him nor condemn'd themselves But he will needs have vengeance to pursue and overtake them though to bring it in it cost him an inconvenient and obnoxious comparison As the Mice and Ratts overtook a German Bishop I would our Mice and Ratts had bin as Orthodoxal heer and had so pursu'd all his Bishops out of England then vermin had ridd away vermin which now hath lost the lives of too many thousand honest men to doe He cannot but observe this Divine Justice yet with sorrow and pitty But sorrow and pitty in a weak and over-maister'd enemy is lookt upon no otherwise then as the ashes of his revenge burnt out upon it self or as the damp of a coold fury when we say it gives But in this manner to sit spelling and observing divine justice upon every accident slight disturbance that may happ'n humanly to the affaires of men is but another fragment of his brok'n revenge yet the shrewdest the cunningest obloquy that can be thrown upon thir actions For if he can perswade men that the Parlament and thir cause is pursu'd with Divine vengeance he hath attain'd his end to make all men forsake them and think the worst that can be thought of them Nor is he onely content to suborn Divine Justice in his censure of what is past but he assumes the person of Christ himself to prognosticate over us what he wishes would come So little is any thing or person sacred from him no not in Heav'n which he will not use and put on if it may serve him plausibly to wreck his spleen or ease his mind upon the Parlament Although if ever fatal blindness did both attend and punish wilfulness if ever any enjoy'd not comforts for neglecting counsel belonging to thir peace it was in none more conspicuously brought to pass then in himself and his predictions against the Parlament and thir adherents have for the most part bin verify'd upon his own head and upon his chief Counselors He concludes with high praises of the Army But praises in an enemy are superfluous or smell of craft and the Army shall not need his praises nor the Parlament fare worse for his accusing prayers that follow Wherin as his Charity can be no way comparable to that of Christ so neither can his assurance that they whom he seems to pray for in doing what they did against him knew not what they did It was but arrogance therfore and not charity to lay such ignorance to others in the sight of God till he himself had bin infallible like him whose peculiar words he overweeningly assumes XXVII Intitil'd to the Prince of Wales VVHat the King wrote to his Son as a Father concerns not us what he wrote to him as a King of England concerns not him God and the Parlament having now otherwise dispos'd of England But because I see it don with some artifice and labour to possess the people that they might amend thir present condition by his or by his Sons restorement I shall shew point by point that although the King had bin reinstall'd to his desire or that his Son admitted should observe exactly all his Fathers precepts yet that this would be so farr from conducing to our happiness either as a remedy to the present distempers or a prevention of the like to come that it would inevitably throw us back again into all our past and fulfill'd miseries would force us to fight over again all our tedious Warrs and put us to another fatal struggling for Libertie and life more dubious then the former In which as our success hath bin no other then our cause so it will be evident to all posteritie that his misfortunes were the meer consequence of his perverse judgement First he argues from the experience of those troubles which both he and his Son have had to the improvement of thir pietie and patience and by the way beares witness in his own words that the corrupt education of his youth which was but glanc'd at onely in some former passages of this answer was a thing neither of mean consideration nor untruly charg'd upon him or his Son himself confessing heer that Court delights are prone either to root up all true vertue and honour or to be contented only with some leaves and withering formalities of them without any reall fruits tending to the public good Which presents him still in his own words another Rehoboam soft'nd by a farr wors Court then Salomons and so corrupted by flatteries which he affirmes to be unseparable to the overturning of all peace and the loss of his own honour and Kingdoms That he came therfore thus bredd up and nurtur'd to the Throne farr wors then Rehoboam unless he be of those who equaliz'd his Father to King Salomon we have heer his own confession And how voluptuously how idlely raigning in the hands of other men he either tyranniz'd or trifl'd away those seventeen yeares of peace without care or thought as if to be a King had bin nothing els in his apprehension but to eat and drink and have his will and take his pleasure though there be who can relate his domestic life to the exactness of a diary there shall be heer no mention made This yet we might have then