning But whilst you continue this out-cry against me only in general Terms without being able to produce particular Articles to vouch and justifie it you prove nothing but your want of breeding and better Arguments and the Calumny when you cannot drive it home recoils upon your own Heads He that charges another of an uncivil Crime when he cannot make it good indites himself And yet perhaps in spite of my Integrity I may have been too zealous for my King and Countrey Plain-dealing is too rough a Vertue for this false and self-designing Age. But be that as it will and as for the decency of the manner of my treating you when I have said all I can and I have said too much already I must leave it to the Judgment of the World I am now only concern'd to vindicate the matter of my discourses against you and here I have laid open your jugling so plainly that 't is a Reproach to Mankind that you should still persevere so immodestly in the same Impostures This is no bragging no man that had any consisistency in his Skull could have perform'd less in so plain and palpable a Case For what can be more notorious than that 1. When you exempt your Consciences from the jurisdiction of your Prince you exempt your selves both in that a man and his Conscience are one and the same thing and in that he is not capable of any obligation of Laws but purely by vertue of his Conscience 2. When you exempt matters of Religion from the same Power you in effect exempt all things there being nothing of any considerable weight or concernment in humane affairs that is not matter of Religion and much more so than those things that you contend about and this dashes in pieces all your general pleas But then 3. As for your particular pleas of Scandal and an unsatisfied Conscience and unscriptural Ceremonies c. what can be more evident than 1. That they are precarious and depend purely upon your own humours 2. That they are unavoidable in all Churches and all Constitutions in the world 3. That they are so unreasonable as that they may be adapted or applyed to subvert all Government in the Church as well as ours even your own And if after all this you will not learn to be quiet and peaceable you will first or last thank your selves for something that must follow and then your being big with conscience will not serve to reprieve you You are ferreted out of all your subterfuges and they are laid open to the view and scorn of all men And you have now nothing left to shelter your selves but only by slandering your Adversaries and perswading the people for you presume strangely upon their ignorance and stupidity that whilst we assert His Majesties Ecclesiastical Supremacy we invest him with an unhoopable Jurisdiction which being so bold and rank a forgery it is to all intelligent men i. e. all such as can either read or understand an ample demonstration of a desperate and baffled Cause But by the way how is this consistent with what you as often suggest that my design was to write against the Power of the King and to animate the People against the exercise of his Ecclesiastical Supremacy Are you not sufficiently furnished with informations against any man that can in the same indictment charge him for plotting and attempting at the same time to assert the unlimited Power of Kings and yet to allow them none at all certainly between two such wide extremes a man can never want for materials to make out an impeachment But how have I animated the People against the exercise of His Majesties Supremacy How have I not written expresly against his Indulgence to tender Consciences Not one syllable you know well enough I have only beat down and witnessed against your demands of Indulgence when you challenge it from the King by vertue of your Natural and Religious Rights and charge him as a Tyrant towards his Subjects and a Rebel against God if he presume to claim or pretend to any Jurisdiction over your Consciences or Religious Pretences the insolence of this kind of talk was not to be endured and therefore it was that I set my self to clear and defend His Majesties Supremacy against such plain and yet to the Rout plausible Principles of Anarchy and Confusion But I was no where so presumptuous as to censure or condemn the measures he has taken of his Government pardon me Sir for that we of the Bran of the Church of England have modesty enough to submit to the wisdome of our Superiours when ever they are pleased to declare their will and pleasure And whatever may be my own private Opinion neither I nor any other good Subject shall ever go about to confront it to the publique Declarations of the State so that as long as the Government shall think good to grant you Indulgence assure your self whatever you simply surmise I shall never trouble them with Remonstrances They understand the turns and junctures of their own affairs and are the most competent Judges what methods are fittest to procure both their own and our quiet And though they should at any time mistake yet if there were no other tye of duty it is more eligible they should be complyed with than that their Government should be affronted and the Common-wealth disturbed by every man that thinks himself wiser than his Governours But Sir though we are so dutiful to His Majesty as to submit to his granting Indulgence if he apprehends it seasonable for his present Affairs and as for his power of dispensing with Laws by vertue of his Prerogative we have nothing to do with it by vertue of our Office it is a matter forreign to our Judicature and therefore it is not only manners but duty in us to leave it to our Governours to adjust such disputes among themselves But yet though we are so entirely submissive to our Prince yet assure your selves we shall never be so civil to you as to suffer you to challenge a right to it in spite of his Power and to extort it from him as he would not stand charged before God of Tyranny and Usurpation You see now the vast difference between opposing the Kings Power to give Indulgence
Bishop reproves his Prince of any enormous Vice if he refuse to hear him he sins against the Command of God who has given him Authority in his name to declare and to bind every mans Duty upon his Conscience under pain of the Divine Displeasure and it is an equal Aggravation of Guilt in all men before God to break his Commands against the Sentence and Declaration of his Officers This is so clear and obvious a Truth that if there be any Divine Institution or perpetual Necessity of a Priestly Office in the Church the greatest must be equally bound with the least to Obedience not by the Coercion of Secular Penalties but by the Tyes of Religion and the Judgments of God I mean not hereby to excuse the boldness and insolence of those men that take upon them to upbraid and expose their Prince with publick and Pulpit Reproofs This is to abuse the Dignity of their Office into the Ill-manners and Sedition of the Kirk that insulted in nothing more than putting affronts upon Kings and exposing them and their Authority to the contempt of the Rabble No but all Addresses to Superiours must be private and prudent and modest and though Kings may and ought to be inform'd of their duty as well as Subjects yet it must be done with all the Arts of Gentleness and Humility and if any man shall abuse his Sacerdotal Freedome to vent unhandsom and disgraceful Reflections upon his Superiours he deserves as much as you do the Scorn of a Buffoon and the Correction of the Stocks And now from these Premises it is very easie to determine the bounds of the Imperial and the Priestly Power notwithstanding that both are and must be acknowledged Supreme in their several Kinds The Prince is Supreme and Absolute over all things and persons within his own Dominions as far as they concern the Affairs of this present Life but yet when they are consider'd purely as relating to the Life to come the Priest is Superiour and therefore in all cases of Competition whenever they happen he can only refer the Justification of himself and his Cause to the future Judgement of God but at present he must be content either to obey the Commands or if in Cases of manifest Obedience to God he cannot to submit to the Authority of his present Superiours and if it be his Fortune to oppose the Judgment of his Prince there is no remedy but he must suffer his Lot and rather choose to be endamaged in his own private affairs than that Government should be disturbed or defeated for his sake Here then is no interfering of the two Jurisdictions the exercise of the one is Spiritual and of the other Secular and so being of different natures and to different ends they may both without any material inconvenience be supreme in their different kinds and if the Ecclesiastical State shall at any time think it self obliged to controwl the civil power it is only of a spiritual efficacy and brings no direct disadvantage to the supreme Authority because it has ordinarily no visible force but in the World to come and that makes no alteration in the present state of things So that the exercise of the supreme civil Power is as uncontroulable as if it were absolute and not limited by the spiritual because at present it must prevail as to the Government of the World and the effectual execution of its Decrees And thus have I to avoid dull or wilful mistakes as briefly as the nature of the Subject would permit proved the necessity of a spiritual Authority in the Church as a distinct society by it self and in order to its peace here and the salvation of its members hereafter And then that it is not a meerly ministerial Office but is Authoritative to all the intents and purposes of Jurisdiction and in the next place that it is supreme and uncontroulable in its own kind by any other Power whatsoever and lastly that its spiritual Supremacie is no infringement to the civil Rights of Sovereign Princes in that their Power must notwithstanding all Countermands whatsoever over-rule in the present Government of the World And now I hope you see how plainly the spiritual Power of the Church is reconcileable with the Ecclesiastical Supremacy of Kings and that there is no necessity as you dream that whoever asserts one must unavoidably casheir the other And upon review of the whole â—â—ate of the controversie 't is some comfort and satisfaction to me that as I have not vested the civil Magistrate with any other Power than what is and ever has been challenged by all Common-wealths in the World so I never could meet with any thing objected against it but what proceeded purely from malice or inadvertency And that is all the trouble I have been put to both by you and J. O. to vindicate easie and honest assertions from wilful or sleepy Mistakes But the great Misprison of all and that approaches nearest to Treason against modern Orthodoxy is my presuming to trample upon your great secret of symbolical Ceremonies which hard word is now become the only remaining Palladium of your Cause and Idol of your Conventicles for in our dayes it is not with you as it was from the Reign of good Queen Elizabeth quite down to that of the Good Long Parliament The Good Gentlemen of those times had the Holy Discipline and the Scepter of the Lord Christ to rattle in the Peoples and the Princes ears but those good dayes are gone and the Kirk-discipline when it came to be put in practice though it were an Iron rod upon the backs of Kings yet it proved such a wooden Scepter among the Common People that it quickly wore it self into sport and contempt and all the little Folk that waged War with so much zeal and fury against Prelacy and Antichrist only aim'd their stroaks at random and rail'd and raged at they knew not what till at last they became ashamed at the littleness of their own Pretences and how little all of them were able to perforn in behalf of the Divine Right of Presbytery sufficiently appears to the world by the great Smectymnuan labours Nothing but a complicated dulness could ever have brought forth such a phlegmatick and insipid Pamphlet and no man has now so little wit or so much confidence as to own much less to appear in defence of such a contemptible and baffled Cause or if there should remain a Scot or an High-Lander so unalterably peevish he lyes below both our scorn and our confutation But though their Principles have forsaken them yet they so invincible is their constancy will never forsake their Principles but having once been drawn into a Revolt from the Church by a manifest Imposture they have too much stomach to confess their fault so far as only to return back to her Communion and therefore Covenant one and all to stand firm to their party and justifie themselves as they can And then the
great promises of Assistance and Supply and these being still diverted by endless Disputes about Liberties and Priviledges and bold demands to abate the Powers of the Crown he saw plainly as himself declares That they only made use of the necessities grown upon him by that War to inforce him to yield to Conditions incompatible with Monarchy So that despairing of any good from the Seditious Spirits of that Parliament he dissolves them And in the interval his necessities growing upon him by a new and sad disaster that had befallen his Unkle the King of Denmark He commands his Council to Advise by what means and wayes he might fitly and speedily be furnish'd with Monies suitable to the importance of the undertaking Hereupon after a Consultation of divers dayes together they came to this Resolution that the urgency of Affairs not admitting the way of Parliament the most speedy equal and convenient means were by a general Loan from the Subject according as every man was Assessed in the Rolls of the last Subsidy Upon this Result the King issues out his Declaration accordingly but assuring the People that this way to which he was forced by the urgency of his Occasions should not be made a Precedent for the time to come to charge Them or their Posterity to the prejudice of their Just and Ancient Liberties enjoyed under his most Noble Progenitors And promising them in the word of a Prince first to repay all such summs of Money as should be lent without fee or charge so soon as he shall be any wayes enabled thereunto And secondly that not one Penny so borrowed should be bestowed or expended but upon those publique and general Services wherein every of Them and the body of the Kingdom their Wives Children and Posterity have their personal and common Interest When the King and his Council had Voted the Loan they commanded Laud then Bishop of Bath and Wells to draw up certain Instructions to be communicated to the Arch-bishops Bishops and the rest of the Clergy of the Realm to stir up and exhort the People to express their Zeal to the true Religion their Duty to the King and their Love to their Countrey by a chearful complyance with his Majesties Commissions And in this was represented the Afflicted Condition of the Princes and States of the Reformed Religion in all parts of Christendom some being over-run some diverted and some disabled to give assistance The distress of his Unkle the King of Denmark the great danger of losing the Sound and thereby the Eastland and the Hamborough Trade the Confederacy of the Pope the House of Austria and the French King to root out the Protestant Religion the great Fleets both of France and Spain at that Instant endeavouring to block up Rochel together with their Land-forces on the Coast of Brittain ready to invade us And what more important Motives could have been press'd to perswade thePeople to a ready and chearful Contribution What more powerful and plausible Arguments could have been put into the mouths of the Clergy to win their Auditories to a dutiful Compliance both with his Majesties Desires and Necessities And this among other things brought forth Sibthorp's Sermon and the man did well and as became his Function to perswade the People that they ought in point of Conscience and Religion chearfully to submit to all such Taxes as were imposed upon them by Royal Authority without murmurs and disputes But if he intermedled as it is said he did with the Kings Absolute Power of imposing Taxes without Consent of Parliament according to the Laws and Constitutions of this Kingdom he went both beyond his own Commission and against the Kings Declaration For what had he to do in the Pulpit with the Rights of Sovereignty and the Priviledges of Parliament It was none of his business to adjust the disputes of his Superiours and he had no Authority either from God or the King to interpose in Affairs of State his Office was to recommend the Piety and the Necessity of their Contributions and though possibly they were not under any enforcements of Complyance by the Constitutions of this Realm yet to urge it upon their Consciences from the Common Principles and Obligations both of Nature and Christianity that could not but effectually enforce their complyance with so good a King in so pious and necessary a work But if he exceeded his Commission by taking upon him to teach the Laws of the Land and determine the Rights of the Prerogative though he cannot be justified yet he ought as circumstances then stood to be in a great measure excused because he did it at a time when the King could not in the usual Parliamentary method obtain sufficient supplyes to preserve his Honour and Safety but by Concessions shamefully contrary to both and that might provoke a warm man to lavish out beyond the bounds of prudence and discretion And as for Manwarings Case I need say little to it in that it was the very same with Sibthorps only it is observable that his Prosecution was carried on with all eagerness by such Members as Pym and Rous men that took advantage of such imprudences only to give countenance to their own clamours and confirm the jealousies they had blown into the People against the King by the indiscretion of a Countrey Vicar though if there were at that time any designs of absolute Government it was to be imputed to their Impudence for when they assaulted the Royal Power with their bold and unreasonable demands they forced it to stand upon its own guard and then it was none of the Kings fault if he were necessitated to act sometimes by vertue of his meer Prerogative because there was no other way left to preserve himself or his Government in that they had brought things to that pass that nothing must be done unless he would either grant away all his Power to them or keep it all to himself for they would not share the Sovereignty with a single Person and under pretence of priviledges of Parliament assumed the Royal Supremacy and as soon as they had Power and opportunity it is well known how confidently they put in practice the very same courses which they resisted as Acts of Arbitrary Government in the King so that if He were at any time to have recourse to extraparliamently proceedings it was not from his own choice or inclinations but purely from the rudeness and insolence of their demands which were so insufferable that the case was plain that he must sometimes govern without them or not govern at all And what is to be done in that case the Law of self-preservation determines I know this may be pretended where there is no such necessity but that I cannot help if men will abuse a just pretence to authorize unjust actions It is enough to my purpose that it is plain in the case of the last King that he never made use of his Prerogative till the
