despising God's precious Saints but in Heaven there is a good reception for them where are Mansions prepared from the beginning of the world He said You will shortly see God coming forth with Vengeance upon the whole Earth Vengeance upon the outward-man of his Saints and Vengeance upon the inward-man of his and their Enemies and that shall perform greater execution than was heretofore After his Sentence he said to some Friends God brought him upon on three stages to wit before the Court and was now leading him to the fourth his Execution-place which was far easier and pleasanter to him than any of the other three Saturday June 14. 1662 being the day of his Execution on Tower-Hill He told a Friend god bid Moses go to the top of Mount Pisgah and die so he bid him now go to the top of Tower-hill and die Some passages of his Prayer with his Lady Children and other Friends in his Chamber MOst holy and gracious Father look down from the habitation of thy Holiness visit relieve and comfort us thy poor Servants here gathered together in the Name of Christ Thou art rending this Vaile and bringing us to a Mountain that abides firm We are exceeding interrupters of our own joy peace and good by the workings and reasonings of our own hearts Thou hast promised that thou wilt be a Mouth to thy People in the hour of Tryal for thou hast required us to forbear the preparatory agitations of our own minds because it is not we that are to speak but the Spirit of our heavenly Father that speaketh in us in such seasons In what seasons more Lord than when thou callest for the Testimony of thy Servants to be writ in Characters of Blood Shew thy self in a poor weak Worm by enabling him to stand against all the power of thy Enemies There hath been a battel fought with garments rouled in blood in which upon solemn Appeals on both sides thou didst own thy Servants though through the spirit of Hypocrisie and Apostacy that hath sprung up amongst us these Nations have been thought unworthy any longer to enjoy the fruits of that Deliverance Thou hast therefore another day of decision to come which shall be wrought by fire Such a battel is to begin and be carried on by the Faith of thy People yea is in some sort begun by the Faith of thy poor Servant that is now going to seal thy Cause with his Blood Oh that this decision of thine may remarkably shew it self in thy Servant at this time by his bold Testimony and sealing it with his Blood We know not what interruptions may attend thy Servant but Lord let thy Power carry him in a holy Triumph over all difficulties Thou art the great Judge and Law-giver for the sake of thy Servants therefore O Lord return on high and cause a righteous Sentence to come forth from thy presence for the relief of thy despised People This thy Servants with Faith and Patience wait for The working of this Faith in us causeth the Enemy to give ground already If Death be not able to terrifie us from keeping a good Conscience and giving a good Testimony against them what can they do but stumble and fall backwards The day approaches in which thou wilt decide this Controversie not by Might nor by Power but by the Spirit of the living God This Spirit will make its own way and run through the whole Earth Then shall it be said Where is the fury of the Oppressor Who is he that dares or can stand before the Spirit of the Lord in the mouth of his Witnesses Arise O Lord and let thine Enemies be scattered Thy poor Servant knows not how he shall be carried forth by thee this day but blessed be thy great Name that he hath whereof to speak in this great Cause When I shall be gathered to thee this day then come thou in the Ministry of thy holy Angels that excel in strength We have seen enough of this World and thou seest we have enough of it Let these my Friends that are round about me commit me to the Lord and let them be gathered into the Family of Abraham the Father of the Faithful and become faithful Witnesses of those principles and Truths that have been discovered to them that it may be known that a poor weak Prophet hath been amongst them not by the words of his mouth onely but by the voice of his Blood and Death which will speak when he is gone Good Lord put words into his mouth that may daunt his Enemies so that they may be forced to say God is in him of a Truth and that the Son of God is in his heart and in his mouth My hour-glass is now turned up the sand runs out apace and it is my happiness that Death doth not surprize me It is Grace and Love thou dost shew thy poor Servant that thou hastenest out his time and lettest him see it runs out with Joy and Peace Little do my Enemies know as eager as they are to have me gone how soon their breaths may be drawn in But let thy Servant see Death shrink under him What a glorious sight will this be in the presence of many Witnesses to have Death shrink under him which he acknowledgeth to be only by the power of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ whom the bands of Death could not hold down Let that Spirit enter into us that will set us again upon our feet and let us be led into that way that the Enemies may not know how to deal with us Oh! what abjuring of Light what Treachery what meanness of spirit has appeared in this day What is the matter Oh! Death is the matter Lord strengthen the Faith and Heart of thy poor Servant to undergo this dayes work with Joy and Gladness and bear it on the Heart and Consciences of his Friends that have known and seen him that they also may say the Lord is in him of a truth Oh that thy Servant could speak any blessing to these three Nations Let thy Remnant be gathered to thee Prosper and relieve that poor handful that are in Prisons and Bonds that they may be raised up and trample Death under foot Let my poor Family that is left desolate let my dear Wife and Children be taken into thy Care be thou a Husband Father and Master to them Let the Spirits of those that love me be drawn out towards them Let a Blessing be upon these Friends that are here at this time strengthen them let them find Love and Grace in thine Eyes and be increased with the Increasings of God Shew thy self a loving Father to us all and do for us abundantly above and beyond all that we can ask or think for Jesus Christ his sake Amen Several Friends being with him in his Chamber this morning he oft encouraged them to chearfulness as wel by his example as expression In all his deportment he shewed himself marvellously fitted to