foreseen that he who spent his leisure so remissly and so corruptly to his own pleasing would one day or other be wors busied and imployd to our sorrow And that he acted in good earnest what Rehoboam did but threat'n to make his little finger heavier then his Fathers loynes and to whip us with his two twisted Scorpions both temporal and spiritual Tyranny all his Kingdoms have felt What good use he made afterward of his adversitie both his impenitence and obstinacy to the end for he was no Manasseh and the sequel of these his meditated resolutions abundantly express retaining commending teaching to his Son all those putrid and pernicious documents both of State and of Religion instill'd by wicked Doctors and receav'd by him as in a Vessel nothing better seasond which were the first occasion both of his own and all our miseries And if he in the best maturity of his yeares and understanding made no better use to himself or others of his so long and manifold afflictions either looking up to God or looking down upon the reason of his own affaires there can be no probability that his son bred up not in the soft effeminacies of Court onely but in the rugged and more boistrous licence of undisciplin'd Camps and Garrisons for yeares unable to reflect with judgement upon his own condition and thus ill instructed by his Father should give his mind to walk by any other rules then these bequeath'd him as on his Fathers death-bed as the choisest of all that experience w ch his most serious observation and retirement in good or evil dayes had taught him David indeed by suffering without just cause learnt that meekness and that wisdom by adversity
from which his Conscience and his Reason chose to run rather then not deny To be importun'd the removing of evil Counselors and other greevances in Church and State was to him an intollerable oppression If the peoples demanding were so burd'nsome to him what was his denial and delay of Justice to them But as the demands of his people were to him a burd'n and oppression so was the advice of his Parlament esteem'd a bondage Whose agreeing Votes as he affirmes Were not by any Law or reason conclusive to his judgement For the Law it ordaines a Parlament to advise him in his great affaires but if it ordaine also that the single judgement of a King shall out-ballance all the wisdom of his Parlament it ordaines that which frustrats the end of its own ordaining For where the Kings judgement may dissent to the destruction as it may happ'n both of himself and the Kingdom there advice and no furder is a most insufficient and frustraneous meanes to be provided by Law in case of so high concernment And where the main principal Law of common preservation against tyranny is left so fruitless and infirm there it must needs follow that all lesser Laws are to thir severall ends and purposes much more weak and uneffectual For that Nation would deserv to be renownd and Chronicl'd for folly stupidity that should by Law provide force against privat and petty wrongs advice only against tyranny and public ruin It being therfore most unlike a Law to ordain a remedy so slender and unlawlike to be the utmost meanes of all our safety or prevention as advice is which may at any time be rejected by the sole judgement of one man the King and so unlike the Law of England which Lawyers say is the quintessence of reason and mature wisdom wee may conclude that the Kings negative voice was never any Law but an absurd and reasonless Custom begott'n and grown up either from the flattery of basest times or the usurpation of immoderat Princes Thus much to the Law of it by a better evidence then Rowles and Records Reason But is it possible he should pretend also to reason that the judgement of one man not as a wise or good man but as a King and oft times a wilfull proud and wicked King should outweigh the prudence and all the vertue of an elected Parlament What an abusive thing were it then to summon Parlaments that by the Major part of voices greatest matters may be there debated and resolv'd when as one single voice after that shalldash all thir Resolutions He attempts to give a reason why it should Because the whole Parlament represents not him in any kind But mark how little he advances for if the Parlament represent the whole Kingdom as is sure anough they doe then doth the King represent onely himself and if a King without his Kingdom be in a civil sense nothing then without or against the Representative of his whole Kingdom he himself represents nothing and by consequence his judgement and his negative is as good as nothing and though we should allow him to be something yet not equivalent or comparable to the whole Kingdom and so neither to them who represent it much less that one syllable of his breath putt into the scales should be more ponderous then the joynt voice and efficacy of a whole Parlament assembl'd by election and indu'd with the plenipotence of a free Nation to make Laws not to be