a Prince cannot take money for any place in Court without Tyranny who drains his Peoples purses to no other end than to maintain a vain and wastful Prodigality and who spends his time in nothing more than either the rifling of the Subjects houses the deflouring of their Wives and Daughters the slaughter of the innocent c. And though it be alwayes implanted in the Souls of men not more to love and reverence a just and vertuous Prince than to abominate and detest an ungodly Tyrant Yet even in this case he requires Duty and Obedience from the Subject to such a Magistrate as the Minister of God And to this purpose Mr. Speaker he has admirably explain'd all Texts both of the Old and New Testament in favour of the Prerogative and Supremacy of Kings But then Mr. Speaker we must understand both him and our selves aright that when he restrains us from executing vengeance upon Licentious Princes this must still be understood of private persons For if there be now any popular Officers and such he knows there are every where without an if ordained to moderate the licentiousness of Kings such as the Ephori of old set up against the Kings of Sparta the Tribunes of the People against the Roman Consuls and the Demarchi against the Athenian Senate and with which Power perhaps as the world now goes and yet he knows the Christian world now to go so every where without a perhaps the three Estates are furnished in each several Kingdom when they are solemnly assembled So far am I from hindring them from putting a restraint on the exorbitant Power of Kings as their Office binds them that I conceive them guilty rather of a perfidious dissimulation if they connive at Kings when they play the Tyrants or wantonly insult over the Common People in that they basely betray the Subjects Liberty of which they know they were made Guardians by Gods own Ordinance and appointment This Mr. Speaker is our Case we are entrusted by God and our Countrey with the Peoples Liberties and we must give an account to both for the faithful discharge of our Trust. And wherever the fault lyes I dare not pretend to know but this I do know that we have God be praised as Gracious a Prince as ever wielded Scepter and yet I know not by what means though perhaps I do know his whole Reign is deform'd with Tyranny and Absolute Government Mr. Speaker it concerns us to look about us our Lives and Liberties and what is dearer our Religion lyes at stake let us then take Courage and whatever it cost see this licentiousness curb'd and the force of Law restored No doubt but the King will be advised by his great Council or if he will not it is our duty to snatch him from a Precipice however we must not be so slothful and perfidious as to betray the Subjects Liberty of which we know we were made Guardians by Gods own Ordinance and appointment And thus had they got out of Mr. Calvin a Jus Divinum for the Long-Parliament Rebellion and under this pretence of being Trustees for the Peoples Liberties they plainly usurp'd the Kings Supremacy Nothing must be done in the Government of the State without their Advice and Approbation and any proceedings that they disliked and yet they disliked all that were done without them became immediately illegal and till they are redress'd all Government must be laid aside and if the King hapned at any time to do any thing contrary to some idle precedent of Sparta and Lycurgus it was a manifest subversion of the Fundamental Laws And thus by this fooling and the help of Calvin came they at length to challenge the Sovereignty to themselves and to set the Crown upon their own heads that is as we all know to suffer the King to do nothing without them and to assume a Power to themselves as oft as they judged it expedient of doing every thing without the King and this made these Pedants as troublesome in their demands as were the Rebels by design till they had challenged every branch of the Regal Power Both these and the Zealots were excellent Tools of Sedition but they were no more than Tools the Master-workmen were the cunning and reserved Members of the Republican Faction For it is plain enough that all things were govern'd in both Houses by a Cabal of such as had from the beginning as appeared afterwards a design upon the alteration of the Government And these men were able upon all occasions to form themselves into all shapes and all parties to drive on their designs and it was not so much their business to make Speeches and complain of Grievances as to perplex and obstruct the Kings Affairs and by any artifices make him obnoxious to their Power and when that was grown great enough they understood their own work Their usual trick was to appear alwayes with the first to comply with the Kings designs and desires and when by that means they had brought him into straits they still left him v. g. they were perpetually putting the King upon expensive wars by great promises of assistance and accordingly seem'd alwayes the most chearful and liberal voters of Taxes but yet they were sure to raise so many disputes and difficulties about other matters that the supply was either altogether diverted or came alwayes too late This was the particular unkindness that the King complain'd of in all his Parliaments But by leaving him thus perpetually in the lurch they forced him at length to make use of some extraordinary courses and then they presently made their advantage of that to raise their clamours and complaints of Arbitrary Government and nothing could stop their mouths till his Majesty had not only done severe penance but made ample Restitution by some special Act of Grace whereby he granted away some considerable Branch of his Power And so they would for a while receive him into favour again and then anon play the same game over again and by this means they at length grew so much upon him and gain'd so many advantages of him till perceiving their own strength they command him to resign his Regal Power into their hands or if he refuse to stand upon his own guard and defend himself as he can by force of Arms. And that was the contest of the war who should wear the Crown He or They. It was these men chiefly that invited back the Kirk-Army after they had agreed to Articles of Pacification and return'd home satisfied with the Kings Concessions and the abolition of Episcopacy that was indeed the pretence of the Covenanters Rebellion but very far from being the end of those men that set them on Their business was only to bring the King under a necessity of calling a Parliament for Money and for that he was to pawn his Crown into their hands and buy supplies at the price of his Sovereignty And it succeeded accordingly for the
necessity of a Soveraign Power over the affairs of Religion from their concernment in the Peace and Government of the world I thence proceeded to enquire where and in whom it ought to reside and having shewn the inconsistency of erecting two Supreme Secular Powers one over Civil and the other over Ecclesiastical Causes I concluded that the Supreme Government of every Common-wealth must of necessity be Universal Absolute and Uncontroulable in that it must extend its Jurisdiction as well to affairs of Religion as to affairs of State because they are so strongly influential upon the Interests of Mankind and the Ends of Government And now is this to make the Ecclesiastical Authority of the Civil Magistrate absolutely Paramount without regard to any other Jurisdiction of what nature soever when I only maintain it in defiance to the claims of any other humane Power For this was the only subject of that enquiry And when I asserted the Soveraign Power to be Absolute and Uncontroulable 't is apparent nothing else could be intended than that it is not to be controuled by any distinct Power whether of the Pope or the Presbytery for they are the only Rivals of the Princes of Christendome And when I asserted it to be Universal and Absolute no man unless he would give his mind to misunderstanding could understand it in any other sense than that it was not confined to matters purely Civil but extended its Jurisdiction to matters of an Ecclesiastical Importance upon which account alone I determin'd it to be Absolute Universal and Uncontroulable This is the main and the fundamental Article of the Reformation and that which distinguishes the truly Orthodox and Catholick Protestant both from Popish and Presbyterian Recusants and is the only fence to secure the Thrones of Princes against the dangerous encroachments of those bold and daring Sects and therefore from so plain and avowed a Truth to charge me for ascribing in general terms an Absolute Universal and Uncontroulable power to the Civil Magistrate over the Consciences of men in matters of Religion argues more boldness than wit and discretion and gives us ground to suspect that these men are not less forsaken of shame and modesty than they are of Providence for it must needs be a very bold face and a very hard forehead that could ever venture to obtrude such palpable and disingenuous Abuses upon the world This I think was answer enough for him and is I am sure too much for you But when beside this I have drawn up a brief and plain account of the parts the coherence and the design of my first Treatise to prevent you from abusing the People for the future with such rude mistakes and pervertings for you to repeat the very same Leasing is if any thing is false Heraldry 't is brass upon brass And when I have there so stated the Controversy as to provide with equal care and caution against the Inconveniences of both extremes an unlimited Power on the one hand and an unbounded Licence on the other when the bounds I have proposed are so very easie to be observed and so unnecessary to be transgress'd by all Partys concern'd viz. that Governours only take care not to impose things certainly and apparently evil and that subjects be not allowed to plead Conscience for disobedience in any other case and when I have so carefully avoided all kind of severity more than is absolutely necessary to the preservation of Government and the peace of Mankind with many other things so easie and so obvious that there is scarce any thing to excuse me from Impertinency in taking so much pains to prove them but their Manifest Necessity After all this I beseech you by the tyes of ancient Friendship deal clearly and candidly with me and tell me upon what other principles I could have discoursed more safely or more innocently upon this Argument though it is possible I might have done it more wittily by the help of your friend Bays who supposing two Kings of Brentford one for example a Secular the other an Ecclesiastical King remarks upon it that the People having the same Relations to both the same Affections the same Duty the same Obedience and all that would be divided among themselves in point of devoir and interest how to behave themselves equally between them these Kings differing sometimes in particular though in the main they agree And therefore what if they should agree to divide their Empire and one be King of the Land-men and the other of the Water-men or one to rule by night and the other by day or take their turns of Government by weeks or months but this device would not do for where there are two supreme Powers in the same Common-wealth there can be no avoiding civil jars and bloody-noses So that for this reason had I been a Senator of Brentford I should have humbly proposed that either King Phys or vice versâ King Ush might be vested with the absolute and uncontroulable Power of the Empire i. e. with both kinds of jurisdiction because otherwise as he proceeds shrewdly the People being embarrast by their equal Tyes to both and the Sovereign's concern'd in a reciprocal regard to their own Interest as to the good of the People may make a certain kind of a you understand me upon which there does arise several disputes turmoils heart-burnings and all that Ay this is pregnant and demonstrative and does not sob us off as you always do with empty tittle tattle without any colour or pretence of reason And had it come to hand time enough I might have been as much beholden to it for sence as you have been for wit for so you will have it that I have pilfer'd all my best or in your own Poetick phrase rapping flowers out of Play-books and several choice ones you have in spite of Almanacks and Chronology discover'd in my first Book that were by all means filch'd out of this very Play though as fortune would have it this was not made any way publick till above two years after that But waving the advantage of Bays his Assistance and every body else and relying upon my own single strength and presumption after all my care and pains to way-lay Calumny could I ever suspect any thing in the shape of a man so desperately fallen from all sense of Conscience or Modesty as to upbraid me with ascribing an infinite jurisdiction to Princes without any regard to the Divine Laws Well! I now see what it is for a man to live in his study and be unacquainted with the world for my part I could never have supposed it possible that Mankind could ever by Travel and Conversation emprove it self to such an height of Confidence Especially when there is not any one Writer extant either ancient or modern that I know of that has so vehemently and industriously asserted the hoopableness of all humane Authority as I have done And when in particular I have spent two
Clamours that have the face to compare three easie and harmless Rites with the Yoke of Moses and the Tyranny of Antichrist But thus split a Straw and lay it cross a Fanaticks forehead and as hard as it is it shall break the back of his Conscience I could have wish'd you had been as much refreshed and edified with the Arch-Bishop's Testimony as with Mr. Hales's that so instead of quoting a single Passage you might have taken upon your self the grateful penance of transcribing his whole Book and then you would have obliged us with that remarkable Prophecy wherewith he shuts up his Antiquities There is nothing more to be fear'd and provided against in this well-constituted Church of England than lest the Clergy whilst it takes pains in the Word and Truth and is with the greatest Observance subject to the Soveraign Power should be set forth as a Prey and Spoil to the Lavish and Spend-thrifts and be torn by the Reproaches and Contumelies of the Ignorant and exposed to the Affronts and Insolences of the Rascal-Rabble If this shall ever happen more heavy Scourges from God and sadder times than those of Queen Mary's Reign may justly be expected And yet thus it has been and thus it must be wherever it is the humour and fashion to vilifie the Priesthood Religion becomes contemptible with its Officers and where that loses its Esteem and Reverence Government loses its support and security And this was at the bottom of our late wild and wanton Rebellion that the People were debauch'd into a slight regard of all things Sacred and Civil by the bold and juggling suggestions of a few ambitious and sacrilegious Malecontents and then it was not only easie but natural to put Affronts upon all the Proceedings of Authority to bear down all its Remonstrances and run the Common-wealth into flat Anarchy and open War You see how little Execution is to be done upon the Church of England with the But-end of an Arch-Bishop as you express it with equall Wit and Manners Here the Quotation of my Lord Verulam which you could produce to my confusion would in my opinion have been much more to the purpose but to tell us what you can say without saying it is only to talk to your self Or the story of Pork that you forbear to tell too because you say I know it but I say I do not know it or if I did you should however have had the Manners to have told it for his Majesties sake because he knows how to make use on 't But another Qualm that is upon every turn throwing you into groaning Fits is that after all my seeming and pretended zeal for the Church of England for which you have the greatest kindness in the World were it not for the Pick-thankness and Pick pocketingness of the Clergy I shall be found by any unpack'd Jury of Divines little better than a rank Erastian a word you have pick'd up out of Bishop Bramhal though for any thing you know that may signifie a Wizard or a Magician yes or a Jewish Zealot i. e. a notorious Rogue and Cut-throat But be it what it will this too was as all the rest are J. O's grievance And you are both Crafty Colts that when you know your selves unable to answer Arguments presently spurn at them with some false and foul Recrimination I scorn'd to take any notice of his Braying and so I should of yours but that I perceive some weak and well meaning Brethren that are only wont to skim and skip over Books to be a little startled at the Impeachment because I all along discourse of the Power of the King and not of the Church though the reason of it is very obvious viz. because the Subject I design'd and proposed to treat of was the Power of the King and not of the Church so that if you and J. O. are aggrieved at any thing it is for no other cause than that I have stuck close enough to my own Argument and too close to yours Now Sir as you well remember you have for want of wiser Remarques calculated