mation itself. Neither can the evil doings of some be the excuse of our delaying or deserting that duty to the church, which for no respect of times or carnal policies can be at any time unseasonable.

He tells, with great show of piety, what kind of persons public reformers ought to be, and what they ought to do. It is strange, that in above twenty years, the church growing still worse and worse under him, he could neither be as he bids others be, nor do as he pretends here so well to know; nay, which is worst of all, after the greatest part of his reign spent in neither knowing nor doing aught toward a reformation either in church or state, should spend the residue in hindering those by a seven-years' war, whom it concerned, with his consent or without it, to do their parts in that great performance.

It is true, that the "method of reforming" may well subsist without "perturbation of the state;" but that it falls out otherwise for the most part, is the plain text of Scripture. And if by his own rule he had allowed us to "fear God first," and the king in due order, our allegiance might have still followed our religion in a fit subordination. But if Christ's kingdom be taken for the true discipline of the church, and by "his kingdom" be meant the violence he used against it, and to uphold an antichristian hierarchy, then sure enough it is, that Christ's kingdom could not be set up without pulling down his: and they were best Christians who were least subject to him. "Christ's government," out of question meaning it prelatical, he thought would confirm his: and this was that which overthrew it.

He professes "to own his kingdom from Christ, and to desire to rule for his glory, and the church's good." The pope and the king of Spain profess every where as much; and both by his practice and all his reasonings, all his enmity against the true church we see hath been the same with theirs, since the time that in his letter to the pope he assured them both of his full compliance. "But evil beginnings never bring forth good conclusions:" they are his own words, and he ratified them by his own ending. To the pope he engaged himself to hazard life and estate for the Roman religion, whether in compliment he did it, or in earnest; and God, who stood nearer than he for complimenting minded, wrote down those words; that according to his resolution, so it should come to pass. He prays against "his hypocrisy and pharisaical washings," a prayer to him most pertinent, but chokes it straight with other words, which pray him deeper into his old errors and delusions.

XXI. Upon his letters taken and divulged.

THE king's letters taken at the battle of Naseby, being of greatest importance to let the people see what faith there was in all his promises and solemn protestations, were transmitted to public view by special order of the parliament. They discovered his good affection to papists and Irish rebels, the strict* intelligence he held, the pernicious and dishonourable peace he made with them, not solicited, but rather soliciting, which by all invocations that were holy, he had in public abjured. They revealed his endeavours to bring in foreign forces, Irish, French, Dutch, Lorrainers, and our old invaders the Danes upon us, besides his subtleties

The second edition has the old word "straight."

and mysterious arts in treating; to sum up all, they showed him governed by a woman. All which, though suspected vehemently before, and from good grounds believed, yet by him and his adherents peremptorily denied, were by the opening of that cabinet visible to all men under his own hand. The parliament therefore, to clear themselves of aspersing him without cause, and that the people might no longer be abused and cajoled, as they call it, by falsities and court impudence, in matters of so high concernment; to let them know on what terms their duty stood, and the kingdom's peace, conceived it most expedient and necessary, that those letters should be made public. This, the king affirms, was by them done without "honour and civility;" words, which if they contain not in them, as in the language of a courtier most commonly they do not, more of substance and reality, than compliment, ceremony, court-fawning, and dissembling, enter not I suppose further than the ear into any wise man's consideration. Matters were not then between the parliament, and a king their enemy, in that state of trifling, as to observe those superficial vanities. But if honour and civility mean, as they did of old, discretion, honesty, prudence, and plain truth, it will be then maintained against any sect of those Cabalists, that the parliament, in doing what they did with those letters, could suffer in their honour and civility no diminution. The reasons are already heard.

And that it is with none more familiar than with kings, to transgress the bounds of all honour and civility, there should not want examples good store, if brevity would permit: in point of letters, this one shall suffice.

The duchess of Burgundy, and heir of duke Charles, had promised to her subjects, that she intended no otherwise to govern, than by advice of the three estates; but to Lewis the French king had written letters, that she had resolved to commit wholly the managing of her affairs to four persons, whom she named. The three estates, not doubting the sincerity of her princely word, send ambassadors to Lewis, who then besieged Arras belonging to the duke of Burgundy. The king, taking hold of this occasion to set them at division among themselves, questioned their credence: which when they offered to produce with their instructions, he not only shows them the private letter of their duchess, but gives it them to carry home, wherewith to affront her; which they did, she denying it stoutly; till they, spreading it before her face in a full assembly, convicted her of an open lie. Which, although Comines the historian much blames, as a deed too harsh and dishonourable in them who were subjects, and not at war with their princess, yet to his master Lewis, who first divulged those letters, to the open shaming of that young governess, he imputes no incivility or dishonour at all, although betraying a certain confidence reposed by that letter in his royal secrecy.