deny'd Laws and with no more but No a sleevless reason in the most pressing times of danger and disturbance to be sent home frustrat and remediless Yet heer he maintains To be no furder bound to agree with the Votes of both Houses then he sees them to agree with the will of God with his just Rights as a King and the generall good of his People As to the freedom of his agreeing or not agreeing limited with due bounds no man reprehends it this is the Question heer or the Miracle rather why his onely not agreeing should lay a negative barr and inhibition upon that which is agreed to by a whole Parlament though never so conducing to the Public good or safety To know the will of God better then his whole Kingdom whence should he have it Certainly Court-breeding and his perpetual conversation with Flatterers was but a bad Schoole To judge of his own Rights could not belong to him who had no right by Law in any Court to judge of so much as Fellony or Treason being held a party in both these Cases much more in this and his Rights however should give place to the general good for which end all his Rights were giv'n him Lastly to suppose a clearer insight and discerning of the general good allotted to his own singular judgement then to the Parlament and all the People and from that self-opinion of discerning to deny them that good which they being all Freemen seek earnestly and call for is an arrogance and iniquity beyond imagination rude and unreasonable they undoubtedly having most autoritie to judge of the public good who for that purpose are chos'n out and sent by the People to advise him And if it may be in him to see oft the major part of them not in the right had it not bin more his modestie to have doubted their seeing him more oft'n in the wrong Hee passes to another reason of his denials Because of some mens hydropic unsatiableness and thirst of asking the more they drank whom no fountaine of regall bountie was able to overcome A comparison more properly bestow'd on those that came to guzzle in his Wine-cellar then on a freeborn People that came to claime in Parlament thir Rights and Liberties which a King ought therfore to grant because of right demanded not to deny them for feare his bounty should be exhaust which in these demands to continue the same Metaphor was not so much as Broach'd it being his duty not his bounty to grant these things He who thus refuses to give us Law in that refusal gives us another Law which is his will another name also and another condition of Freemen to become his vassals Putting off the Courtier he now puts on the Philosopher and sententiously disputes to this effect that reason ought to be vs'd to men force and terror to Beasts that he deserves to be a slave who captivates the rationall soverantie of his soule and liberty of his will to compulsion that he would not forfeit that freedome which cannot be deni'd him as a King because it belongs to him as a Man and a Christian thoughto preserve his Kingdom but rather dye injoying the Empire of his soule then live in such a vassalage as not to use his reason and conscience to like or dislike as a King Which words of themselves as farr as they are sense good and Philosophical yet in the mouth of him who to engross this common libertie to himself would tred
What remaines then He appeales to God and is cast lik'ning his punishments to Jobs trials before he saw them to have Jobs ending But how could Charity her self beleive ther was at all in him any Religion so much as but to fear ther is a God when as by what is noted in the Declaration of no more addresses he vowd solemnly to the Parlament with imprecations upon himself and his Posterity if ever he consented to the abolishing of those Lawes which were in force against Papists and at the same time as appeard plainly by the very date of his own Letters to the Queen and Ormond consented to the abolishing of all Penal Lawes against them both in Ireland and England If these were acts of a Religious Prince what memory of man writt'nor unwritt'n can tell us newes of any Prince that ever was irreligious He cannot stand to make prolix Apologies Then surely those long Pamphlets set out for Declarations and Protestations in his Name were none of his and how they should be his indeed being so repugnant to the whole cours of his actions augments the difficulty But he usurps a common saying That it is Kingly to doe well and heare ill That may be sometimes true but farr more frequently to doe ill and heare well so great is the multitude of Flatterers and them that deifie the name of King Yet not content with these neighbours we have him still a perpetual preacher of his own vertues and of that especially which who knows not to bee Patience perforce He beleives it will at last appeare that they who first began to embroyle his other kingdoms are also guilty of the blood of Ireland And wee beleive so too for now the Cessation is become a Peace by publishd Articles and Commission to