at least ten times over in what Year of the Lord and upon what day of the Month my several Books were born and then if you will compare it you will find that the juncture of Affairs to which the first was accommodated was at a certain Season after the Chatham Adventure when you began to lift up your Heads and to Nose your Governours and to make bold demands in the name of your Consciences against the late illegal Impositions of King and Parliament And you know what innumerable swarms of Pamphlets you were perpetually sending abroad only to declare to all his Majesties good Subjects that either were already out of humour or had a mind so to be that if himself or any other Civil Magistrate whatsoever shall presume to challenge or exercise any Authority over their Free born Consciences in any matters of Religion whatsoever he usurps upon the Royalty of God and involves himself in the guilt of Tyranny and Persecution This was loud and broad enough to alarm the Church of England we understood the men and their meaning and had no mind believe me to have that comfortable settlement restored to Church and State by his Majesties happy Restauration unravel'd by these Men's bold and insolent Pretences And therefore divers Persons out of pure Love for the Church and Loyalty to their Prince and Zeal to their Countrey set themselves to beat back all your new Republican Pleas of Sedition and to assert his Majesties Prerogative against all your old Shifts of Dis-loyalty Among the rest I had no more Wit than to thrust my self too forward into the Scuffle and to pursue you too close through all your peevish Clamours and Pretences For when I saw men of known and approved Enmity to the present State buzze abroad such Exorbitant Principles among the Common-People as flatly contradict all the Principles and defeat all the Obligations of Government I could not I ought not to refrain from lashing such Lewd Designs with some Warmth and Smartness of Reproof and if I have any where overlash'd it was out of an over-vehement Concern for the Peace and Prosperity of my Countrey though for my own part I am not sensible of any one Expression that is chargeable with the least Harshness or Incivility I have only express'd ill things by their Proper Names and whereas both your self and J. O. pour fourth in every Page incessant complaints of Railing and Reviling that is but an Uncivil Word that you may throw at any man that you are not fond of and it proceeds merely from your Old prodigious Pride and Partiality to your selves who whilst you make it both your Recreation and Employment to invent or blazon Slanders against the Innocent rave and fome at all Conviction of guilt against your selves I have challenged you often enough to specifie but one foul or false word in
and yours to demand it and whether he give it or give it not as he sees it most convenient for the ends of Government concerns neither Me nor my Writings seeing in both he exercises that Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction that I have asserted to be inherent in the Supreme Power At least you see what reason I had to discourse of the Kings Power rather than the Churches because that was the only Principle you endeavour'd to batter down and if once you could but tye up the Secular Arm you valued not the strokes of the Spiritual Rod so that had I opposed the Power of the Church to your attempts of Anarchy it had been as wisely design'd as to send forth a party of Church-men to encounter a Brigade of Horse with their Spiritual Weapons But because I see you are resolved not to spare for laying on load enough and have the confidence to impeach or suspect a man of any thing that is odious if he do not expresly protest against it and because some other men that I have more reason to satisfie than your self have fallen into the same suspicion of Erastianism take this short and plain account of the whole business for the prevention of future mistakes Religion then has a twofold End either as it relates to the affairs of this present life or of that which is to come and so is enforced with a twofold Jurisdiction or Power of Coaction suitable to its respective ends Now its design in reference to this present world is the peace of Societies and the security of Government and therefore it must be enforced by such sanctions as are proper to the attainment of that end and those are secular rewards and punishments so that this being the Office of the Civil Magistrate or as you word it according to that deep respect you profess to Princes the trade of Kings to provide for the safety or welfare of the Common-wealth all his Jurisdiction must be temporal and backt only by external inflictions as suited only to the ends of his Authority His Power then over Religion is of a Political Nature and is intended to the same purpose as his Power over all other affairs of State i. e. the publique peace and prosperity and therefore need only be exercised in the same way of Jurisdiction and this is that Authority that I have all along asserted to be the natural and unalienable Right of all Sovereign Princes But then secondly its design in reference to the world to come is purely spiritual and relates only to the welfare of the Souls of men hereafter and therefore is to be prosecuted by such enforcements as are apt to govern Souls without laying restraints upon their bodies Now the only sanctions proper in this case are the rewards and punishments of another life and this is the power of the Ecclesiastick State Authoritatively to declare the Laws of God to the People and to enforce their obedience to them from the threatnings and promises of the Gospel And to this purpose did our blessed Saviour depute the Apostolical order or succession of Apostles to superintend the Affairs of his Holy Catholique Church it is the right of their Office and Commission to consult advise and determine in all disputes that concern the Government and the welfare of all Christian Assemblies and their Decrees are obligatory upon the Consciences of men by vertue of their own proper Authority and under their own proper penalties For as all their Power is meerly spiritual so are all the Sanctions of their Laws and therefore though they cannot by vertue of their own inherent Jurisdiction punish the disobedient with Civil and Secular inflictions yet may they require and demand obedience to their constitutions under pain of the Divine displeasure and the lash of the Apostolical Rod and their sentence when regularly passed upon refractory offenders is valid and terrible as a decree of heaven and if there be any truth or sense in our Saviours words to the Colledge of Apostles that whatsoever they shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven their Censures shall be approved and ratified by the judgement of the Almighty And that man deserves the wrath of God that is want only rebellious and incorrigible to the soft and gentle discipline of his Church this is such a desperate and malicious peevishness that it does of it self consign a man up to final contumacy and utter impenitence He is too stubborn and too impudent to be reclaim'd that dares rashly bid defiance to the wisdom and authority of his ghostly guides and governours but when the exterminating sentence is passed upon the Offender it smites like the sword of an Angel it throws him out of the Church and the ordinary capacities of Mercy and delivers him up to the wrath and judgment of God And this is no more than what is necessary to the very Being and Preservation of all Society in that Society cannot subsist without Order nor Order without Authority nor Authority without a Power of requiring and enforcing Obedience and therefore if our Saviour have founded a Church in the world and does design its continuance to the end of it it is necessary he should provide for its Preservation by delegating some peculiar persons to govern and guide the Society by Laws and Penalties otherwise his Church were no better than a wild and ungovernable Rabble that only meet together by chance or by humour and are under no enforcements of orderly and peaceable behaviour And this would be a worthy representation of the Church of Christ that it is only a Rout of rude People without Law or Government But as it is necessary that Ecclesiastical Affairs should be govern'd so is it that this should be done by Ecclesiastical persons whose profession and peculiar employment it is to study and understand those matters and 't is but reasonable to relye upon their judgement who ought to be presumed best skill'd in the nature of the thing it is no more than what common prudence directs to in all other affairs of life to consult and trust every man in his own profession we do not apply our selves to Physicians for the settlement of our Estates nor to Lawyers for the preservation and recovery of our healths But men are to be entrusted and employed with regard to their own proper skill and office and therefore though we should set aside the express Authority of our Saviours commission to the Apostles and their Successours for the perpetual Government of his Church the very rules of common prudence will cast the management of Ecclesiastical matters upon Ecclesiastical persons and this is so avowed a principle among mankind that the Jurisdiction proper to the Church was never yet invaded by any Laicks till t'other day the Tradesmen and Burgers of the Corporation of Geneva banish'd their Prince and Bishop and then took the Government both of Church and State into their own hands and seated the Power of the
Keys in Mr. Mayor and the Town-Clerk and issued out Excommunications under the Town Seal and every Fisherman upon the Lake Lemane if he were a Livery man of the City immediately became an Apostle and the Spirit of Infallibility forsook the whole Order of Church-men and setled upon every illiterate Mechanick that had a bold Face and a loose Tongue And with what Apostolical Wisdome and Gravity they made Religion it self ridiculous Mr. Calvin himself has inform'd us particularly in the cases of Bertileir and Perin who were absolved from the Sentence of Excommunication by the Common-Council and under the Town-Seal And 't is observable that those States that have made bold to despise or disregard the Power of the Clergy have always first prostituted the Revenues of the Church to the worst of men and in a little time the Government of it to the Scorn and Contempt of the Common Rabble And therefore all wise and pious Princes have ever chosen to govern Religion by the Counsel and Assistance of their Clergy and to be determined in Enquiries of Faith by their Decrees and Declarations for though all Power of External Coercion be vested in the Civil Magistrate yet that of teaching and declaring the Law of God is the Right and Office of Ecclesiasticks so that though they cannot force Princes to confirm and ratifie their Decrees yet may Princes be obliged by Vertue of an Higher Authority by regard to Piety and Religion by the Order and Decency of things to have reference to their Judgments though if they will not it is not in the Power of the Church to call them to an account for their Proceedings as the men of Rome and Geneva talk That shall be demanded at an higher Judicature they can only declare and discharge their Duty and leave the pursuance of their Cause to the Judgment of God For in all Affairs whatsoever capable of External Cognizance the Supreme Civil Power must and will over-rule this is absolutely necessary to the Order and Preservation of Government and the World must be govern'd as they will or not be govern'd at all And thus have I briefly proved that the Clergy must be vested with some Power peculiar to themselves both from the Institution of Christ and the nature of Society for as much as the Constitution of the Church as such is distinct from that of the Civil State so that all Christians are obliged to the Visible Profession of the Name of Christ not only without the leave but against the Edicts of the Supreme Authority of Kingdomes and Common-wealths The next thing to be consider'd against Erastus is that their Office is not merely declarative or ministerial but carries proper jurisdiction in all the Acts and Exercises of its Power and enforces all its Decrees by Penalties and Inflictions and wherever we find Coercion there is all that can be required to the Nature and Exercise of Jurisdiction that is nothing else but a Power of Imposing Laws and Inflicting Punishments and whoever has a Right to both these Acts of Government has all that Authority that is proper to Empire and Dominion and whatsoever Privileges and Prerogatives of absolute Sovereignty we can imagine they are all reducible to one of these swo Heads either a Power of requiring Obedience to its Commands or of punishing Disobedience by its Penalties and both these are apparently included in the Priestly Office that consists of two parts first the Authoritative Power of Preaching whereby they are enabled to declare Divine Laws under Penalty of the Divine Displeasure and this is proper Legislation and is declared to be so in his Original Commission granted by our Saviour to his Apostles and their Successours to the End of the World in that he sent them as his Father sent him to teach or disciple all Nations whereby he derived upon them the same Power that himself was furnisht with from above to pursue the same ends so that if he himself were entrusted with any proper Jurisdiction he has conveyed and imparted the same to the Apostolical Office and Order and that he was so is an unquestionable and granted Case on all sides and therefore he himself founds the Validity of their Commission upon the Right of his Power All Power in Heaven and Earth says he is given me of my Father therefore go c. I am now enthroned Sovereign Lord of the whole Creation and the Exercise of all my Fathers Power is entrusted to my Management and therefore in the first place I appoint and Authorize you and your Successors in my Name and by Vertue of my Supremacy to take care of the Guidance and Instruction of my Church this is the Office and Power to which you are deputed next and immediately under my self in the Discharge and Execution whereof I engage all my Power to be immediately assistant to you to the end of the World So that it is plain that their Power of Preaching and Declaring the Laws of the Gospel is properly Authoritative and of the same Nature though of a Subordinate force with our Saviours own Dominion over Mankind and all Men by Vertue of his Command and his Commission are bound to give Obedience to their Doctrines in the right and Faithful Discharge of their Trusts as to the Authorized Stewards of his Mysteries And then as for the other part of the Power of the Keys or Church Censures it is as full of Jurisdiction as any Secular Power whatsoever it judges gives Sentence and inflicts Punishment in Criminal Causes and though they do not execute their own Judgment but leave it to the Divine Justice yet where God has promised to abett their Censures by his immediate Power 't is the same thing as to all the purposes of Government as if it were done by the stroke of their own Arm and though they did but only minister to the Divine Judgement as to these immediate Inflictions of Heaven yet the sentence it self is a severe instance and exercise of Coercive Jurisdiction it cuts a man off from all the Advantages of the Communion of Saints and of our Saviours Incarnation and that is a Capital Execution and more affrightful to any man that makes Profession of the Christian Faith than all the Rods and Axes and Pillories and Whipping-posts of the Secular Power And as their Authority carries in it true and proper Jurisdiction so is it in its Kind Supreme Universal and Uncontroulable and extends to all Nations Ages and Conditions Kings and Princes are subject to the Spiritual Authority of their Doctrines they have Souls to be conducted to Heaven as well as their Subjects and therefore stand as much in need of Spiritual Guides and Instructors for if Christ have intrusted the Spiritual Government of his Church in the hands of his Apostles and their Successors then all its Members of what Rank and Quality soever are regularly to make enquiries and receive determinations of Conscience from their Mouths and when the