THe Heaven is thy Throne O Lord and the Earth is thy footstool but to this man wilt thou look even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembleth at thy Word Thou O Lord art the great God of Heaven and Earth thou fillest all places with thy presence art the Judge of the whole World and dost Righteousness We are poor unworthy sinful creatures by nature children of wrath as well as others We are wise to do evil but to do good we have no knowledge If to will be present with us yet how to perform and go through with that which is good and not be weary of well-doing we find not Bring us O Lord into the true mystical Sabbath-state that we may cease from our own works rest from our labors not think our own thoughts find our own desire or walk in the way of our own hearts but become a meet habitation of thy Spirit by the everlasting Covenant the place of thy Rest Let the Spirit of God and of Glory that is greater than he that is in the world rest upon us work in and by us mightily to the pulling down of flesh and blood the strong holds of Sin and Satan in our selves and others causing us so to suffer under the Fire-Baptism thereof as that we may cease from sin for ever or from that fleshly mutable temporary state of life and righteousness which at best is liable to roul back into sin again to be intangled overcome and finally triumphed over by the pollutions of this world Deliver us O Lord from the Evil One deliver us from our selves take us out of our own dispose our own liberty and power the freedom the mutable holiness and righteousness of the sons of men at its best and bring us into the most glorious Liberty the most holy immutable and righteous state of the sons of God a freedom to Good only and non at all to evil attended and accompanied with a power in us through thy Spirit of doing all things for the Truth and a disability brought upon us as to the doing of any thing against the Truth in the single power and freedom of our own spirit Then the prince of this world coming to us will find nothing in us at least no prevailing activity of self nature or flesh which at best is capable to be made by him an ergin of opposition to the Kingdom of Christ and our own true blessedness Thou hast laid on thy Son the iniquities of us all by his stâ—ipes we are healed We must all stand before the Judgment-Seat of Christ to give an account of what we have done in the body whether it be good or whether it be evil He will bring every secret counsel to light things that are wrought in darkness he maketh plain and evident Thine eyes O Lord run to and fro through the whole earth Thine eyes do behold thine eye-lids try the children of men The wicked and him that loveth violence thy soul hateth But thou upholdest the poor and needy him that is of a broken heart and of a contrite spirit The humble and lowly thou wilt teach the meek thou wilt guide in Judgment thou wilt beautifie the meek with Salvation Thou art the supream disposer of all the Kingdoms of men giving them to whomsoever thou wilt Whatever cross-blows thou sufferest to be given thy People for a season thou orderest all to thy own glory and their true advantage But thou hast a set time for Sions deliverance in which the greatness of the Kingdom under the whole Heaven shall be given unto the best and choicest of men the people of the Saints of the most high whose Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom Let the exceeding near approach of this bear up the spirits of thy poor despised ones in this day of extremity and suffering from sinking and despondency Carry them through their suffering part with a holy triumph in thy Chariots of Salvation How long O Lord holy and true make hast to help the Remnant of thy People Break the Heavens and come down touch the Mountains of prey the Kingdoms of this evil world and let them smoak Let the mouth of all Iniquity be stopped Silence every one that stands up against thee Rebuke the debauched prophane spirits of men that set themselves to work wickedness running with greediness into all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness They eat thy People as they eat bread They are profound to make slaughter skilful to destroy though thou hast been the rebuker of them all But Lord be this dispensation of what continuance it will for the serving of thy most gracious and wise designs let the spirit and resolution of thy Servants be steady and unchangeable that whether they live they may live to the Lord that died for them or whether they die they may die to the Lord who lives for ever to make intercession for them that they may glorifie thee with their bodies and spirits whether by life or by death Thou knowest O Lord that in the Faith of Jesus and for the Truth as it is in Jesus thy Servant desires to die walking in the steps of our father Abraham and for Righteousness and Judgment following the Lord in all his wayes whithersoever he goes worshipping the God of his believing fathers Abraham Isaac and Jacob in that way which men call Heresie In this Faith dear Lord I have lived and in this Faith and Profession I die as one that hath herein stood up for the Testimony of JESUS against all Idolatry Superstition Prophaness and Popery or whatever is unsound or unfit to be brought before the Throne of so great and glorious a Majesty 'T is in this Faith that thy Servant dies Now set thy Seal to it and remove the reproaches and calumnies with which thy Servant is reproached for thou knowst his innocency Dear Father thou sentest us into this world but this world is not our home we are strangers and pilgrims in it as all our fathers were We have no abode here but there is a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens that when this tabernacle is dissolved we may enter into In our Fathers house are many mansions Oh! whatever the curses and condemnations of the Law are be thou near to us and spread the Righteousness of Christ over us and we shall be safe Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sins are covered Who wil speak who will take on him to say any thing or to plead with Thee upon any other terms but in the Name and Merits of the mighty Redeemer on whom our help is laid We desire to lie low to be abased and take shame confusion of face to our selves as that which properly belongs to us that Thou alone maist be exalted and advanced 'T is of meer Grace O Lord that thy Servant hath now some sign of thy special Salvation even thy free-Grace O God whereby thou dost accept him in thy