With much more reason then may letters not intercepted only, but won in battle from an enemy, be made public to the best advantages of them that win them, to the discovery of such important truth or falsehood. Was it not more dishonourable in himself to feign suspicions and jealousies, which we first found among those letters, touching the chastity of his mother, thereby to gain assistance from the king of Denmark, as in vindication of his sister? The damsel of Burgundy at sight of her own letter was soon blank, and more ingenuous than to stand outfacing; but this man, whom nothing will convince, thinks by talking world without end, to make good his integrity and fair dealing, contradicted by his own hand and seal. They who can pick nothing out of them but phrases shall be counted bees: they that discern further both there and here, that constancy to his wife is set in place before laws and religion, are in his naturalities no better than spiders.

He would work the people to a persuasion, that "if he be miserable, they cannot be happy." What should hinder them? Were they all born twins of Hippocrates with him and his fortune, one birth, one burial? It were a nation miserable indeed, not worth the name of a nation, but a race of idiots, whose happiness and welfare depended upon one man. The happiness of a nation consists in true religion, piety, justice, prudence, temperance, fortitude, and the contempt of avarice and ambition. They in whomsoever these virtues dwell eminently, need not kings to make them happy, but are the architects of their own happiness; and whether to themselves or others are not less than kings. But in him which of these virtues were to be found, that might extend to the making happy, or the well-governing of so much as his own household, which was the most licentious and ill-governed in the whole land?

But the opening of his letters was designed by the parliament "to make all reconciliation desperate." Are the lives of so many good and faithful men, that died for the freedom of their country, to be so slighted as to be forgotten in a stupid reconcilement without justice done them? What he fears not by war and slaughter, should we fear to make desperate by opening his letters? Which fact he would parallel with Cham's revealing of his father's nakedness: when he at that time could be no way esteemed the Father of his Country, but the destroyer; nor had he ever before merited that former title.

"He thanks God he cannot only bear this with patience, but with charity forgive the doers." Is not this mere mockery, to thank God for what he can do, but will not? For is it patience to impute barbarism and inhumanity to the opening of an enemy's letter, or is it charity to clothe them with curses in his prayer, whom he hath forgiven in his discourse? In which prayer, to show how readily he can return good for evil to the parliament, and that if they take away his coat he can let them have his cloak also; for the dismantling of his letters he wishes "they may be covered with the cloak of confusion." Which I suppose they do resign with much willingness, both livery, badge, and cognizance, to them who chose rather to be the slaves and vassals of his will, than to stand against him, as men by nature free; born and created with a better title to their freedom, than any king hath to his

crown.

XXII. Upon his going to the Scots.

THE king's coming in, whether to the Scots or English, deserved no thanks: for necessity was his counsellor ; and that he hated them both alike, his expressions everywhere manifest. Some say his purpose was to have come to London, till hearing how strictly it was proclaimed, that no man should conceal him, he diverted his course. But that had been a frivolous excuse: and besides, he himself rehearsing the consultations had, before he took his journey, shows us clearly that he was determined to adventure "upon their loyalty who first began his troubles." And that the Scots had notice of it before, hath been long since brought to light. What prudence there could be in it, no man can imagine; malice there might be, by raising new jealousies to divide friends. For besides his diffidence of the English, it was no small dishonour that he put upon them, when rather than yield himself to the parliament of England, he yielded to a hireling army of Scots in England, paid for their service here, not in Sotch coin,

but in English silver; nay, who from the first beginning of these troubles, what with brotherly assistance, and what with monthly pay have defended their own liberty and consciences at our charge. However, it was a hazardous and rash journey taken, "to resolve riddles in men's loyalty," who had more reason to mistrust the riddle of such a disguised yielding; and to put himself in their hands whose loyalty was a riddle to him, was not the course to be resolved of it, but to tempt it. What providence denied to force, he thought it might grant to fraud, which he styles Prudence; but Providence was not cozened with disguises, neither outward nor inward.

To have known "his greatest danger in his supposed safety, and his greatest safety, in his supposed danger," was to him a fatal riddle never yet resolved; wherein rather to have employed his main skill, had been much more to his preservation.