result of all their Messages Remonstrances and Declarations is the illegal and arbitrary imposition of unscriptual Ceremonies by which when we come to treat more closely they mean nothing else but only those three establish'd in the Church of England for they themselves never stick to allow or practise any others so these be excepted And had you wit and learning enough to judge of Non-sense you would even cross your self were it not a Popish Symbol to observe what a deal of Metaphysicks J. O. has lavish'd away upon this Argument But alas you shew so little judgment as to slide over his great depths of subtilty and fix upon speculations so wretchedly shallow that every man has wit enough to fathom their folly Thus I verily believed I had in my first Book acquitted my self manfully enough towards battering down this Theological Scar-crow that you have set up in the high places of Armageddon to fray away the People or rather Boys and Girls from the Communion of the Church by shewing that it is so far from being a crime in any Ceremonies to be significant and symbolical that it is their only nature and office so to be that the signification of all Ceremonies is equally arbitrary that it is of the very same kind and to the very same purpose with that of words and therefore that all tender Consciences have the same reason to be offended at the one as the other These I thought in the simplicity of my heart solid and satisfactory notions and counted upon it that we should never more be annoyed with such a thin and empty bubble But behold out stalks the great Leviathan J. O. and pours upon me such a volley of Distinctions as would have stunded a whole Regiment of stouter and more experienced School-men than my self In the first place he distinguishes very subtilely between the Appointment and the Institution of Ceremonies the first he allows of but the last is or may be blasphemy From hence he advances to distinguish between natural and customary signs and then of customary signs between Catholique and Topical and these all pass muster But as for all such wicked signs as signifie neither by Nature nor by Custom but only by vertue of their Institution they are full of such rank and desperate Idolatry that the people of God ought rather than suffer themselves to be defiled with them to tear the Church into Schisms and the State into Wars to murther and banish Kings to subvert the Government and destroy Religion At their own peril therefore be it as he threatens them if Magistrates will be venturing at such a dangerous extravagance of power because 1. They have not any absolute Authority over the sign and thing signified 2. They cannot change their Natures nor create a new relation between them 3. They cannot give a mystical and spiritual efficacy to them And then lastly as for the signification of words that I have parallel'd with that of Symbols the Schoolmen have demonstrated it that when they are signs of sacred things they are signs of them only as things but not as sacred Here are dragons and deeps it were worth a mans while to work in the Mines of Metaphysicks for such Jewels as these this is gibberish strong enough to make a Rosi-crucian mad and were J. O. in good earnest I should notwithstanding all Quarrels be so much his friend as to provide him a dark lodging and clean straw But what wretched fooling this is any man that has a mind to the sport may see in my Reply to him where I gave my self the divertisement of ferreting him from distinction to distinction i. e. from non-sense to non-sense And methinks it is no unpleasant sight to see a poor Rat thus to work and traverse it about to find some little hole wherein he may hide his baffled head when he can hope for no other shelter then to stand still and wink hard But as for your part though you are in the very same straits yet you have the confidence to think your self close with your eyes open and all the world staring at you Thus whereas your most astonishing objection from Cartwright downwards for just where he begun you have all left off and stand like the statue of Erasmus in the posture of turning over a leaf but without ever turning it over will stand in the same posture to the day of judgement against the Institution of Symbolical Rights is that it is no less an attempt than to entrench upon the Divine Prerogative by offering to institute new Sacraments J. O. in particular expresses his sense of it thus that to say that the Magistrate has power to institute visible signs of Honour to be observed in the outward worship of God is upon the matter to say that he has power to institute new Sacraments for so such things would be For this I took him up somewhat roundly as he deserved I upbraided him with the precariousness of the Cavil I challenged him with that plain answer that he could not but know had alwayes been returned to it viz. that Divine Institution is the only thing necessary to the nature and the office of a Divine Sacrament and so at last I dared him to renounce his Argument if he would not take notice of his answer And I could do no less when they have for above one hundred and fifty years together vext and haunted us with such a new-fangled nothing To all this what do you reply why after a tedious deal of forced mirth and grinning you gravely inform us that the Non-conformists were never so silly as to attempt to prove that these Symbolical Ceremonies are indeed Sacraments Nothing less 't is that which they most labour against And now is it not time for me to cry Victory and Triumph when I have put an end to so long and bloody a War when I have gain'd all that we have fought for ever since Cartwrights Rebellion when you your self have resign'd up the Controversie and tyed all their Champions and their Chiefteins to my Chariot wheels Are you not a trusty Patron of the dear Brethren and their dear Cause to give them all up thus broadly for a generation of egregious and incorrigible block-heads should they ever be so weak as to go about to prove that these Symbolical Ceremonies are indeed Sacraments When it is the very Curtana of the Cause when it is the only weapon wherewith Cartwright gored the Bowels of the Church and that has been transmitted successively to all their Champions down to J. O. and the Cobler of Gloster when it is so undeniably upon record in all their writings when it is the subject of so many whole Books and when it is still the last word of all their brawls and contentions So that you say well It is time indeed for the Non-conformists to desire a truce to bury their dead nay there are none left alive to desire it
shall be adjudged Heresie by the high Court of Parliament of this Realm with the assent of Clergy in their Convocation And within our own memory there have happened Cases in which the Parliament have ventured to define not only the signification of words but the nature of things as you know they determin'd not long since without advising with the Royal Society that Brandee belongs properly and formally to the specifick Essence of Spirits So that it seems this Power has sometimes been reduced to practice without throwing all into Rebellion and Anarchy and shaking the Crowns of Princes and reducing the World into a second Babel Though such an exorbitant and arbitrary exercise of it as was chalenged by your Presbyterian Long Parliament was enough to dissolve all Governments and break up all societies in the World For they had the impudence to impose such bold meanings upon words as flatly contradicted their common and customary signification Thus could they make such sentences to be just and legal as were not fit to pass into Precedent in the like cases that is to say such as themselves confess'd by their own provision to be unjust and illegal in that there can be no hurt or danger in lawful Prescriptions Thus could they make a new and unheard-of sort of Treason call'd cumulative Treason that is a great many no Treasons to make up a Treason Thus a Delinquent signified any man that they had a mind to cut off for his Loyalty and thus to make open preparations for Rebellion was to put the Kingdom into a posture of defence against all the Kings enemies whether foreign or domestick i. e. against the King himself and all his friends and Allies But the dismal Calamities and Earthquakes that followed thereupon were the Consequences of the abuse of this Power not of the Power it self and so all Power of what kind soever if stretch'd to the same degrees of Tyranny is as naturally productive of the same effects of Confusion And now after all these nice and stubborn speculations about the abstracted and metaphysical Idea of symbolicalness and after the Champions of your cause have for so long a time kept up this Ball or rather Bubble of Contention even from Cartwright down successively to the present Age you would like a cunning Rook turn the Tables upon us and charge us as the Aggressours in this ridiculous dispute i. e. after you have played the Children so long with this hard word that signifies nothing and now too late perceive your folly in raising such an inveterate and implacable War upon such a slender pretence you would just as you dealt with his late Majesty when you rebell'd against him lay the War at our doors and upbraid us as if we had made all this stir about this wretched trifle as if it were our Sir Solomons sword our dead-doing Tool wherewith we flatter our selves to have done so much execution upon the Puritan Cause and as if I my self had set up this hard word on purpose to be my Opponent And thus would you cunningly slide your own wooden Dagger into our hands when it is manifest that we are altogether on the defensive part and are so far from using any weapons of offence that we never so much as employed a Shield to ward off your Thrusts but have always put them by with neglect or a mere denial and have scorn'd and pityed your simplicity in laying at us so fiercely with such a wooden tool The Church of England was never so idlely employed as to concern it self to determine the nature of Symbolical Ceremonies whether it be Sacramental or not It has indeed defined the number of such Sacraments as are necessary to Salvation that is to say such as are instituted by Divine Authority as the perpetual Pledges and Symbols of the Christian Faith And if men have a mind to any more Sacraments they may for her have as many as they please provided they pretend not to Divine Institution And whereas you often insult upon some great Prelate that you say wrote a book of seven Sacraments though there was never any such book written he might if he had nothing else to do have written one of seven hundred for there is nothing in nature that may not in the Puritan notion be applied to a Sacramental use i. e. be appointed as a pledge and signification of something or other Keep then your impertinencies to your selves you shall not pin them upon our sleeves and when you have worn this fools Coat so long till you have worn it threadbare think not that we will then suffer you to put it upon our backs Neither tell me of setting up an hard word for my Opponent when it is your own scarcrow and withall such a despicable and woful pretence that at last I scorn'd to dispute against it I only despised its intolerable silliness and exposed it to the contempt of your own Herd It is below the seriousness of an argument And if it be an hard word that signifies nothing blame not me for mumbling and mousling it till I have made it contemptible for it is your own and you know I was so little fond of it that I offer'd to exchange it for Syncategorematical because it is more frightful by three or four syllables and rattles through the throat with a bigger and more terrible accent and any other hard word that sounds bravely and signifies nothing and that no body understands would serve the turn as well and I am content if you are hereafter to call them by common consent either flying Dragons or Usinulca's Keep your Goblin-nonsense to your selves we have nothing to do with it but to despise your folly And if it be Taplash as you call it it is of your own brewing and is both the first and the last running of your brains but hereafter let us hear no more of it for shame such thin and spiritless stuff as this as it is not worth keeping so it can never hold tilting And now upon review of this whole matter it is well worth our observation how the state of the question is changed with the state of affairs The controversie is not now as it has been heretofore between the holy Discipline and the establisht Government of the Church of England that contest has put an end to it self but whether men of rebellious spirits and Democratical Principles shall under counterfeit shews of tenderness of Conscience be suffer'd to work the Common People into a disaffection to the Government For it is notorious that the most zealous Agents and Patrons of the Cause are so far from being seriously scared with their own pretended scruples that they have given the world too many undeniable proofs of their being above the most avowed Principles of Justice and common honesty and withall that they have been and still are for any evidence they have given to the contrary the most vehement and implacable enemies to the present
Antisacraments to the prejudice of Christs own true Sacraments than which worse need not be said of the most Antichristian Church in the World And thus the Commissioners of the Worcester-house Conference obstructed his Majesties felicity and the Nations settlement because they thought it reasonable and convenient to stick to the present establishments of the Church till some proof of their unlawfulness was produced and because when none could be produc'd they would not condescend to that temper and moderation as to change all her Constitutions without any other reasonable Motive than to salve the reputation of the Presbyterians they must be branded for cunning and revengeful men And good reason too because the Non-conformists demand nothing but what is so far from doing us any harm that it would only make us better And yet all their demands are against our legal Establishments of which your worship is so enamour'd And as for the Act of Uniformity and that superfoetation of Acts that followed after it though they were all establish'd by Law yet were they procured by trinkling nay by Bishops trinkling and for that reason serve only to expose the Wisdome of King and Parliament to after Ages Another special commendation of the Church of England as by Law establish'd that its Legal Establishments are so foolish as to be a perpetual Testimony of the Law-makers Folly Find me out a Fanatique in Hungary Transylvania Bohemia Scotland Geneva Pin-makers Hall J. O's Congregation that may not boast his deep respect and reverence to the Church of England upon as good Terms as your self So that it is plain here you did but Personam induere of an honest Zealot for say what you will you must and shall know that all Zealots are not Rogues and Cut-throats And after all your counterfeit reverence you mean no body else by this particular Bran than the Bishops and the Clergy of the Church of England as 't is by Law establish'd Upon them it is that you dispense forth this sweet Character with so much bounty and in the very spirit of meekness And in the first place Arch-bishop Laud cannot lye quiet in his Grave but after a great many fair and foul words as consistent with themselves as the rest of your Book you are pleased at length to score all the miscarriages of the late Kings Reign and all the miseries of the late War upon his head and Conscience I suppose because he was a man so learned so pious so wise so studious to do both God and his Majesty good service you thought he was better able to bear it than some others whose reputation was not altogether so clear and unquestionable But poor Bishop Laud this is hard measure that when never any man's Innocence clear'd it self so gallantly from all the assaults of Malice and Calumny his venerable ashes should be thus insolently arraign'd by every bold and Fanatique Blockhead For notwithstanding the vigour and activity of his mind his zeal for the settlement and prosperity of the Church his care to reduce Religion to sober and justifiable Principles his Interest in the Kings favour and Counsels yet was he so wise and so pious in the conduct of all his affairs that when he was devested of all Power and Protection when he was exposed to the violence and outrage of the people when Calumny was let loose upon him when he was treated not only without mercy but justice and common civility when Libels and Petitions against him were rewarded when tumults and clamours were invited when he was even overwhelm'd with the number of Slanders Jealousies and Accusations when he was prosecuted by some with the utmost Fraud and Artifice by others with an unheard of malice and violence when his Murther was decreed with an absolute Doom before his Trial when his impeachment was drawn up in the most heinous and aggravating terms when the Evidence was managed with an unusual vehemence and animosity yet after all this his Innocence appear'd so clear and his Integrity so unblemish'd that not only his Judges but his very enemies were convinced and ashamed of their own Accusations For when the particular Articles of his Charge came to be examined they proved after the expence of a great deal of time and wit and eloquence so trifling and silly that they durst not venture to proceed any farther against him in way of legal Tryal and so were forced to condemn him and he was the first and last that was ever so condemned by Ordinance of Parliament without any other Formality than bringing him once to the Commons Bar for fashion sake that he might not be condemn'd unseen as he was unhear'd but condemn'd he was for no other Crime than that of cumulative Treason that is what you please and by this Impudence they might take away the life of any innocent man if either they hated him or he liked not them But the Remarque that his Historian has made upon the review of all their proceedings against him is so just and observable that all Circumstances consider'd it will appear the highest Act of Malice and Impudence that ever was before committed for since it has been outdone by any Age and under any Government in the World Viz. That as the predominant Party in the united Provinces to bring about their ends in the death of Barnevelt subverted all those fundamental Laws of the Belgick Liberty for maintenance whereof they took up Arms against Philip the second So the Contrivers of this mischief had violated all the fundamental Laws of the English Government for maintenance whereof they had pretended to take up Arms against the King It was said they a fundamental Law of the English Government and the first Article in the Magna Charta that the Church of England shall be free and shall have all her whole Rights and Priviledges inviolable Yet to make way unto the condemnation of this innocent man the Bishops must be voted out of their place in Parliament which most of them have held far longer in their Predecessors than any of our noble Families in their Progenitors and if the Lords refuse to give way unto it as at first they did the people must come down to the house in multitudes and cry No Bishops no Bishops at the Parliament doors till by the Terrour of the Tumults they extort it from them It is a fundamental Law of the English Liberty That no Free-man shall be taken or imprisoned without cause shewn or be detained without being brought unto his answer in due form of Law Yet here we see a Free-man imprisoned ten whole weeks together before any charge was brought against him and kept in Prison three whole Years more before his general accusation was by them reduced unto particulars and for a Year almost detain'd close Prisoner without being brought unto his answer as the Law requires It is a fundamental Law of the English Government That no man be disseized of his Free-hold or Liberties but