our best security The Common Law then or Liberties of England comprized in the Magna Charta and the Charter of Forest are rendred as secure as authentick words can set them from all Judgments or Precedents to the contrary in any Courts all corrupting advice or evil counsel of any Judges all Letters or Countermands from the Kings Person under the Great or Privy Seals yea and from any Acts of Parliament it self that are contrary thereunto As to the Judges no question they well know the story of the 44 corrupt Judges executed by King Alfred as also of Tresillian Belknap and many others since By 11 Hen. 7. cap. 1. They that serve the King in his Wars according to their duty of Allegiance for defence of the King and the Land are indempnified If against the Land and so not according to their Allegiance the last clause of that chapter seems to exclude them from the benefit of this Act. 6 Hen. 8. 16. Knights and Burgesse of Parliament are required not to depart from the Parliament till it be fully finished ended or prorogued 28 Ed. 3. cap. 3. No man is to be imprisoned disherited or put to death without being heard what he can say for himself 4 Ed. 3. 14. and 36. Ed. 3. 10. A Parliament is to be holden every year or oftner if need be 1 Ric. 3. cap. 2. The subjects of this Realm are not to be charged with any new imposition called a Benevolence 37 Ed. 3. c. 18. All those that make suggestions against any man to the King are to be sent with their suggestions before the Chancellor Treasurer and his grand Council and there to find surety that they will pursue their suggestions and are to incur the same pain the party by them accused should have had if attained in case the suggestion be found evil or false 21 Jacobi cap. 3. All Monopolies and Dispensations with Penal Laws are made void as contrary to the great Charters These quotations of several Statutes as Ratifications and Restorers of the Laws of the Land are prefixed to the following Discourses and Pleas of this Sufferer as certain steady unmovable Land-marks to which he oft relates The rouling Seas have other Laws peculiar to themselves as Cook observes on that expression Law of the Land in his Comment on the 29th Chapter of Magna Charta Offences done upon the High Sea the Admiral takes conusance of and proceeds by the Marine Law But have those steady Land-marks though exactly observed and never so pertinently quoted and urged by this Sufferer failed him as to the securing of his Life 'T is because we have had Land-floods of late Tumults of the People that are compared to the raging Seas Psal 65. 7. The first Paper of this deceased Sufferer towards the defence of his Cause and Life preparatory to the Tryal as the foundation of all that follows before he could know how the Indictment was laid and which also a glance back to any crime of Treason since the beginning of the late War that the Attorney General reckoned him chargeable with shews to be very requist take as followeth Memorandums touching my Defence THe Offence objected against me is levying War within the Statute 25 Ed. 3. and by consequence a most high and great failer in the duty which the Subject according to the Laws of England stands obliged to perform in relation to the Imperial Crown and Soveraign Power of England The crime if it prove any must needs be very great considering the circumstances with which it hath been accompaned For it relates to and takes in a series of publick action of above twenty years continuance It took its rise and had its root in the Being Authority Judgment Resolutions Votes and Orders of a Parliament and that a Parliament not onely authorized and commissionated in the ordinary and customary way by his Majesties Writ of Summons and the Peoples Election and Deputation subject to Adjournment Discontinuance and Dissolution at the King's will but which by express Act of Parliamenâ— was constituted in its continuance and exercise of its Power free from that subjection and made therein wholly to depend upon their own will to be declared in an Act of Parliament to be passed for that purpose when they should see cause To speak plainly and clearly in this matter That which is endeavoured to be made a Crime and an Offence of such an high nature in my person is no other than the necessary and unavoidable Actings of the Representative Body of the Kingdom for the preservation of the good People thereof in their allegiance and duty to God and his Law as also from the imminent dangers and destruction threatned them from God's and their own Enemies This made both Houses in their Remonstrance May 26. 1642. protest If the Malignant spirits about the King should ever force or necessitate them to defend their Religion the Kingdom the Priviledges of Parliament and the Rights and Liberties of the Subjects with their Swords The Blood and Destruction that should ensue therupon must be wholly cast upon their account God and their own consciences telling them that they were clear and would not doubt but that God and the whole world would clear them therein In his Majesties Answer to the Declaration of the two Houses May 19. 