The sum of his discourse is against "settling of religion by violent means;" which, whether it were the Scots' design upon England, they are best able to clear themselves. But this of all may seem strangest, that the king, who, while it was permitted him, never did thing more eagerly than to molest and persecute the consciences of most religious men ; he who had made a war, and lost all, rather than not uphold a hierarchy of persecuting bishops, should have the confidence here to profess himself so much an enemy of those that force the conscience. For was it not he, who upon the English obtruded new ceremonies, upon the Scots a new Liturgy, and with his sword went about to engrave a bloody Rubric on their backs? Did he not forbid and hinder all effectual search of truth; nay, like a besieging enemy, stopped all her passages both by word and writing? Yet here can talk of "fair and equal disputations:" where, notwithstanding, if all submit not to his judgment, as not being "rationally convicted," they must submit (and he conceals it not) to his penalty, as counted obstinate. But what if he himself, and those his learned churchmen, were the convicted or the obstinate part long ago; should reformation suffer them to sit lording over the church in their fat bishoprics and pluralities, like the great whore that sitteth upon many waters, till they would vouchsafe to be disputed out? Or should we sit disputing, while they sat plotting and persecuting? Those clergymen were not "to be driven into the fold like sheep," as his simile runs, but to be driven out of the fold like wolves or thieves, where they sat fleecing those flocks which they never fed.

He believes" that presbytery, though proved to be the only institution of Jesus Christ, were not by the sword to be set up without his consent;" which is contrary both to the doctrine and the known practice of all protestant churches, if his sword threaten those who of their own accord embrace it.

And although Christ and his apostles, being to civil affairs but private men, contended not with magistrates; yet when magistrates themselves, and especially parliaments, who have greatest right to dispose of the civil sword, come to know religion, they ought in conscience to defend all those who receive it willingly, against the violence of any king or tyrant whatsoever. Neither is it therefore true, "that Christianity is planted or watered with Christian blood:" for there is a large difference between forcing men by the sword to turn presbyterians, and defending those who willingly are so, from a furious inroad of bloody bishops, armed with the militia of a king their pupil. And if "covetousness and ambition be an argument that presbytery hath not much of Christ," it argues more strongly against episcopacy; which, from the time of her first mounting to an order above the presbyters, had no other parents than covetousness and ambition. And those sects, schisms, and heresies, which he speaks of, "if they get but strength and numbers," need no other pattern than episcopacy and himself, to "set up their ways by the like method of violence." Nor is there any thing that hath more marks of schism and sectarism than English episcopacy; whether we look at apostolic times, or at reformed churches; for "the universal way of church-government before," may as soon lead us into gross error, as their universally corrupted doctrine. And government, by reason of ambition, was likeliest to be corrupted much the sooner of the two. However, nothing can be to us catholic or universal in religion, but what the Scripture teaches; whatsoever without Scripture pleads to be universal in the church, in being universal is but the more schismatical. Much

The second edition has "score."

less can particular laws and constitutions impart to the church of England any power of consistory or tribunal above other churches, to be the sole judge of what is sect or schism, as with much rigour, and without Scripture, they took upon them. Yet these the king resolves here to defend and maintain to his last, pretending, after all those conferences offered, or had with him, "not to see more rational and religious motives than soldiers carry in their knapsacks." With one thus resolved, it was but folly to stand disputing.

He imagines his "own judicious zeal to be most concerned in his tuition. of the church." So thought Saul when he presumed to offer sacrifice, for which he lost his kingdom; so thought Uzziah when he went into the temple, but was thrust out with a leprosy for his opinioned zeal, which he thought judicious. It is not the part of a king, because he ought to defend the church, therefore to set himself supreme head over the church, or to meddle with ecclesial government, or to defend the church, otherwise than the church would be defended; for such defence is bondage: nor to defend abuses and stop all reformation, under the name of "new moulds fancied and fashioned to private designs." The holy things of church are in the power of other keys than were delivered to his keeping. Christian liberty, purchased with the death of our Redeemer, and established by the sending of his free spirit to inhabit in us, is not now to depend upon the doubtful consent of any earthly monarch; nor to be again fettered with a presumptuous negative voice, tyrannical to the parliament, but much more tyrannical to the church of God; which was compelled to implore the aid of parliament, to remove his force and heavy hands from off our consciences, who therefore complains now of that most just defensive force, because only it removed his violence and persecution. If this be a violation to his conscience, that it was hindered by the parliament from violating the more tender consciences of so many thousand good Christians, let the usurping conscience of all tyrants be ever so violated!

He wonders, fox wonder! how we could so much "distrust God's assistance," as to call in the protestant aid of our brethren in Scotland; why then did he, if his trust were in God and the justice of his cause, not scruple to solicit and invite earnestly the assistance both of papists and of Irish rebels? If the Scots were by us at length sent home, they were not called to stay here always; neither was it for the people's ease to feed so many legions longer than their help was needful.