State because he never intended him for that employment when all Princes were as little aware of it as his Majesty till you were pleased to inform them So that it must be consessed that he followed the best Light that as J. O. speaks God held forth as the horns in his hand to the believers of that Generation for then he had no reason to suppose that he could do better than to trust his Affairs with a man learned and wise and pious not being bless'd with your Revelations from the high places of Armageddon And yet for all this had the Arch-bishops precipitate violent rigorous sanguinary and extreme Counsels been followed I am apt to think it had by the blessing of God been the most likely way to prevent all the mischiefs of the late Rebellion He saw plainly enough what the Antimonarchical Faction aim'd at how they had prepared the People for Confusion how they had encombred the Kings Affairs and that there was no probable way of escape for his Majesty but by some violent breaking through those difficulties in which they had entangled his Government And if the Faction had been convinced by any thing but Declarations that the King would not bear such insufferable Affronts against his Crown and Prerogative it is at least to be supposed that they would never have attempted it with such open and impudent endeavours But though he committed his exquisite understanding to the Arch-bishops keeping he kept his own sweet-nature and Gentlemans Memory to himself for being a person of an incomparable goodness he was strangely easie to forget and forgive the boldest injuries and that was all the use they made of his gentleness to encourage one another in their disloyal Practices till at length they proceeded to demand his Crown and when for meer peace and goodness-sake he had granted them one half of it by vertue of that they fought for the other And as little as the Arch-bishop gain'd upon them by his Priestly implacableness the King gain'd much less by his Princely Condescensions They were already resolved upon Rebellion and then every thing was an occasion of Tumult when they were resolved to tumultuare upon every occasion And though the War be no more to be imputed to the Kings goodness than the wickedness of impenitent sinners is to Gods mercy yet had they not shamelesly presumed upon that they though Presbyterians could never have had the confidence to treat him as they did Nay so little did he work upon them by the good-nature of all his condescensions that they perpetually set themselves to pick quarrels and take exceptions at the most obliging words as for example in the Bill of pressing and leavying Souldiers by Authority of Parliament when he had made a passionate Speech to them to move their pity towards the lamentable estate of his Protestant Subjects in Ireland and to dispatch their supplies for suppressing the Rebellion and to avoid dispute and delay he offers them to pass their own Bill that they were then framing though expresly against his undoubted Prerogative so it might be done with a salvo jure leaving the Debate to a better and more quiet season How think you did these meek-natured men that had they not been forced to it by Laud and Sibthorpianism could never have lift up an ill thought against the King requite all this tenderness and condescension but immediately Vote a Petition i. e. a Remonstrance to represent to his Majesty how he had violated the ancient lawful and undoubted Priviledges and Liberties of Parliament by taking notice of any Matter though it were Town-talk in agitation in either House before it was presented to his Majesty in due course of Parliament and humbly beseech i. e. threaten him to make known the Persons that by their Evil Counsels had induced him to it that they might be brought to condign punishment i. e. be affronted and severely handled only for being acquainted with the King Were not these men resolved upon it to renounce all sense of Duty and respect to their Prince that could seize such an advantage of discontent in such a sad juncture of Affairs from such a slight and unjust occasion And what way was there to deal with them but by such violent and precipitate Counsels as you impute to the Arch-bishop They were you see plainly from all their proceedings proof against all the obligations of goodness and ingenuity and then there is no way left but to suppress them by force and rigour and if that fail'd it was only because the Faction was grown too strong for the Government And 't is possible nay likely that if the King had through his whole Reign taken contrary Counsels and Courses yet the event might have been the same because however he carried Himself and his Affairs they were resolved to pursue their Democratical designs and had as the world went Power and Interest enough so to confound his Government till they brought him into a necessity of a Civil War But the three Rocks upon which this Man so learned so wise so pious ruin'd the King and Kingdom were Sibthorp Arminianism and the Scotch Liturgy so as not to leave it in the power of the Rebels to prevent the war For they alas Righteous Men acted in the sincerity of their Hearts and faithful discharge of their Consciences and were only forced into Arms in Defence of the King Kingdom and Themselves by Sibthorp Arminianism and the Liturgy But as for the Story of Sibthorp and the Loan-money in short thus it hapned In all the Parliaments under the late Kings Reign there was alwayes a strong Cabal of ill-affected persons that resolved to lay hold on all Advantages which way soever Affairs were managed to embroil the Government and bring the King into such streights as should make him obnoxious to their Power and to this purpose they put him upon expensive wars and when they had so done obstructed all Supplies by falling to complaints of Grievances and disputes of Liberties and Priviledges and Remonstrances against his Government and Petitions of Redress that is to say by assaulting him with Demands and Threatnings and however things were Reformed yet these Malevolent Persons as his Majesty expresses it like Empyricks and lewd Artists did strive to make new work and to have some disease on foot to keep themselves in request and to be employed and entertain'd in the Cure chiefly by raising jealousies and designs upon their Religion a wicked Practice sayes the King that they took up not for any care that they had of the Church but only as a plausible Theme to deprave our Government as if We our Clergy and Counsel were either senseless or careless of Religion with many other wicked Arts and Practices that the Declaration recapitulates p. 8 9 10. But the King being engaged in a foreign War in defence of his Unkle the King of Denmark by the Counsels and Perswasions of both Houses of Parliament with
Parliament began to challenge it and then he could make use of nothing else and the dispute then was not whether the Prerogative should govern but whether it were vested in him or them and that brought forth the War they fought for the Crown and when the Parliament had won it they were resolved to wear it and exercised all the Jurisdictions of Sovereign Power by vertue of their Parliamentary Supremacy But to return to Manwaring it is a great instance of the Presbyterian Humanity that though the poor man had begged their pardon with all the expressions of sorrow and humility yet no less punishment would appease their fury but to be imprisoned during their pleasure i. e. for ever to be fined a thousand Pounds to be suspended three Years and to be made uncapable of any farther Ecclesiastical preferment with many other heavy tokens of their displeasure and all this only for his too eager Zeal and forwardness in the Cause of Loyalty and so his Majesty understood it and therefore punish'd him with preferment accordingly to defie their pragmaticalness and to encourage such as promoted his and the Kingdomes service though they might fail in a point of Prudence But as for those persons that openly refused the Loan and affronted the Kings Commissions and would rather suffer Imprisonment than comply in so easie and reasonable a Demand they plainly shewed they had forgot that respect they owe to their Prince and that duty they owe to God who so severely requires them to obey not for their wrath only but for Conscience sake so that it was a manifest and unpalliable Breach both of Loyalty and Religion Especially when it was so very manifest that the King was forced upon all extraordinary courses purely by the stubborness of Presbyterian Parliaments and when they had such unquestionable assurance both from his own Temper that he could do nothing but what was just and honourable and from his Royal word that he would be always as tender of his Peoples ancient and just Liberties as of the Rights of his Crown and Soveraignty In these plain Circumstances as things stood between him and his Parliaments punctilios of Law were superseded For when it was so manifest that their demands were disloyal and unreasonable and withal that on one hand their designs were worse than their Declarations and on the other that his Majesty never intended any thing but the Peace and prosperity of his Kingdomes that was sufficient motive to overrule all good Subjects and ingenuous men not to endanger all by standing too curiously upon precedents and and niceties of old Custome But when these men first put the King upon his necessities and then defeated him of his supplies and so forced him upon extraordinary courses and then resisted his Authority and affronted his proceedings and animated the people to stand it out against his Commissioners and raised a disturbance and discontent through the whole Nation and all this when they knew his Majesties occasions so urgent and his designs so just and pious I dare determine that whatever they were by the Laws of the Land they were most notorious Rebels by all the Laws of the Gospel though what they proved afterward we all know it being these very men I mean as many of them as persisted in their stubborness for some of them were converted to a more orderly temper by the mere power of shame and modesty that were the great Authors and Ringleaders in the Long-parliament Rebellion The next fatal Rock upon which this man so learned so wise so pious ruin'd both King and Kingdome is the Rock of Arminianism for it seemed he and the Bishops had in order to setting up a new kind of Papacy of their own here in England provided themselves of a new Religion in Holland Arminianism which though it were the Republican Opinion there yet now they undertook to accommodate it to Monarchy c. But I beseech you Sir that are so deep a Statesman to inform a poor sucking Divine which way Arminianism is concern'd for or against Monarchy As for its Orthodoxy I have not a word to say especially when it has been so sufficiently determin'd by the Synod of Dort and the Assembly of West-minster i. e. all the Modern Orthodox Divines of Hungary Transylvania Bohemia and so downward to Pin-makers Hall though how it should at all conduce to Popery I must confess it is beyond my comprehension when the controversie has been always more or less disputed in all Nations under all Governments by all Sects and all Religions and is bandied as much by the Divines of the Church of Rome as by those of the Reformation And therefore when you upbraid us that in the late beating up the Pulpit Drums against Popery some were so ignorant as to fight the Papists with Arminian Arguments you would have done well to tell us the Ear-mark of an Arminian Argument I always thought they had been equally concern'd with other Protestants against the Pope and that the Arminians howsoever otherwise heterodox agree no more with some Papists in some things than the Calvinists agree with other Papists in other things so that their differences have no relation to their common Cause against Popery But to what purpose is it to talk to a Gamester of matters of Divinity For you understand none of these things but write purely by roat you find grievous outcries of Arminianism in the Long-Parliament Speeches and Declarations and you thought you might serve your turn of it as they did theirs It was an hard word that the people understood not at all i. e. as little as themselves did the thing only they taught them to hate and abhorr it as Children do Bugbears and Hobgoblins So that in those days Arminianism and Popery went always hand in hand and if they had a mind to blast any mans Reputation it was but sticking this name upon him and his business was done and among other Artifices to give better Countenance to the Cheat a counterfeit Letter was framed to the Rector of the Jesuites in Bruxels in which they inform him with what Art and success they had planted here the Sovereign Drug of Arminianism to purge the Protestants from their Heresies and to make a Party against the Puritans that were their only dangerous enemies with abundance more of the like impudent stuff though by whom it was written it was never yet discover'd yet by several passages in favour of the Puritan Faction it is evident enough to all sober men that it was a mere Gullery of their own devising And agreeably to this they were always very liberally bestowing their stroaks upon the Monster of Arminianism I desire Mr. Speaker that we may consider the increase of Arminianism an errour that makes the Grace of God lackey it after the will of man yea I desire that we may look into the very belly and bowels of this Trojan Horse to see if there be not men
in it ready to open the Gates to Romish Tyranny and Spanish Monarchy for an Arminian is the spawn of a Papist and if there come the warmth of favour upon him you shall see him turn into one of those Frogs that rise out of the bottomless Pit and if you mark it well you shall see an Arminian reaching out his hand to a Papist a Papist to a Jesuite a Jesuite gives one hand to the Pope and another to the King of Spain c. These were wonderful tricks for the deep Worthies of those times but now nothing but an incorrigible blockhead could either believe that they were very serious or if they were that they were not very silly And yet however Arminianism whatever it is may stand in relation to Popery it was a new Religion that the Prelates brought from Holland and though it were the Republican Opinion there because that Faction was there accused of designs to reduce that Common-wealth under the Spanish Government they undertook to accommodate it to Monarchy And they were no doubt deep Youths that could reconcile a Republican Religion to a Monarchical Interest nay not only so but make that the very Engine to screw up the Prerogative to an absolute Power They must be very cunning men and certainly could never have miscarried as they did were it not that God is resolved never to bless Church-men in their Statetrinklings Otherwise I would request you to tell me in the name of Machiavel which way the Kings Prerogative is concern'd whether God Almighty decreed from all Eternity to create ten Myriads of men nine whereof he peremptorily resolved to doom to everlasting misery for the Glory or rather Ostentation of his uncontroulable Power and Dominion and that they might not frustrate the purpose of his Good-pleasure as they call it resolved again by one device or other to draw them or rather than fail by his own irresistible Instigation to drive them into such practices as might deserve and by consequence justifie the severity of his proceedings Though this seems to make very much for the lawfulness and the divine Right of arbitrary Government yet I never heard of any Calvinist that urged his opinion in this matter in behalf of the absolute and unhoopable Supremacy of Kings Neither do I understand what it imports to any form of Government whether a man be a Supralapsarian or a Sublapsarian and suppose he proceed as far as Gomarus in asserting absolute and irrespective Reprobation I would fain know wherein lyes the Republicanness of his opinion and by what trinkling distinctions and subtilties the Bishops were able to accommodate it to Monarchy At least all these Speculations of absolute and arbitrary Dominion are easily defeated and over-ruled by Calvin's practical Doctrines of Government viz. that it is the duty of the Common people and their Trustees to assert the liberty of Subjects against the Tyranny and wantonness of Kings and that if they grow licentious and exorbitant in the use of their power it is then incumbent upon the popular and inferiour Officers to restrain and moderate their Excesses One such blunt assertion as this is enough to baffle all the dry and speculative Consequences of notional Decrees for these only swim in men's fancies whilst there are perpetual or at least too many occasions of reducing that to practice And though the Consequence is very obvious that if God disposes of his Creatures by an arbitrary Decree and without regard to the merits of the Cause for so he acts according to the Predestinarian Doctrine by which he pre-ordains the greatest part of his Creatures to everlasting Destruction and that he may not be defeated pre-ordains them too to as much sin as may deserve it that then his Vicegerents may govern the World by his own measures and destroy any of their Subjects as they see cause for the Interest and Glory of his or their own Empire Yet how it comes to pass I do not know or perhaps I do know the followers of Calvin have always been as eager in decrying Civil as Ecclesiastical Idolatry and to avoid the very peril and suspicion of it have every where treated Kings as roughly as if they had taken them for a Race of Capons It were easie to adde a great deal more gloss upon this hard word but this may suffice to convince a wiser man than you if he needed it that it had not the least real concernment in the disputes of Monarchy or Popery but being some Foreign Monster that no body understood it might conveniently serve at all turns for a standing pretence of jealousie and suspicion The third Rock upon which this man so learned so wise so pious ruin'd both King and Kingdom was the imposing the English Liturgy upon the Kirk of Scotland Now as to this to be short you must know that this very thing was covenanted and subscribed to by the first Reformers when they Petition'd Queen Elizabeth's aid to expel the French and was in some measure put in practice till in the Minority of King James the Scotch Reformation was as all the rest were over-run by the Bramble and so the Liturgy was by degrees neglected to make way for the new invention of extempore Prayers in which if we may relie upon the Kings word the Mass Johns prayed sometimes so ignorantly as it was a shame to all Religion to have the Majesty of God so barbarously spoken unto sometimes so seditiously that their Prayers were plain Libels girding at Sovereignty and Authority or Lyes being stuffed with all the false Reports in the Kingdom But King James as soon as he came to the use of his Royal Understanding reflecting upon the rudeness and sedition of their Prayers immediately as became a religious Prince bethought himself seriously how his first Reformation in that Kingdom might begin at the publique worship of God which he most truly conceived could never be happily effected until such time as there should be an unity and uniformity in the publique Liturgy and Service of the Church established throughout the whole Kingdom And to this end a publique Liturgy was compiled by the Bishops and others of the most Eminent Clergy and presented to the King by Arch-bishop Spotswood and being approved and ratified by Royal Assent was sent back for the use of the Kirk though as it hapned it took no great effect by reason of his Quarrel with Spain that followed immediately upon it and of his Death that followed not long after it But upon some Addresses from the Clergy of that Kingdom his late Majesty resolved to pursue the Pious and Princely design of his Royal Father to which purpose he caused the same Service-Book to be sent back to himself that after his perusal and alterations if any should be foundnecessary and convenient it might likewise receive his Royal Authority and Approbation And after many and serious Consultations with the Bishops and Clergy of that Kingdom it was at