1642. he acknowledgeth his going into the House of Commons to demand the five Members was an errour And that was it which gave the Parliament the first cause to put themselves in a posture of defence by their own Power and Authority in commanding the Trained-Bands of the City of London to guard and secure them from Violence in the discharge of their Trust and Duty as the two Houses of Parliament appointed by Act to continue as above-mentioned The next cause was his Majesties raising Forces at York under pretence of a Guard expressed in the humble Petition of the Lords and Commons May 23. 1642. wherein they beseech his Majesty to disband all such Forces and desist from any further designs of that nature otherwise they should hold themselves bound in duty towards God and the Trust reposed in them by the People and the Fundamental Laws and Constitutions of this Kingdom to employ their care and utmost power to secure the Parliament and preserve the peace and quiet of the Kingdom May 20. 1642 The two Houses of Parliament gave their Judgment in these Votes First That it appears that the King seduced by wicked Counsel intends to make War against the Parliament who in all their Consultations and Actions have proposed no other end to themselves but the Care of his Kingdoms and the performance of all Duty and Loyalty to his Person Secondly That whensoever the King maketh War upon the Parliament it is a breach of Trust reposed in him by his People contrary to his Oath and tending to the dissolution of this Government Thirdly That whosoever shall serve or assist him in such Wars are Traytors by the fundamental
extraordinariness thereof And I beseech your Lordships to let me go on without interruption in my endeavouring to make it out as clearly as God shall enable me and as briefly also not to spend too much of your time In general I do affirm of this Case That it is so comprehensive as to take in the very Interests of Heaven and Earth First Of God the Universal Soveraign and King of Kings Secondly That of earthly Soveraigns who are God's Vicegerents as also the Interests of all Mankind that stand in the relation of Subjects to the one or both those sorts of Soveraigns This is general More particularly within the bowels of this Case is that Cause of God that hath stated it self in the late Differnces and Wars that have happened and arisen within these three Nations and have been of more than twenty years continuance which for the greater certainty and solemnity hath been recorded in the form of a National Covenant in which the generality of the three Nations have been either implicitly involved or expresly concern'd by the signing of their Names The principal things contained in that Covenant were the known and commonly received Duties which either as Men or as Christians we owed and stood obliged to perform either to God the highest and universal King in Church and State or to our natural Lord and Sovereign the Kings of this Realm in subordination to God and his Laws Again It contains as well the Duties which we owe to every particular and individual person in their several stations and callings as to the King in general and our Representative Body in Parliament assembled These Duties we are thereby obliged to yeeld and perform in consistency with and in a just subordination and manifest agreeableness to the Laws of God as is therein expressed And this also in no disagreement to the Laws of the Land as they then were By this solemn Covenant and Agreement of the three Nations giving up themselves in subjection to God and to his Laws in the first place as the Allegiance they owe to their highest Soveraign as the Creator Redeemer Owner and Ruler of all Mankind they have so far interested the Son of God in the the Supream Rule and Government of these Nations that nothing therein ought to be brought into practice contrary to his revealed Will in the holy Scriptures and his known and most righteous Laws This Duty which we owe to God the universal King Nature and Christianity do so clearly teach and assert that it needs no more than to be named For this subjection and allegiance to God and his Laws by a Right so indisputable all are accountable before the Judgment-seat of Christ It is true indeed men may de facto become open Rebels to God and to his Laws and prove such as forfeit his Protection and engage him to proceed against them as his professed Enemies But with your Lordships favour give me leave to say that that which you have made a Rule for your proceedings in my Case will indeed hold and that very strongly in this that is to say in the sence wherein Christ the Son of God is King de jure not only in general over the whole World but in particular in relation to these three Kingdoms He ought not to be kept out of his Throne nor his visible Government that consists in the Authority of his Word and Laws suppressed and trampled under foot under any pretence whatsoever And in the asserting and adhering unto the Right of this highest Soveraign as stated in the Covenant before mentioned The Lords and Commons joyntly before the year 1648 and the Commons alone afterwards to the very times charged in the Indictment did manage the War and late Differences within these Kingdoms And whatever defections did happen by Apostates Hypocrites and Time-serving worldlings there was a party amongst them that continued firm sincere and chast unto the last and loved it better than their very lives of which number I am not ashamed to profess my self to be not so much admiring the form and words of the Covenant as the righteous and holy ends therein expressed and the true sense and meaning thereof which I have reason to know Nor will I deny but that as to the manner of the prosecution of the Covenant to other ends than it self warrants and with a rigid oppressive spirit to bring all dissenting minds and tender Consciences under one Uniformity of Church-discipline and government it was utterly against my Judgment For I alwayes esteemed it more agreeable to the Word of God that the Ends and Work declared in the Covenant should be promoted in a spirit of love and forbearance to differing Judgments and Consciences that thereby we might