"The government of their kirk we despised" not, but their imposing of that government upon us; not presbytery, but archpresbytery, classical, provincial, and diocesan presbytery, claiming to itself a lordly power and superintendency both over flocks and pastors, over persons and congregations no way their own. But these debates, in his judgment, would have been ended better "by the best divines in Christendom in a full and free synod." A most improbable way, and such as never yet was used, at least with good success, by any protestant kingdom or state since the reformation: every true church having wherewithal from Heaven, and the assisting spirit of Christ implored, to be complete and perfect within itself. And the whole nation is not easily to be thought so raw, and so perpetually a novice, after all this light, as to need the help and direction of other nations, more than what they write in public of their opinion, in a matter so familiar as church-government.

In fine, he accuses piety with the want of loyalty, and religion with the breach of allegiance, as if God and he were one master, whose commands were so often contrary to the commands of God. He would persuade the

Scots, that their "chief interest consists in their fidelity to the crown." But true policy will teach them, to find a safer interest in the common friendship of England, than in the ruins of one ejected family.

XIV. Upon the Covenant.

UPON this theme his discourse is long, his matter little but repetition, and therefore soon answered. First, after an abusive and strange apprehension of covenants, as if men "pawned their souls" to them with whom they covenant, he digresses to plead for bishops; first from the antiquity of their "possession here, since the first plantation of Christianity in this island;" next from "a universal prescription since the apostles, till this last century." But what avails the most primitive antiquity against the plain sense of Scripture? which, if the last century have best followed, it ought in our esteem to be the first. And yet it hath been often proved by learned men, from the writings and epistles of most ancient Christians, that episcopacy crept not up into an order above the presbyters, till many years after that the apostles were deceased.

He next "is unsatisfied with the covenant," not only for "some passages in it referring to himself," as he supposes, "with very dubious and dangerous limitations," but for binding men "by oath and covenant" to the reformation of church-discipline. First, those limitations were not more dangerous to him, than he to our liberty and religion; next, that which was there vowed, to cast out of the church an antichristian hierarchy which God had not planted, but ambition and corruption had brought in, and fostered to the church's great damage and oppression, was no point of controversy to be argued without end, but a thing of clear moral necessity to be forthwith done. Neither was the "covenant superfluous, though former engagements, both religious and legal, bound us before;" but was the practice of all churches heretofore intending reformation. All Israel, though bound enough before by the law of Moses "to all necessary duties;" yet with Asa their king entered into a new covenant at the beginning of a reformation and the Jews, after captivity, without consent demanded of that king who was their master, took solemn oath to walk in the commandments of God. All protestant churches have done the like, notwithstanding former engagements to their several duties. And although his aim were to sow variance between the protestation and the covenant, to reconcile them is not difficult. The protestation was but one step, extending only to the doctrine of the church of England, as it was distinct from church discipline; the covenant went further, as it pleased God to dispense his light and our encouragement by degrees, and comprehended church-government Former with latter steps, in the progress of well-doing, need not reconcilement. Nevertheless he breaks through to his conclusion, "that all honest and wise men ever thought themselves sufficiently bound by former ties of religion;" leaving Asa, Ezra, and the whole church of God, in sundry ages, to shift for honesty and wisdom from some other than his testimony. And although after-contracts absolve not till the former be made void, yet he first having done that, our duty returns back, which to him was neither moral nor eternal, but conditional.

Willing to persuade himself that many "good men" took the covenant, either unwarily or out of fear, he seems to have bestowed some thoughts how these "good men," following his advice, may keep the covenant and

not keep it. The first evasion is, presuming "that the chief end of covenanting in such men's intentions was to preserve religion in purity, and the kingdom's peace." But the covenant will more truly inform them, that purity of religion and the kingdom's peace was not then in state to be preserved, but to be restored; and therefore binds them not to a preservation of what was, but to a reformation of what was evil, what was traditional, and dangerous, whether novelty or antiquity, in church or state. To do this, clashes with "no former oath" lawfully sworn either to God or the king, and rightly understood.

In general, he brands all "such confederations by league and covenant, as the common road used in all factious perturbations of state and church." This kind of language reflects, with the same ignominy, upon all the protestant reformations that have been since Luther; and so indeed doth his whole book, replenished throughout with hardly other words or arguments than papists, and especially popish kings, have used heretofore against their protestant subjects, whom he would persuade to be "every man his own pope, and to absolve himself of those ties," by the suggestion of false or equivocal interpretations too oft repeated to be now answered.