King having been at a vast expence in his first Expedition was forced to summon a Parliament for fresh Supplies but they no sooner met than they justified their Dear Brethren as they call'd the Kirk-Rebels and so fall to their old complaints of Grievances and Arbitrary Government and the illegal Proceedings of the Kings Ministers of State and these things they must and will have redress'd before they will take any business of money into consideration and so long baffled the Kings expectations that he having no hope of any Supply from them dissolves them and resolves to cast himself upon the assistance of his better affected Subjects and accordingly finds the greatest part of his Gentry and Nobility so sensible of their own Duty and Loyalty and of those affronts that were put upon his Regal Power by these men in the late and former Parliaments that by their own voluntary Contributions they raised an Army more than sufficient to have reduced the Rebels to obedience But being over-ruled by the advice of some that were alwayes too near to all his Councils and that were no friends to his Prerogative though perhaps they were no enemies to Monarchy he condescends to a Treaty and that concludes as these men would wish in referring the whole Controversie to the decision of a Parliament And this produced the fatal Long-Parliament that chiefly consisted of the most Seditious Members of all his former Parliaments For though the greatest part of the Gentry were loyal and dutiful enough yet it so hapned that the Commonalty had been preached into malecontentedness by the Puritan Preachers they thought no man a Patriot of his Countrey or fit to be trusted in Parliament that was not a profess'd enemy to the Prerogative and that did not oppose Taxes and Tyranny And if any one had been so stubborn as to deserve punishment for Sedition and had been imprisoned or gon to Law with the King for the non-payment of a Sess of twenty or forty shillings that gain'd him the hearts of the whole Countrey and so upon the merit of their sufferings it came to pass that the most eminent Persons of the Presbyterian Faction came to be so generally elected Knights and Burgesses in this as well as all other Parliaments of his Reign but now their discontent was heightned partly by their former just imprisonments partly by that affront that as they supposed was put upon them in the dissolution of the late Parliament And therefore having once again got possession of the House and perceiving the Kings necessities to be greater than ever and withall their own Party to be stronger and more numerous than ever they resolved to appear more boldly than ever and to make something of so great an advantage And so they immediately fall upon accusing the King and his Ministers of all the crimes that could render them odious to the people they charge him with designs of reestablishing the Roman Religion of subverting the fundamental Laws of setting up Arbitrary Government of laying aside all Parliaments with a Thousand other Clamours and Calumnies making use of every Accident to raise matter of Accusation And if you will look into the grand Remonstrance of the state of the Kingdom that was the first Declaration of the War you will find that they imputed all misfortunes whatsoever to the King and his evil Council The loss of the Rochel Fleet the diversion of the War from the West-Indies to the successess attempt upon Cales the Peace with Spain the breach with France the dissolving of former Parliaments for their stubbornness the destruction of the Kings Timber in the Forest of Dean the Monopolies of Sope and Salt the Sale of Nuzances the design of Coyning Brass money the depriving seditious men of the comfort and conversation of their Wives by close Imprisonments Misdemeanours in all Courts of Justice Bribery Extorsion and buying of Offices Suspensions of painful learned and pious Ministers the decay of Trade the loss of Merchants Ships by the Pyrates of Dunkirk with all other good or bad Accidents that befel the Government were imputed 1. To the Jesuited Papists who hate the Laws as the Obstacles of that change and subversion of Religion which they so much long for 2. To the Bishops and the corrupt part of the Clergy who cherish Formality and Superstition as the natural Effects and more probable Supports of their own Ecclesiastical Tyranny and Usurpation 3. To such Counsellours and Courtiers who for private ends engaged themselves to further the Interest of some foreign Princes or States to the prejudice of his Majesty and the State at home Though the Root of all this mischief was a Malignant and pernicious design of subverting the fundamental Laws and Principles of Government upon which the Religion and Justice of this Kingdome are firmly establish'd And then the common Principles by which they moulded and govern'd all their particular Counsels and Actions were 1. To keep up a misunderstanding between the King and his people by their Leasings 2. To keep down the Purity and power of Religion 3. To bring in Arminianism 4. To trinkle the King against his Parliaments Where by the way you may see that you are not the first Authour of your own notions your whole Book is but a short Rehearsal of the Remonstrances Speeches and Declarations of the Rebels But now must all things stand stock still till these and a Thousand grievances more are redress'd his Ministers must be impeached of high Treason and if he expected any comfort from them he must buy it with the blood of his best Subjects and his fastest Friends But you cannot here reasonably expect a compleat account of all their Injustice their Folly their Impudence and their Hypocrisie when the whole World can scarce contein the History of their Wickedness I am sure it can never equal it However it is plain that they were now resolved upon the Rebellion and so made demands accordingly For the summe of all their Messages Remonstrances and Declarations was only to chalenge the Soveraign Power it self and all the parts and branches of the Prerogative They petition'd no more than that the King would be pleased to betray and give up his Friends to their Malice as in the Pique of the five Members that he would deliver up all Castles and Forts and the whole Power of the Militia into their hands That they might have the choosing of all the Lords of his Council and of all great Officers of State the Government and Education of his Children the Power to hang Delinquents as they shall think fit and the liberty of excepting whom they pleased out of the Kings general Pardon and that no Peer be permitted to sit in the house of Peers but by consent of both houses Upon these and the like Terms to which they stuck with an impregnable Obstinacy from first to last they would apply themselves to settle his Revenue and supply his necessities and make him the most glorious
Engagement in defence of the Parliament and Army meaning as they did that as the King was virtually in the Parliament so was the Parliament virtually in the Army And thus was their silly and sensless Distinction of the King 's personal and politick Capacity turn'd upon themselves And the same Articles and Demands that the Parliament sent to the King they sent to the Parliament and baffled all their Excuses by Precedents from their own Principles and Proceedings v. g. Their Charge against the eleven Presbyterian-members by the Example of the Archbishop and the Earl of Strafford when they pleaded that they could not legally procede against them till the particulars of their Crime were specified and so they acted over all the same Knavery again till they at length proceded to crown all their wickedness with the Kings murther But the fraud and malice the injustice and folly the impudence and hypocrisie of these men is so notorious that it need not be reported and yet so unconceivably horrid that it would scarce be credited They committed all the boldest impieties in the world not only under the greatest shews of Religion but by Authority of divine Impulse they still sought the Lord for all their wickedness and they were directed to all their Murthers and Perjuries by his deep and hidden discoveries of himself to his secret Ones They made no more of an Oath than other men do of a Complement they would swear an hundred times backward and forward to follow the Revolutions of Providence and the Rump when they had murthered the King absolv'd themselves by their own Vote from Perjury it was but voting the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance to be null and void and they were as innocent as if they had never taken them But to say all in one word their Rebellion was not only against the King but against Monarchy it self that is to say against all Kings And I remember I have seen an humble Testimony for God in this perillous time by a few who have been bewailing their own and others Abominations and would not be comforted until their Redeemer who is holy be exalted in Righteousness and his Name which has been so much blasphemed be sanctified in the sight of the Nations subscribed by J. O. and some other secret ones In which having witnessed against all the Backslidings and Abominations of many from the Publick Good Old Cause and bemoaned the Rebuke that was poured forth upon the Rump and Barebones Parliament they procede to witness in all humility and fear against the setting up or introducing any Person whatsoever as King or chief Magistrate or an House of Lords or any other thing of like Import under what name or title soever or any other Power arising from the Nation as a Nation upon the old corrupt and almost ruinated Constitution apprehending that the great Work of taking the Kingdom from man and giving it to Christ hath had its beginning in the Revolutions we have been under And then positively they do witness for andhumbly assert that the Right of making and giving Laws unto Men is originally in God who hath given this Power as well as the Execution thereof unto Christ as he is the Son of Man and therein made universal Lord and Sovereign over the whole World and under Christ as his Ministers a certain number of men qualified and limited according to his Word ought to be set apart to the Office of chief Rule Government over these Nations as part of Christ's universal Kingdom So that you see J. O. is a profest enemy to the present Government of the State upon the same Principles that he is a Non-conformist to the present Establishment of the Church He is bound in Conscience to abhorr and oppose Monarchy in pure Obedience to the Institutions of Christ as King of Saints and Nations having appointed in his Word a certain number of Men to be set apart for the Office of chief Rule and Government over these and all other Nations in the World Now I think it is convenient that men who have openly witnessed such Principles as these should at least be bound to unwitness them before they are too confidently trusted by the present Government J. O. was absolutely for the divine Right of a Common-wealth but a very little before his Majesties Restitution for this Declaration was publish'd after the Cheshire Insurrection upon occasion whereof he threatens to witness with full evidence to the Conviction of all Upright ones against the abominable Malignity Treachery and Enmity of many in eminent Power and in the publick Ministry and then I dare appeal to your self whether it would not become him to recant such a positive Principle of Rebellion as this before he can with any modesty boast his own and his Parties Allegiance to the present Government At least if he refuse this when he is upbraided to it that is an undoubted evidence of his Constancy to his old Principles and then judge you whether it is fit for such a man to claim a Liberty of publick talking in any Common-wealth when he is under a tye of Conscience to subvert it And yet it was upon this occasion that I fell to preaching Repentance and calling for signal Marks and Acknowledgments c. when with all the scorn and indignation in the World he spit at my bare suspicions of their Loyalty in that as he has the confidence to affirm they give all the security for it that mankind can desire from their profest duty principle faith and doctrine And this Impudence I must confess provoked me to deal somewhat more roundly with him and to let him see how great and how many obligations himself and his party lay under to a publick Repentance Of all which you have taken no notice but only to wonder at my Insolence and that signifies nothing but only to shew your own The grounds and motives that I have laid before you to exhort you to this duty are plain and undeniable they are too many to be here repeated you may if you please find them in my Reply to J. O. from p. 629. to p. 641. If you can quit your selves of them as I am sure you never can I will give you as many more but till the old Scores are discounted there is no need of a new Reckoning and as you love your selves be advised never to call for any And now you see upon what reason I demanded signal Marks it was none of my own Motion but his Challenge though without that it had been pertinent and ingenuous enough unless they would learn more sober Principles However I had never taken any notice of his former Blasphemies had I not been driven to it by his own Impudence I was not so disingenuous as to object his or any mans personal Miscarriages to the disparagement of a publick Cause though you have raked up the faults as you suppose them of several particular Members of the Church of
they thus magnifie the Kings pardons and dispensations but only out of hatred and opposition to the Government because by this means they suppose some part of the supreme power to be lopt off and then they are hearty friends to any thing that abates of that They are right Gibellines for any thing or any interest to make disturbance for King or Parliament or either or neither for their own ends and to oppose the Guelphs In the late War when the King declared against them and the Parliament for them they then fought for the Parliament against the Prerogative But after all the fatal Consequences of that Rebellion the King and Parliament both observing their Sea-marks joyn together to root up their principles of Schism and Sedition and then they declare against both for the Prerogative of God and every man's Conscience And now the King lately for reasons of State and perhaps to make an experiment of their good nature being inclined to suspend for a while the Penalties of the Laws in force against them then hey for the Prerogative above all Laws and Parliaments and they preach up nothing but Sibthorpianism and Absolute Government because it was the Rock on which the last King ruined They care not what becomes of King and Parliament and Kingdom too so they may gratifie their own Pride and peevishness Not that I believe they have all formed designs against the State they are most of them too simple to entertain thoughts so great but yet they are easily acted by those that have they are conceited and froward and apt to pick quarrels and take offence at the present management of affairs be it what it will And if they are not courted as well as humour'd by their Governours their proud hearts are liable to a certain Infirmity that is very troublesom and they are presently reflecting upon the Histories of former times the Roman Emperour the King of Poland Alexander the Great the King of Spain the Queen of Sweden the Flea Tyrant and the sturdy Swiss and a thousand more not such idle stories but that they can tell how to make use of them as well as Kings And if Kings will not be instructed by these Examples to behave themselves dutifully towards their Subjects they know how to take an Antipathy to Regal Government and then he is bound to be so civil as to refrain the use of it however not to press it upon them but if he have so little sense of common humanity as not to yield to their Weaknesses he makes himself an hard hearted and inflexible Tyrant and if he have so little discretion as to trust his Understanding to the Clergies keeping and to know nothing beyond Ceremonies and Sibthorpianism i. e. to take any care for the Execution of Ecclesiastical Laws if he ruine his Government upon that Rock by forcing them to rebel shrewdly against their Wills poor Innocents he may thank himself and his implacable Divines This is all your friendship to the Prerogative in matters of Religion to make all exercise of Ecclesiastical Power Acts of Tyranny And you are so far his Majesties friend as to advise him to be so satisfied with the abundance of his Power as to abate of its exercise by his discretion But though you are always excusing your self from medling with State affairs by reason of your private breeding your modesty