be approving our selves in doing that to others which we desire they would do to us and so though upon different principles be found joynt and faithful advancers of the Reformation contained in the Covenant both publick and personal This happy Union and Conjunction of all Interests in the respective duties of all relations agreed and consented to by the common suffrage of the three Nations as well in their publick Parliamentary capacity as private stations appeared to me a Rule and measure approved of and commanded by Parliament for my action and deportment though it met with great opposition in a tedious sad and long War and this under the name and pretext of Royal Authority Yet as this Case appeared to me in my conscience under all its circumstances of Times of Persons and of Revolutions inevitably happening by the hand of God and the course of his wise Providences I held it safest and best to keep my station in Parliament to the last under the guidance and protection of their Authority and in pursuance of the Ends before declared in my just Defence This general and publick Case of the Kingdoms is so well known by the Declarations and Actions that have passed on both sides that I need but name it since this matter was not done in a corner but frequently contended for in the high places of the Field and written even with characters of Blood And out of the bowels of these Publick Differences and Disputes doth my particular Case arise for which I am called into question But admitting it come to my lot to stand single in the witness I am to give to this Glorious Cause and to be left alone as in a sort I am yet being upheld with the Authority before asserted and keeping my self in union and conjunction therewith I am not afraid to bear my Witness to it in this great Presence nor to seal it with my Blood if called thereunto And I am so far satisfied in my conscience and understanding that it neither is nor can be Treason either against the Law of Nature or the Law of the Land either malum per se or malum prohibitum that on the contrary it is the duty I owed to God the universal King and
Son Lay him low and humble abase his soul for his sins and all his unworthinesses before thee Men cannot speak evil enough of our sins In this perswasion this abasement and humiliation thy Servant desires to die And dear Lord thou seest knowst all things and art able to witness to the truth integrity of thy Servant When his blood is shed upon the Block let it have a voice afterward that may speak his Innocency and strengthen the Faith of thy Servants in the Truth Let it also serve for conviction to the worst of thy Enemies that they may say Surely the Lord knows and the Lord owns his Servant as one that belongs to him The desire of our soul is to hasten to thee O God to be dissolved that we may be with Christ Blessed be thy Name that this great strait that we were before in is now determined that there is no longer abode for me in this mortal body Our great Captain the great General of our souls did go in a way of affliction before us to Heaven Come Lord declare thy Will that thy poor Servant may manifest a readiness to come to Thee Prepare his heart that in his access to Thee may he be brought down at thy feet in shame confusion for all the evil is so of hul but Thou art his salvation Let thy Servant speak something on the behalf of the Nation wherein he hath lived Lord did we not exceed other Nations in our day Great things have been done by thee in the midst of us Oh that thou wouldst look down in pity compassion and pardon the sins of this whole Nation and lay them not to their charge shew them what is thy good and acceptable Will and bring them into subjection thereunto We humbly pray thee O Lord look down with compassion upon this great populous City cleanse away the impurity sinfulness and defilements thereof cause their souls to delight in thy Word that they may live Let a spirit of Reformation and Purity spring up in and amongst them with power make them willing to lay down all that is dear to them for thee that Thou mayst give them a Crown of Life that they may always desire chuse affliction and to be exposed to the worst condition hardest circumstances that can be brought upon them in this world rather than sin against him that hath loved them and bought them with a price that they might live to him in their bodies and in their spirits We are assured Thou knowest our suffering case and condition how it is with us We desire to give no just occasion of offence nor to provoke any but in meekness to forgive our Enemies Thy Servant that is now falling asleep doth heartily desire of thee that thou wouldest forgive them and not lay this sin to their charge Before the stroke he spake to this effect I bless the Lord who hath accounted me worthy to suffer for his Name Blessed be the Lord that I have kept a conscience void of offence to this day I bless the Lord I have not disserted the Righteous Cause for which I suffer But his very last words of all at the Block were as followeth Father glorifie thy Servant in the sight of men that he may glorifie thee in the discharge of his Duty to Thee and to his Country It was observed that no signs of inward fear appeared by any trembling or shaking of his hands or any other parts of his body all along on the Scaffold Yea an ancient Traveller and curious observer of the demeanor of persons in such publick Executions did narrowly eye his Countenance to the last breath and his Head immediatly after the separation he observed that his Countenance did not in the least change and whereas the Heads of all he had before seen did some way or other move after severing which argued some reluctancy and unwillingness to that parting-blow the Head of this Sufferer lay perfectly still immediately upon the separation on which he said to this purpose That his Death was by the free consent and act of his mind which Animadversion notably accords with what the Sufferer himself had before expressed in differencing a death by rational choice from that by sickness which is