bring them over against England first only ten thousand by the Earl of Glamorgan next all of them if possible under Ormond which was the last of all his transactions don as a public Person And no wonder for he lookt upon the blood spilt whether of Subjects or of Rebels with an indifferent eye as exhausted out of his own veines without distinguishing as he ought which was good blood and which corrup the not letting-out wherof endangers the whole body And what the Doctrin is ye may perceave also by the Prayer which after a short ejaculation for the poore Protestants prayes at large for the Irish Rebels that God would not give them over or thir Children to the covetousness cruelty fierce and cursed anger of the Parlament He finishes with a deliberat and solemn curse upon himself and his Fathers House Which how farr God hath alreadie brought to pass is to the end that men by so eminent an example should learn to tremble at his judgements and not play with Imprecations XIII Upon the calling in of the Scots and thir comming IT must needs seem strange where Men accustom themselves to ponder and contemplat things in thir first original and institution that Kings who as all other Officers of the Public were at first chos'n and install'd onely by consent and suffrage of the People to govern them as Freemen by Laws of thir own framing and to be in consideration of that dignity and riches bestow'd upon them the entrusted Servants of the Common-wealth should notwithstanding grow up to that dishonest encroachment as to esteem themselves Maisters both of that great trust which they serve and of the People that betrusted them counting what they ought to doe both in discharge of thir public duty and for the great reward of honour and revennue which they receave as don all of meer grace and favour as if thir power over us were by nature and from themselves or that God had sould us into thir hands Indeed if the race of Kings were eminently the best of men as the breed at 〈◊〉 is of â—…orse it would in some reason then be their part onely to command ours always to obey But Kings by generation no way excelling others and most commonly not being the wisest or the worthiest by far of whom they claime to have the governing that we should yeild them subjection to our own ruin or hold of them the right of our common safety and our natural freedom by meer gift as when the Conduit pisses Wine at Coronations from the superfluity of thir royal grace and beneficence we may be sure was never the intent of God whose ways are just and equal never the intent of Nature whose works are also regular never of any People not wholly barbarous whom prudence or no more but human sense would have better guided when they first created Kings then so to nullifie and tread to durt the rest of mankind by exalting one person and his Linage without other merit lookt after but the meer contingencie of a begetting into an absolute and unaccountable dominion over them and thir posterity Yet this ignorant or wilfull mistake of the whole matter had tak'n so deep root in the imagination of this King that whether to the English or to the Scot mentioning what acts of his Regal Office though God knows how un willingly he had pass'd he calls them as in other places Acts of grace and bounty so heer special obligations favours to gratifie active spirits and the desires of that party Words not onely sounding pride and Lordly usurpation but Injustice Partiality and Corruption For to the Irish he so farr condiscended as first to tolerate in privat then to covnant op'nly the tolerating of Popery So farr to the Scot as to remove Bishops establish Presbytery and the Militia in thir own hands preferring as some thought the desires of Scotland before his own interest and Honour But being once on this side Tweed his reason his conscience and his honour became so streitn'd with a kind of fals Virginity that to the English neither one nor other of the same demands could be granted wherwith the Scots were gratifi'd as if our aire and climat on a sudden had chang'd the property and the nature both of Conscience Honour and Reason or that he found none so fit as English to be the subjects of his arbitrary power Ireland was as Ephraim the strength of his head Scotland as Iudah was his Law-giver but over England as over Edom he meant to cast his Shoo and yet so many sober Englishmen not sufficiently awake to consider this like men inchanted with the Circaean cup of servitude will not be held back from running thir own heads into the Yoke of Bondage The summ of his discours is against setling of Religion by violent meanes which whether it were the Scots designe upon England they are best able to cleare themselves But this of all may seem strangest that the King who while it was permitted him never did thing more eagerly then to molest and persecute the consciences of most Religious men he who had made a Warr and lost all rather then not uphold a Hierarchie of persecuting