and your not having been bound Prentice to the Trade of Kings and on the contrary accusing me for presuming to instruct and advise Princes yet are you always too prescribing to them Rules of Wisdome and Discretion teaching them when it is requisite to screw up and when to let down their Prerogative how to humour their Subjects to condescend to their Infirmities and bid them to be cover'd in their presence and sometimes as here to be content with having their Power without exercising it Whereas I have no where read them any Lectures how to govern their Islands but have only as became a dutiful Subject asserted their power against your principles of Anarchy and Rebellion And if they will forgo any part of it to condescend to your Infirmities they are more competent Judges of their own actions than I am and therefore I shall never censure them for it though I must confess they would be better natur'd than I think I should be in their Cases Though alas it is pity but you should be humour'd after all this experience they have had of your meekness and simplicity and after all that assurance you have given them of your peaceable resolutions and principles viz. that whereas you have heretofore embroil'd the Nation in a civil War for nothing and though you are now convinced of it your selves yet you will not so much as acknowledge it because forsooth it would be a blemish upon your Reputation and therefore you will admit of no terms of Peace unless we will condescend to your unreasonable humours only to save your paltry credit And if we will not we may look to our selves you will make good your own party And then if upon this the Government shall think it a little necessary to restrain you in these bold and factious courses it is Tyranny and a violation of the Divine Majesty You and your Consciences are exempt from all their Laws and are in the hand of God alone and that is all your real owning of the Prerogative Though if at any time it lets you alone in all your extravagances and suffers you to break the Laws you are then such friends to it as no men more You are for or against any thing so you may but have the comfort of affronting Authority All that I have hitherto discoursed concerns only those Non-conformists that at least pretend to Sobriety but as for all the inferiour Sects though they never agreed in any thing but in their implacable Zeal against their Prince yet I never troubled my self so much as to exhort them to Repentance because they have the privilege of all other mad men to do mischief without being responsible for it and therefore are not to be discoursed or advised into their wits because being insensible of the mischief they do they can only be bound and restrained from doing it and to give them their Liberty is not only to suffer them to act any extravagance they have a mind to but to spread and propagate the Infection of their Madness For there is no Frenzy in Religion that the lower sort of the People are not too apt to be tainted with so that instead of allowing them Conventicles it were more proper to build them Bedlams nothing can govern them but Chains and Keepers But as for your own part we are willing to excuse you from signal Marks c. because you have given such mighty proofs and demonstrations of your Loyalty and Good-will to the King by that wonderful Zeal that you have upon all occasions shewn for the Act of Oblivion and Indemnity which as
into which you have not precipitated your self with all the Circumstances and Aggravations of an affected Cox-comb And whoever compares your Lectures must conclude Sancho to be much the deeper Politician For the result of all your Instructions to Princes how to govern well is to advise them not to govern at all because the Body is in the power of the mind and the mind in the hand of God so that to punish the body for the mind is to make the Innocent suffer for the Guilty and to punish the mind when it is in the hand of God is to violate the Divine Majesty And now if both the minds and the bodies of his Majesties Subjects are entirely exempt by Divine Right from his Authority what a mighty Emperour was Sancho in comparison to the Kings of England for you know how he served Mr. Doctor Pedro Rezio of Agnero when he would not suffer him to eat his meat at quiet and though his body were in the power of his mind and his mind in the hands of God yet for all that his Highness made bold to lay his Doctorship neck and heels for his Impertinency whereas according to your Measures when the King suffer'd the Law to pass upon Hugh Peters and Colonel Venner he did not only violate his own but the Divine Majesty And though the Cow-keeper declared War point-blank for God himself yet he had his outward Tabernacle fairly suspended by a mere carnal humane Institution for which the judge must expect to give an account at the day of Judgment for violating the Divine Majesty But in truth this solemn and frowning Non-sense is so horribly ridiculous that I am perfectly ashamed to expose it And yet it is the result not only of your own Book but of all the Books of your own Party whilst they make the Conscience subject to God alone and impute all the Actions of the outward man to that inward Principle and then what has the Magistrate to do with any of his Subjects when their bodies are purely in the power of their minds their minds in the power of God There is avast deal more of such wretched stuff that I shall pass by because I perceive every body has wit enough to discern it at first sight by their own natural Sagacity Only one deep Aphorism I cannot omit no more than you can your idle stories because Kings may make use of it for their own advantage viz. that as reasonable men are to be govern'd by reason so are Consciencious men by Conscience What you mean I neither know nor care but this advantage I can make of it for the use of Kings that then his Majesties Conscience if you will allow him any has a Sovereignty over the Consciences of his Subjects and since blashemous Consciences have been conscienciously burnt and rebellious Consciences conscienciously hang'd 't is a powerful Evidence of the Necessity of a Consciencious Government in the Kingdom of Conscience and that his Majesty as he knows best may conscienciously reduce all sturdy Consciences to acquiesce conscienciously in his and the Churches most consciencious Discipline For as he has a royal Understanding and a Gentlemans Memory so has he an imperial and superlative Conscience by virtue whereof he is able to exercise a Consciencious Dominion over ten thousands of his Consciencious little Kings and by virtue of this it was that Hugh Peters being a reasonable man was reasonably hang'd and a consciencious man was conscienciously hang'd and if ever hereafter the Consciences of any Subjects shall drill them into the like consciencious Freaks against the sovereign Conscience that may inflict the same consciencious Punishment upon them by virtue of its consciencious Authority and this I take to be the only Consciencious meaning of these words that Consciencious men are to be dealt with only by Conscience And thus though by your former Maxims you had deposed him from exercising any Authority over his Subjects yet now by this you have reenthroned him in his full Power by making his Conscience King of their Consciences so that it concerns him to look to his Conscience lest he lose his Kingdom in that they will not have their Consciences governed by any thing but Conscience But seeing there is little hopes of perswading his Majesty out of his Government you procede in the next place to prescribe him worshipful Rules and Measures how to manage it discreetly by a preposterous duty and slavish regard to the Will and Insolence of his Subjects Not a word in all your Book of exhortation to them to be obedient all your Advice is thrown away upon Kings to be discreet and to connive and not like the hard-hearted-inflexible-tyrant Clergy exasperate the People to Rebellion by the extravagancy of their just Power but to be so satisfied with having abundance of it as to be content to abate of its exercise by their discretion To condescend for peace sake and the quiet of Mankind to such things as would break a proud heart before it would bend you are all for humbling of Kings not to exact obedience too much to the establish'd Laws lest they require things impossible unnecessary and wanton of their People upon all Occasions to give them good words and humour them like Children to consider the Temper of the Climate the Constitutions of their Bodies and the Antipathies of their Stomachs And if all this will not prevail but his Majesty still prove a stubborn and untractable Pupil he must be taught to reflect upon the histories of former times and consider the Catastrophes of such pragmatical Kings and Governours as would not humour their Subjects like Children nor consider their Infirmities and when they had got a Cold force them to be covered Sir what do you mean by all this Do you not think the King a well-bred Gentleman that you read him these Lectures of Civility as if he were not respectful and mannerly enough to his Subjects If you do not mean mischief why do you speak of it in his time Why stir such an odious seditious impertinent unseasonable discourse Why take this very minute of time but that you have mischief to say no worse in your heart This is plainly written with an evil eye and aim at his Majesty and the measures he has taken of Government For if he be so uncivil as not to condescend to his Inferiours so indiscreet as not to connive at their Infirmities so inhumanâ— as not to yield to their Weaknesses so ill-bred as not to desire them to be covered when they have got a Cold. Nay if he be so hard-hearted as when any of them have an Antipathy to any thing for instance a Flemish Antipathy to Monarohy a Consciencious Antipathy to Obedience and a Fanatick Antipathy to Morality as to cram these things down their throats in spite of their stomachs he is an hard-hearted and inflexible Tyrant and then every body knows the stories of the Roman Emperour
that was stab'd of Alexander the Great that had almost lost all of the Queen of Sweden that was forced to resign of the sturdy Swiss that would not conform and all the other idle stories that they know how to make use of if Kings will not But I beseech you what grounds have you for these fears and jealousies of Incivility Did his Majesty ever turn his Kingdom into a Prison Did he ever weary out his Subjects so at home as to constrain them to seek a more hospitable habitation among Salvages and Canibals abroad This was the incivility that deformed his Fathers Reign and the Rock upon which we all ruined but the King observes his Sea-marks and has learnt more manners and is not so uncivil as Alexander the Great and his Royal Father were as to force them to rebel by forcing them to conform And though I have not the honour to be so intimately acquainted with his Majesty as to give him a Testimonial of the unblameableness of his Life and Conversation as you have very obligingly done yet thus much I dare say for him that he is as civil and good-natured a Prince as ever wielded the English Sceptre so that you need not doubt but that he will upon all occasions give his Subjects good-words though they give him bad ones and humour them like Children though they are never so froward and deserve to be scourged And therefore during his Reign you have no more ground to fear any danger of Incivility than I have of Popery so unnecessary and unseasonable are your Lectures of good manners at this time when his Majesty God be praised is as well provided of a Royal Nature as a Gentlemans Memory Thus far have you instructed him how to govern his Island by way of Precept but now we procede to the more instructive Topick of Example and here you have strung up as Sancho did his Proverbs an hundred idle stories of the fatal Catastrophe of ill-bred and uncivil Kings to fright him into meekness and good manners to which you might in my opinion have added one more how the Subjects of Great Britain because their King would not humour them like Children when they had a mind to play with his Crown nip'd his Prerogative suck'd his Blood subverted his Government and set up a glorious Regiment of their own I verily believe to have trumpeted this in his Majesty's ears as much as I am out of your Books for it would have been a more pertinent story for the use of Princes than Alexander the Great that had almost lost all the Roman Emperor that was stabb'd the sturdy Swiss that would not conform and the frolicksom Queen that gave the blank Town seal of which there came no harm But yet from these you threaten Kings with as much Effrontery as if you had them standing before you upon the Stool of Repentance whilst you lecture to them with the state of King Gill Scotch modern Orthodoxy with politick-Notes and Observations upon Emperors Roman and Grecian Kings and Queens School-boys and Schoolmasters I shall as briefly as I can examine them to prove you as very a Rat-historian as I have proved you a Rat-divine Your first Tale is of a Roman Emperour who when his Captain of the Life-guard came for the word by giving it unhandsomly receiv'd a dagger I suppose you mean Caligula who as Suetonius relates was stabb'd by Sabinus whilst he gave the word not as you will have it for giving it unhandsomly the murther having been plotted aforehand and though Josephus you know had a peculiar grudge against that Emperour as a most implacable enemy to the Jewish Nation and therefore to disgrace him as much as he can affirms that he was stabb'd immediately upon giving for the Word the name of a lewd woman though in Suetonius the Word is Jupiter the most sacred Word in their Religion yet will you there find that it was the execution of a premeditated Conspiracy and that the main cause of it was his frequent railing upon this Captains cowardize This is a Caveat to Kings not to presume too much upon their own Wit and their Subjects good nature and if they will be drolling upon them they may thank themselves if they receive a Dagger for a Repartee I have heard of another Roman Emperour who gave the Sword to the Captain of his Guard requiring him to use it for his defence if he govern'd well but if not to turn the point of it against himself As also of a Prince of Brabant who granted to his Subjects if himself or any of his Successours should ever attempt to violate their Ancient Priviledges a full Power of proceeding to the Election of a New Governour what disturbances ensued hereupon and how Kings approve the example I know not but this I do know that it was very weakly done to submit their Actions so entirely to the judgement of their Subjects and put it within the power of any Malecontent either to murther or depose them But being got into the Roman Empire I am you know in my own kingdom and therefore when you ask me whether had I lived in the dayes of Augustus I should not have made an excellent Privy Counsellour to him for his Father too was murther'd I would have been Privy Counsellour to Augustus with all my soul were it not that he reign'd so long ago so that had I ever been of His Privy Council I must either have been dead fifteen hundred years since or at least have been so very old that by this time I should have been altogether unfit for any publique employment though I had descended of your family of the de Temporibus otherwise I know not any Emperour of them all of whose acquaintance I should have been more ambitious He was a Prince admirable for the wisdom and magnanimity of his mind for the sweetness and facility of his manners he was one that delighted in nothing more than the entertainments of wit and ingenuity Virgil and Horace and Varius were admitted into his retired and cabinet Conversation as well as Agrippa and Mecaenas they were not only his Domesticks but his Familiars and his Confidents they conversed and laughed together as friends and companions And now who would not take it kindly to be honour'd with the favour and familiarity of so great a Prince a Prince of so good and so sweet a disposition a Prince so free from froth and groans a Prince so much to be admired for that Majesty which sat upon the forehead of his Masculine Truth and generous Honesty But had I been of his Privy Council I am confident I should never have given him my Advice to sacrifice three hundred of the Nobles and Citizens of the best Quality to the Ghost of his murther'd Father because his Natural Father old Octavius was not murther'd but being a Civil Gentleman of private condition and breeding and never having suffer'd any of his Tenants to be