with constraint upon the body He desired to be dissolved to be with Christ The Names of the Grand Jury in the Case of Sir Henry Vane SIr John Cropley of Clarkenwel London Knight and Baronet Thomas Taylor of St. Martins in the Fields London Esq Francis Swift of St. Gyles in the Fields Esq. Jonas Morley of Hammersmith Gent. George Cooper of Covent Garden Gent. Thomas Constable of Covent Garden Gent. Edward Burrows of East-Smithfield Gent. Michael Dibbs of the same Gent. Edward Gregory of St. Gyles in the Fields Gent. Richard Freeman of Istington Gent. Thomas Pitcock of the same Gent. Richard Towers of Clarkenwel Gent. Robert Vauce of Paddington Gent. Thomas Benning of Wilsdon Gent. Francis Child of Acton Gent. Isaac Cotton of Bow Gent. Peter Towers of Mile-end Gent. Thomas Vffman of Hammersmith Gent. Matthew Child of Kensington Gent. Bryan Bonnaby of Westminster Gent. George Rouse of St. Gyles in the Fields Gent. Twenty one in all The Names of the Petty Jury Sir William Roberts Sir Christopher Abdy John Leech Daniel Cole John Stone Daniel Brown Henry Carter Thomas Chelsam Thomas Pitts Thomas Upman Andrew Brent William Smith Judges of the King 's Bench. Chief Justice Foster Justice Mallet Justice Twisden Justice Windham The Kings Counsel against the Prisoner no Counsel being permited to speake one word in his behalf to the matter or form of the Indictment or any thing else Sir Geoffry Palmer the King's Attorney General Sir Henneage Fynch the King's Sollicitor General Sir John Glyn. Sir John Maynard Sir William Wild. Serjeant Keeling Witnesses against Sir Henry Vane Marsh a Papist 't is said who witnessed what was accounted most dangerous against the Prisoner as to change of Government William Dobbins Mathew Lock Thomas Pury Thomas Wallis John Coot The Peoples Cause Stated HE in whom is the Right of Soveraign and to give Law is either so of himself or in the Right of another that may derive the same unto him which shews that there are two sorts of Soveraings A Soveraign in the first sense none is nor can be but God who is of himself most absolute And he that is first of all others in the second sence is the Man Christ Jesus to whom the Power of Soveraign in the Right of the Father is committed over all the Works of Gods hands Christ exercised the same in the capacity of David's Root from before the beginning of the World He owne himself thus to be long before he became David's Seed This his being in Spirit or hidden being even as a Creature the first of all Creatures in personal Union with the Word David saw and acknowledged Psal 110. 1. Thus Christ may be called God's Lieutenant
Serpents to wave his assault till our hour is come and we can gain and conquer by dying It is a weakness of mind not to know how to contemn an offence An honest man is not subject to Injury He is inviolable and unmoveable Inviolable not so much that he cannot be beaten but that being beaten he doth neither receive wound nor hurt We can receive no evil but of our selves We may therefore always say with Socrates My enemies may put me to death but they shall never enforce me to do that which I ought not Evils themselves through the wise over-ruling Providence of God have good fruits and effects The World would be extinguished and perish if it were not changed shaken and discomposed by a variety and an interchangable course of things wisely ordered by God the best Physitian This ought to satisfie every honest and reasonable mind and make it joyfully submit to the worst of changes how strange and wonderful soever they may seem since they are the works of God and Nature and that which is a loss in one respect is a gain in another Let not a wise man disdain or ill resent any thing that shall happen to him Let him know those things that seem hurtful to him in particular pertain to the preservation of the whole Universe and are of the nature of those things that finish and fill up the course and office of this World Meditations on Death IT is a fruit of true Wisdom not onely Christian but Natural to be found and kept in a frame of mind ready for Death The day of Death is the Judge of all our other dayes the very tryal and touchstone of the actions of our Life 'T is the end that crowns the work and a good Death honoureth a man's whole Life This last act as it is the most difficult so but by this a man cannot well judge of the actions of anothers Life without wronging him A wise Greek being asked concerning three eminent persons which of them was to be most esteemed returned this Answer We must see them all three die before this Question can be resolved With which accords that saying of Solon the wise Athenian to Craesus when he boastingly shewed him his great Treasures No man is to be accounted happy before his Death True natural Wisdom pursueth the learning and practise of dying well as the very end of Life and indeed he hath not spent his Life ill that hath learned to die well It is the chiefest thing and duty of Life The knowledge of Dying is the knowledge of Liberty the state of true Freedom the way to Fear nothing to Live well contentedly and peaceably Without this there is no more pleasure in Life than in the fruition of that thing which a man feareth alwayes to loose In order to which we must above all endeavour that our sins may die and that we see them dead before our selves which alone can give us boldness in the day of Judgement and make us alwayes ready and prepared for Death Death is not to be feared and fled from as it is by most but sweetly and patiently to be waited for as a thing natural reasonable and inevitable It is to be looked upon as a thing indifferent carrying no harm in it This that is all the hurt enemies can do us is that which we should desire and seek after as the onely Haven of Rest from all the Torments of this Life and which as it gives us a fuller fruition of Christ is a very great gain that the sooner we are possessors of the better Death is the onely thing of all evils or privations that doth no harm hath indeed no evil in it however it be reputed The sting of it is sin and that