The parliament, he saith, "made their covenant, like manna, agreeable to every man's palate." This is another of his glosses upon the covenant; he is content to let it be manna, but his drift is that men should loath it or at least expound it by their own "relish," and "latitude of sense;" wherein, lest any one of the simpler sort should fail to be his craftsmaster, he furnishes him with two or three laxative, he terms them "general clauses, which may serve somewhat to relieve them" against the covenant taken : intimating as if "what were lawful and according to the word of God," were no otherwise so, than as every man fancied to himself. From such learned explications and resolutions as these upon the covenant, what marvel if no royalist or malignant refuse to take it, as having learnt from these princely instructions his many "salvoes, cautions, and reservations," how to be a covenanter and anticovenanter, how at once to be a Scot, and an Irish rebel.

He returns again to disallow of "that reformation which the covenant" vows, "as being the partial advice of a few divines." But matters of this moment, as they were not to be decided there by those divines, so neither are they to be determined here by essays and curtal aphorisms, but by solid proofs of Scripture.

The rest of his discourse he spends, highly accusing the parliament, "that the main reformation" by them "intended, was to rob the church," and much applauding himself both for "his forwardness" to all due reformation, and his averseness from all such kind of sacrilege. All which, with his glorious title of the "Church's Defender," we leave him to make good by Pharaoh's divinity," if he please, for to Joseph's piety it will be a task unsuitable. As for "the parity and poverty of ministers," which he takes to be so sad of "consequence," the Scripture reckons them for two special legacies left by our Saviour to his disciples; under which two primitive nurses, for such they were indeed, the church of God more truly flourished than ever after, since the time that imparity and church revenue rushing in, corrupted and belepered all the clergy with a worse infection than Gehazi's; some one of whose tribe, rather than a king, I should take to be compiler of that unsalted and Simoniacal prayer annexed: although the prayer itself strongly prays against them. For never such holy things as he means were given more to swine, nor the church's bread more to dogs, than when it fed ambitious, irreligious, and dumb prelates. 64 2 S

VOL. I.

XV. Upon the many Jealousies, &c.

To wipe off jealousies and scandals, the best way had been by clear actions, or till actions could be cleared, by evident reasons; but mere words we are too well acquainted with. Had "his honour and reputation been dearer to him" than the lust of reigning, how could the parliament of either nation have laid so often at his door the breach of words, promises, acts, oaths, and execrations, as they do avowedly in many of their petitions and addresses to him? Thither I remit the reader. And who can believe that whole parliaments, elected by the people from all parts of the land, should meet in one mind and resolution not to advise him, but to conspire against him, in a worse powder-plot than Catesbie's, "to blow up," as he terms it, "the people's affection towards him, and batter down their loyalty by the engines of foul aspersions:" Water-works rather than engines to batter with, yet those aspersions were raised from the foulness of his own actions: whereof to purge himself, he uses no other argument than a general and so often iterated commendation of himself; and thinks that court holy-water hath the virtue of expiation, at least with the silly people; to whom he familiarly imputes sin where none is, to seem liberal of his forgiveness where none is asked or needed.

What ways he hath taken toward the prosperity of his people, which he would seem "so earnestly to desire," if we do but once call to mind, it will be enough to teach us, looking on the smooth insinuations here, that tyrants are not more flattered by their slaves, than forced to flatter others whom they fear.

For the people's "tranquillity he would willingly be the Jonah;" but lest he should be taken at his word, pretends to foresee within ken two imaginary "winds" never heard of in the compass, which threaten, if he be cast overboard, "to increase the storm;" but that controversy divine lot hath ended.

"He had rather not rule, than that his people should be ruined:" and yet, above these twenty years, hath been ruining the people about the niceties of his ruling. He is accurate "to put a difference between the plague of malice and the ague of mistakes; the itch of novelty, and the leprosy of disloyalty." But had he as well known how to distinguish between the venerable gray hairs of ancient religion and the old scurf of superstition, between the wholesome heat of well governing and the feverous rage of tyrannizing, his judgment in state physic had been of more authority.

Much he prophesies, "that the credit of those men, who have cast black scandals on him, shall ere long be quite blasted by the same furnace of popular obloquy, wherein they sought to cast his name and honour." I believe not that a Romish gilded portraiture gives better oracle than a Babylonish golden image could do, to tell us truly who heated that furnace of obloquy, or who deserves to be thrown in, Nebuchadnezzar or the three kingdoms. It gave him great cause to suspect his own innocence," that he was opposed by "so many who professed singular piety." But this qualm was soon over, and he concluded rather to suspect their religion than his own innocence, affirming that "many with him were both learned and religious above the ordinary size." But if his great seal, without the parliament, were not sufficient to create lords, his parole must needs be far more unable to create learned and religious men; and who shall authorize his unlearned judgment to point them out?

He guesses that "many well-minded men were by popular preachers