represented them would not have been very forward to approve or follow the Example because Royal Sense can never be much delighted with sitting upon the cold Snow The next is a Queen too and she almost as bold a Virago as the former whoever she was and it is the Queen of Sweden who said Io non voglio governar le bestie but afterwards resign'd But I don't believe she understood one word of Italian before she went to Rome or if she did it is certain the People of Sweden did not so that though she did speak to her People that displeasing word Bestie I do not see how that could cause her Resignation But the true and manifest Reasons of it were on her Subjects part their natural fierceness and inclination to wars that made them loath to be bestrid by a Petticoat and therefore they lean'd to her Kinsman the General and her declared Successour and on her own part a capricious desire of foreign Travel and Conversation with more refined wits But however from hence let Princes be instructed to flatter the meanest of the People lest if they speak contemptibly of them they depose them for their moroseness and want of breeding The next Novel is of the Revolt of Switzerland from the Emperour and its turning Common-wealth only upon occasion of imposing a civil Ceremony by a capricious Governour who set up a Pole in the high-way with a Cap upon the top of it to which he would have all passengers to be uncover'd and do obeysance But one sturdy Swiss that would not conform thereupon over-turn'd the Government as it is at large in history One sturdy Swiss that would not conform this is your Modern Orthodox Language that would not conform so Alexander the Great had almost lost all because he would force his Subjects to conform But to what would he not conform not to a Civil Ceremony a Civil Ceremony how much less to a Religious Ceremony that is no less than an as-it-were-a-Sacrament But however to give you the short of the story it runs thus The Switzers were declared a Free People some hundreds of years before for their good service against the Saracens and at the time you speak of they had no desire to renounce their dependence upon the Empire but upon the House of Austria as an Hereditary Fee And their casting off their Obedience to the Prefect sent by the Emperour Albert of that Family was contrived long enough before the Hat was set upon the Pole and this not by a Rout and Tumult but by the direction of the Chief Magistrate the Baron of Altinghuse But the Prefect knowing of the design to make short work of it set up the Cap and Pole as a tryal and discovery of the Malecontents So that this was no more the cause of their revolt than the Kings setting up the Royal Standard at Nottingham was of the long-Parliaments Rebellion who had before in several cases challenged and as far as they were able seised on his Power and by consequence deposed him from his Sovereignty From hence let wise Princes beware of forcing their Subjects to be uncover'd unseasonably i. e. whenever they have got a cold or are out of humour and it is good advice to the Parliament to have a special care that they injoyn not the Quakers nor others to put off their Hats whether in Courts of Judicature the Parliament House or Chambers of Presence nor injoyn them a Leg or a Cringe or a Bow as they love the Kingdom for one sturdy Swiss that woul'd not conform c. And that which is more material good Sir Pol. you may hence infer that they had need make a Law and Enact that no Wagg by any trick wile or stratagem in earnest or jest use any endeavours to make men put off their Hats as they pass by the three Poles at Tyburn for fear of turning the Kingdom into a Common-wealth again if they will be wise see the consequences and observe the Sea-marks for one sturdy Swiss that would not conform This is right Modern Orthodoxy and you had done well to have added the judgement of a Professour of it in the Corporation of Losarne scituate on the Lake of Lemane on what point of the Compass you Travellers are so critical I dare not determine though this I dare that it is not far from the Town of Geneva Viz. That it was well done of the Switzers to free themselves of their subjection to the House of Austria when the Princes of that House had exercised more than ordinary cruelty in most parts of the Countrey as David might lawfully have kill'd Saul though he did forbear to do it lest he should give an example to the people of Israel of killing their Kings which other men prompted by Ambition might be like enough to imitate against himself and his Royal Posterity The King of Spains losing Flanders is the last piece of News that makes up this Gazet and this hapned according to the information of your Correspondent by setting up the Inquisition But this story is so like that of Alexander the Great that I need only deny it and say that as Alexander dyed seised of all his Acquists and Conquests so neither has the King of Spain lost Flanders by the Inquisition because it is in force there to this day as you may see and feel too if you will but take a voyage to Ostend with an English Bible in your hand and talk there as freely of the Clergy of the Church of Rome as you have here of the Clergy of the Church of England And as for the United Provinces it is evident that he was stript of them by the Fate of War and whatever was the cause of the War was the occasion of his loss And that as it usually happens in the like cases was set on foot by divers concurrent accidents as bringing in Spanish and Italian Forces by Charles the fifth in his Wars against France a grievance unknown to the Flemmings in the Reign of former Princes and it was against these foreign Troops that the States made the first Remonstrance The natural Insolence of the Spaniards that could not but exasperate the peoples hatred against their pride and oppression The peculiar haughtiness of Philip the second that made him neglect and disoblige the Natives and confer all Offices of Trust and Honour upon Strangers His absence from the Provinces and leaving them to the Government of a subordinate Minister whereas they had always shared in the residence of all former Princes And if you will consult the Prince of Oranges Declaration in the head of his Army you will find the main grievance to be this that the States of the Provinces were forcibly restrain'd from holding according to custom their general Assemblies But besides all this the Netherlands were the very Sanctuary and Rendevouz of all the Calvinists from England France and Germany and the Anabaptists from Westphalia and other parts
and these quickly poison'd the people with their own principles of Sedition and Anarchy so that being before the Government was aware grown strong and numerous that made work for the Inquisition which though it soon check'd their growth yet it did little towards a total suppression of the Party partly by reason of the tenderness of the Dutchess of Parma the then Regent and partly by the Envy and Ambition of the Belgick Lords who underhand opposed all proceedings against Sectaries and Hereticks and encouraged their seditious practices so that between them both the wise and resolute Ministry of Granvel was rendred not only successess but withal odious to the people For as he was a man of extraordinary Wisdome Courage and Fidelity that sincerely pursued his Masters interest faithfully executed his Commands and kept up the height of his Authority so being an Implacable Divine he saw to the bottom of the Projects that were carried on by the discontented Lords and foresaw the tendency of Factions in Religion to disorders and seditions in the State And therefore was severe and rigorous in the execution of Laws as knowing that nothing else could ever reduce the people to any peaceable temper after they were once possess'd with such ill Principles and ill humours But for this by the advice of the Dutchess and importunity of the Lords he was removed and the rigour of Edicts remitted and that for the present seem'd to appease all tumults and discontents But by that means the dissenting and discontented Party in a little time grew so considerable as to put the King upon his former resolutions of force and rigour but it was now too late they were grown too strong for the Government When the Venom was too far spread they applyed the Antidote that did then rather irritate than expel the Poison And now too late the Dutchess of Parma saw and bemoan'd her loss of Granvil But so the War broke out with that bruitish rage and fury of the people that their Leaders repented their own rashness and join'd when it was to no purpose with the Governess to suppress Tumults and Insurrections And what were the Events and Traverses of that long and bloody War you know better than I it is enough that at length in the middest of these Confusions the Estates of the Provinces take an opportunity to seize the Government into their own hands and set up a new Common-wealth and a new Religion And this as an ingenious Gentleman tells me was not a little advantaged by a particular Accident viz Whereas in most if not all other parts in Christendom the Clergy composed one of the three Estates of the Countrey and thereby shared with the Nobles and Commons in their influences upon the Government That order never made any part of the Estates in Holland nor had any vote in their Assembly which consisted only of the Nobles and the Cities and this Province bearing always the greatest sway in the Councils of the Union was most inclined to the settlement of that Profession which gave least pretence of Power or Jurisdiction to the Clergy and though he applies the Observation only to Religion yet it is as true of the Government in that as we all know the Estates of Holland were the head of the Rebellion so that after all your Politiques you see that the King of Spain lost the United Provinces purely for want of Trinklers But supposing the truth of your story the consequence you would make of it is to deter Princes from exercising an Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction over the Consciences of their Subjects lest they exasperate such as are tender into Rebellion Or because the Church of Rome abuse their Government into Tyranny therefore we must have none at all And now it were worth while to know what your meaning should be to beat up and down thus industriously through all Histories for such idle stories as these and then to apply them as Caveats and Sea-marks and directions to Princes without ever being in the least concern'd to caution Subjects against the like wantonness upon the like occasions What else can your meaning be but to inform the world what slight pretences will serve the turn at some lucky junctures of affairs both to cause and to warrant Rebellion And the result of all your discourse as address'd to his Majesty amounts to this that by these examples he may learn to condescend to the childish humours of his Subjects and give place to their follies and extravagances whenever they grow head-strong and have a mind to take advantage of being quarrelsom for every trifle 'T is wise advice and such as would quickly make him so glorious a King as the Long-parliament made his father who gain'd so little by his condescensions to their peevishness that he thereby only emboldned them in their Impudence till in a little time no less would satisfie them but to demand the whole Sovereignty it self and when it was denyed them to fight for it In short I can make neither more or less of all this politique Lecture to his Majesty than I can of Bradshaws speech at the High Court of Justice where he justifies their proceedings by raking up as you have done Examples Ancient and Modern of killing and deposing such Tyrant and Traytour Kings as would be forcing their Subjects to conform But beside the wise instructions you have drop'd upon his Majesty and all other Sovereign Princes to humour their subjects like Children and to use their Power with so much caution and tenderness that they may not have any pretence of disturbance howsoever capricious and unreasonable i. e. in short to beware of governing their people for fear of offending them Beside this general care for the welfare of Mankind your sage Wisdom extends it self to the Kingdoms of Gill and Osbolston and wonderfully concern'd you are to settle and preserve a good Understanding between Ushers and School-boys and to this end have you enrich'd the Politiques of the World with divers shrewd and enlightning Observations against the Illegal and Arbitrary Government of whipping School-masters I never remarked so irreconcileable and implacable a Spirit as that of Boys against their School-masters or Tutours The quarrels of their education have an influence upon their Memories and Understandings for ever after then they are not Gentlemen They cannot speak of their Teachers with any patience or civility and their discourse is never so flippant nor their Wit so fluent as when you put them upon that Theme Nay I have heard old men otherwise sober peaceable and good natur'd who never could forgive Osbolston as the younger are still inveighing against Dr. Busby It were well that both old and young would reform this Vice and consider how easie a thing it is upon particular Grudges and as they conceive out of a just censure to slip either into juveline Petulancy or inveterate Uncharitableness 'T is all remarqued like a Senatour that reflects upon the Histories of
weary of nothing but Laws and Government as is too manifest from your restlesness and impatience under all restraints Are you weary of your Principles Do but assure us of that and we shall never desire any more security but if you are not as soon as you can get wind we are still just as we were But the King has so obliged the Non-conformists by his late mercy that if there were any such Knave there can be no such fool among them that would ever lift up an ill thought against him Now indeed you have nickt it to purpose next to their being hang'd nothing can secure their Loyalty like gratitude and good-nature They lift up an ill thought against the King after he has so much obliged them It is impossible It is against the nature of the Beast Away with the Guards Save so much money the Presbyterian has pass'd his word and can you desire a better hostage Oblige him but once and he is your own for ever It is not in his power to do an ungrateful action and now he is so much beholden to the King he is no more able to lift up a disloyal thought against him than to remove mountains This I must confess goes a great way and as far as any thing next to the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy but yet after all it will not do so effectually as hanging for what if the King should ever happen to disoblige them again why then unless they are very weary there is an end of all the Presbyterian Loyalty I know though I have not the honour to have that intimate acquaintance that you have with him he is a very civil and well-bred Gentleman and knows how to condescend to their infirmities and to humour them like Children and when they have caught cold desire them to be cover'd but yet I know withall that they are so peevish and so apt to take exception that let him carry himself never so swimmingly he can never avoid it but that sometime or other he must before he is aware fall under their displeasure and then if ever they get him within their power they will be disposing of him as they were all along of his Father according to the Covenant But what strange News is this The Fanatiques obliged I could scarce have believed it though I had read it in the Gazette I am confident it is more than the King himself knows Will you give me leave to carry the information to any of his Secretaries of State and when I have done will you promise to justifie it I must confess his Majesties Indulgence all things consider'd was a very obliging kindness yet I am sure his Royal Father laid upon them ten times greater Obligations than that amounts to he granted them every thing they asked even to one half of his Kingdom and yet how he obliged them we all know And as I understand it the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion was none of the smallest Obligations at least it was much greater than the Declaration of Indulgence as much as it is really more comfortable for men to enjoy their lives and estates than to have their wills Yet I cannot find any remarkable effect it ever had upon their ingenuity but that they still continue as peevish and unpeaceable as ever Not but that they have suffer'd as well as ever men did and are ready to'do so still only that it is so hard a Chapter for men in their condition to suffer extremities patiently that some think it impossible and therefore though they are never so angry at the Government and impatient of the Laws yet for all that they may be and if we may take your word are of as meek and passive tempers as any men in the world beside seeing it is impossible to flesh and blood to bear the extremities that they suffer patiently so that in the result of all it seems they suffer as patiently as any men living only because it is impossible for any men living to suffer patiently Yes but if there were any such Knave there can be no such fool among them But of their wisdom we are secure enough already and only desire a bond of their honesty And since fools as you think are less dangerous than Knaves the kindness had been greater if you would have been surety to his Majesty against their more possible Knavery And yet though you had given us these and ten thousand ensurances more of their Loyalty they would not do without testimonies signal marks publique acknowledgements satisfaction and recantation because men that have been so deeply engaged in so heinous a crime if they are sensible of it can never be supposed to satisfie themselves with a slight repentance and therefore whatever other assurance they can give from their being hang'd wearied and obliged it is of no force nor use to the publique in that if they are in good earnest these would be the beginnings and first pangs of repentance so that when they plainly refuse to acknowledge their fault there needs no other proof of their being hardned in it and whenever they have opportunity returning to it But it seems they have done more than all this For no sooner has the King shewn them his late favour but I and my Partners reproach them for being too much friends to the Prerogative They friends to the Prerogative just as the Devil was to the Scriptures they make the same use of it to the King as he did of them to our Saviour only to perswade him to break his own neck Do we not know their Principles too well to believe that their seeming acceptance of his Majesties Indulgence proceeds not from any acknowledgement of his Supremacy to make or suspend Ecclesiastical Laws Do they not challenge these Immunities as due to them by Divine Right and which were before wrongfully detain'd from them Their end in magnifying the Kings Indulgence is not to confirm his just claim of Supremacy in Church-concerns when they deny nothing more vehemently but because they hope by this seeming compliance so to encrease and strengthen their own Party as that they may be able to distress the Episcopal Government and then the Royal Supremacy So that we are so far from reproaching them with being too friendly to the Prerogative that their seeming complyance with it upon their Principles is the greatest evidence of their treachery against it When they claim by Divine Right an absolute exemption from this part of it and if the King or Parliament exercise any of this Jurisdiction over them they call it Tyranny and a violating of the Divine Majesty So that they fight for the Prerogative just as they did for the King against it self And they cannot but be zealous Assertours of it above the Laws when as they will not obey the Laws so they will not acknowledge that And therefore it is not out of any friendship that they have to the Prerogative that