is the sting of Life too There is no reason to fear it because no man knows certainly what it is This made Socrates refuse to plead before his Judges for his justification or Life For saith he If I should plead for my Life and desire of you that I may not die I doubt I may speak against my self to my loss and hindrance who may find more good in death than yet I know Those things I know to be evil as unrighteousness and sin I fly and avoid those that I know not to be so as Death c. I cannot fear and therefore I leave it to you to determine for me whether it is more expedient for me to Dye or to Live He can never live contentedly that fears to dye That man only is a free man who feareth not Death Life it self being but slavery if it were not made free by Death It is uncertain in what place Death attends us therefore let us expect it in all places and be alwayes ready to receive it Great virtue and great or long Life do seldom meet together Life is measured by the end if that be good all the rest will have a proportion to it The quantity is nothing as to the making it more or less happy The Spirit of a good man when he ceases to live in the Body goes into a better state of Life than that which he exercises in this World and when once in that were it possible to resume this he would refuse it Yea were a man capable to know what this Life here is before he receives it he would scarce ever have accepted it at first The self same journey men have taken from no being to being and from pre-existent being into mortal Life without fear or passion they may take again from that Life by Death into a Life that hath immortality in it Death is the inevitable Law God and Nature have put upon us Things certain should not be feared but expected Things doubtful onely are to be feared Death in stead of taking away any thing from us gives us all even the perfection of our natures sets us at liberty both from our own bodily desires others domination makes the Servant free from his Master It doth not bring us into darkness but takes darkness out of us us out of darkness and puts us into marvellous light Nothing perishes or is dissolved by Death but the Vail and Covering which is wont to be done away from all ripe fruit It brings us out of a dark dungeon through the crannies whereof our sight of Light is but weak and small and brings us into an open Liberty an estate of Light and Life unvailed and perpetual It takes us out of that mortality which began in the womb of our Mother and now endeth to bring us into that Life which shall never end This day which thou fearest as thy last is thy Birth day into Eternity Death holds a high place in the policy and great common-wealth of the World It is very profitable for the succession and continuance of the works of Nature The fading corruption and loss of this life is the passage into a better Death is no less essential to us than to live
the Lord which therefore we should be most willing unto and with greatest longing after desire The strait which the Apostle found himself in was not at all from the least haesitation in his mind which of the two was in it self best and to be preferred but by which Christ might most be magnified and the Church benefitted according to the will of Christ So then unless to live were Christ and a real and clear magnifying of Christ in his Body he cared not for Life but contemned Death He saw evidently how it was his own particular loss and hindrance even not to Die since to be dissolved to depart and be with Christ and in the Society of the blessed Angels and Saints in Heaven was best of all and far more gainful and to be valued by him than any longer continuance or abode in the flesh The magnifying of Christ in his Body whether by Life or by Death was the Consideration with Paul that held the ballance cast the scale and that onely So it ought to be with every true Christian The end of man's coming into the Body and his temporary continuance and abode there according to the Law of his Creation is the magnifying and glorifying Christ either by his Life or by his Death or both the one of which if he do not it must needs be his sin and he is left without excuse For none can violate or corrupt the mind of man by the Law of Nature nor let in Death upon his Spiritual Substance but himself though they dissolve his temporary abode in the flesh break his outward case and shel and rather than do the one we should choose the other choose affliction rather than sin the dissolution of the Body rather than the corrupting of the Mind In so doing and dying Christ is magnifyed Thus Peter was foretold by what Death he should glorify God And to such it is given by Christ not onely to Believe but Suffer and Die for his Names sake as a transcendent priviledge and honour If no restraint then be upon our mind from without what hinders that Christ is not magnified in our Body but something within us in our judgement will and affections that are not right set and fixed nor as yet wrought to this self same thing by God who hath given us the earnest of his Spirit But it may be demanded What is it in which this great duty of man lies as to the magnifying of Christ in his Body by his Life or living in the Body which is a more difficult thing to do than to Die Christ himself tells us when he saith Let your Light so shine before men that they may see feel and sensibly discern your good works and so glorify your father which is in Heaven There are two sorts of signs we read of in those that believe which justifie their Faith in consortship as it were with which their Faith works and is made perfect so as the work of Faith is fulfilled in them with power 1. Signs Extraordinary as Mark 16. 18. with which the Primitive Christians were well acquainted and so may all such again as arrive to any competent maturity in that primitive Christian Spirit 2. Signes Ordinary as those mentioned Gal. 5. 22 23. called the fruits of the Spirit in us that makes us mighty in word and in deed not onely to will but to perform that which is good by being filled with the Spirit in our very Bodies made the Temples of the holy Ghost rich in Faith and Tuch good Works as are the fruit of Faith without which Faith it self is dead and unprofitable and by which Abraham justified his Faith and was called the Friend of God It is in this sense the Prophet urges the sanctification of our Vessels when he saith Be ye clean that bear the Vessels of the Lord. And the Apostle when he saith 1 Cor. 6. 19. What! know ye not that your Body is the Temple of the holy Ghost unto which Redemption by Christ extends as well as to your Spirits therefore glorify God in your Body as well as in your Spirit which is God's and wherein he hath and challengeth a special propriety The Body in Scripture acceptation signifies not onely the material substance from which the Soul is actually separated when it is laid in the Grave but very usually the Soul it self that is to say that part of the Soul which vitally unites the Body to it self whose faculty and operation is in and by the Body and doth properly and immediately exercise bodily Life as that which is co-natural and co-essential to it There is a higher part in man's Soul called Spirit in distinction from Soul and Body expressed 1 Thes 5. 23. as if the Spirit were an entire thing in it self though it be that in and with which Soul and Body doth consist as parts of the whole Man I pray God saith the Apostle that your whole Spirit Soul and Body be preserved blameless to the coming of Christ and that you may be sanctified throughout or in every part of you in your Soul and in your Body which are to be esteemed but as parts comparatively with your whole Spirit Man considered as entire in his Spirit may have and hath being before he partakes of Flesh and Blood as it is written Behold saith Christ I and the children which thou hast given me Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of Flesh and Blood he also himself took part of the same even he who with the children were a mystery hid with the Father before the World was and had their Seminal and radical Being in the Word of Life the Father of Spirits In this Word as in the Image and Mental conception of the invisible God the Souls of all men even of Christ himself as man were comprehended as in their original pattern and rule in order at the time appointed to come into flesh and there make their temporary abode allotted to them By the Condition and Law of Man's Creation he is made a Spiritual essence with two distinct faculties and operations according to which he may be said to be both Immortal and Mortal Immaterial and Material Spirit and Body as Body signifies man's animal rational Soul that is to live in flesh and hath its peculiar desire faculty and operation proportioned thereunto In all this Man bears the Image and Similitude of God the Mediator or of the Godhead in Christ as two Natures in him are Hypostatically united and make but one Compositum or Person This was comprehended in that Counsel which the blessed Trinity took concerning the making of Man in their Image and after their Similitude He was made male and female in his very Spiritual substance First with a faculty and operation of mind superiour stronger and more excellent which is free and independent upon bodily organs exercising Life properly and purely Spiritual and Immaterial above and without the use of sensible signes or shapes Secondly With that inferiour faculty and operation of mind whose subsistence life being and motion is in with and by the body and through the use of bodily organs sensible signes and external mediums on the loss of which this second faculty and operation of man's Soul which is the weaker inferiour and less valuable ceases at least is for a time suspended which in Scripture phrase is called Death even the Death of the Body Yet the more vigorous the exercise of this latter is and the more that thereby we are at home in the Body the more in truth and reality we are dead at least asleep in the earth as to our more Noble and Spiritual part in and through which we enjoy most of the presence of God and of Christ Since therefore mans constitution of Being in such as he cannot live both these Lives together untill the Resurrection but that in the one of them he must be incompleat have his operation much suspended and be as it were dead or asleep To resolve which of these to choose and prefer ought not to be so difficult as commonly it is made On the SUFFERINGS of the Renowned Sir H. Vane Knight GReat Soul ne're Understood Until deciphered by thy Blood A Priest a Prophet and a King Systeme of every worthy thing Dying that Liberty might Live The English Cause he doth retrieve Stating it in no formal dress But in the Spirit of Righteousness Which he from th' earth perceiving fled Dy'd to Return with 't from the Dead Persons or Forms of Government Did little make to his intent To nought was he an Enemy But what was fix'd in Enmity ' Gainst which he fought with eager breath Became Victorious in his Death And this not by necessity It was his Principle to Dye Flesh will resist but Faith can suffer The soft hand 's gone beware the rougher Th' envy and hate of every Form Upon his head pour'd down the Storm Whilst he sublim'd and sav'd the good O' th' lowest and seal'd it with his Blood How great he was his Enemies tell Who while he liv'd could not be well And in what stead his offering stood By resolute silence Friends made good The male o' th' Flock is ta'ne the best To expiate the blame o' th' rest What tears and prayers wanted in strength His crying blood brings down at length Groan English Hearts groan help the cry Lord Jesus Come I come quickly FINIS The Printer to the Reader IT 's very probable thou mayest meet with some faults and misprintings escaped the Corrector which could not be avoided by reason of the distance between the Transcriber and the Press thou art desired to correct them and pass them by with candor One thou mayest find in page 54 and 55 all those words within the Parenthesis should come in after the word Penetent And page 97. in the Title to that part read Case for Cause ☜