Had he "known when the game was lost," it might have saved much contest; but the way to give over fairly, was not to slip out of open war into a new disguise. He lays down his arms, but not his wiles; nor all his arms; for in obstinacy he comes no less armed than ever cap à pé. And what were they but wiles, continually to move for treaties, and yet to persist the same man, and to fortify his mind before-hand, still purposing to grant no more than what seemed good to that violent and lawless triumvirate within him, under the falsified names of his reason, honour, and conscience, the old circulating dance of his shifts and evasions?

The words of a king, as they are full of power, in the authority and strength of law, so like Samson, without the strength of that Nazarite's lock, they have no more power in them than the words of another man.

He adores reason as Domitian did Minerva, and calls her the "Divinest power," thereby to intimate as if at reasoning, as at his own weapon, no man were so able as himself. Might we be so happy as to know where these monuments of his reason may be seen; for in his actions and his writing they appear as thinly as could be expected from the meanest parts, bred up in the midst of so many ways extraordinary to know something. He who reads his talk, would think he had left Oxford not without mature deliberation yet his prayer confesses, that "he knew not what to do." Thus is verified that Psalm; "he poureth contempt upon princes, and causeth them to wander in the wilderness where there is no way." Psal. cvii.

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XXIII. Upon the Scots delivering the king to the English.

THAT the Scots in England should "sell their king," as he himself here affirms, and for a "price so much above that," which the covetousness of Judas was contented with to sell our Saviour, is so foul an infamy and dishonour cast upon them, as befits none to vindicate but themselves. And it were but friendly counsel to wish them beware the son, who comes among them with a firm belief, that they sold his father. The rest of this chapter he sacrifices to the echo of his conscience, out-babbling creeds and aves: glorying in his resolute obstinacy, and as it were triumphing how "evident it is now, not that evil counsellors," but he himself, hath been the author of all our troubles. Herein only we shall disagree to the world's end, while he, who sought so manifestly to have annihilated all our laws and liberties, hath the confidence to persuade us, that he hath fought and suffered all this while in their defence.

But he who neither by his own letters and commissions under hand and seal, nor by his own actions held as in a mirror before his face, will be convinced to see his faults, can much less be won upon by any force of words, neither he, nor any that take after him; who in that respect are no more to be disputed with, than they who deny principles. No question then but the parliament did wisely in their decree at last, to make no more addresses. For how unalterable his will was, that would have been our lord, how utterly averse from the parliament and reformation during his confinement, we may behold in this chapter. But to be ever answering fruitless repetitions, I should become liable to answer for the same myself. He borrows David's psalms, as he charges the assembly of divines in his twentieth discourse, "To have set forth old catechisms and confessions of faith new dressed:" had he borrowed David's heart, it had been much the holier theft. For such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not bettered by the borrower, among good authors is accounted plagiary. However, this was more tolerable than Pamela's prayer stolen out of Sir Philip.

XXIV. Upon the denying him the attendance of his Chaplains.

A CHAPLAIN is a thing so diminutive and inconsiderable, that how he should come here among matters of so great concernment, to take such room up in the discourses of a prince, if it be not wondered, is to be smiled at. Certainly by me, so mean an argument shall not be written; but I shall huddle him, as he does prayers. The Scripture owns no such order, no such function in the church; and the church not owning them, they are left, for aught I know, to such a further examining as the sons of Sceva the Jew met with. Bishops or presbyters we know, and deacons we know, but what are chaplains? In state perhaps they may be listed among the upper serving-men of some great household, and be admitted to some such place, as may style them the sewers, or the yeomanushers of devotion, where the master is too resty or too rich to say his own prayers, or to bless his own table. Wherefore should the parliament then take such implements of the court cupboard into their consideration? They knew them to have been the main corruptors at the king's elbow; they knew the king to have been always their most attentive scholar and imitator, and of a child to have sucked from them and their closetwork all his impotent principles of tyranny and superstition. While therefore they had any hope left of his reclaiming, these sowers of malignant tares they kept asunder from him, and sent to him such of the ministers and other zealous persons, as they thought were best able to instruct him, and to convert him. What could religion herself have done more, to the saving of a soul? But when they found him past cure, and that he to himself was grown the most evil counsellor of all, they denied him not his chaplains, as many as were fitting, and some of them attended him, or else were at his call, to the very last. Yet here he makes more lamentation for the want of his chaplains, than superstitious Micah did to the Danites, who had taken away his household priest: "Ye have taken away my gods which I made, and the priest, and what have I more?" And perhaps the whole story of Micah might square not unfitly to this argument: "Now know I," saith he, "that the Lord will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest," Micah had as great a care that his priest should be Mosaical, as the king had, that his should be apostolical; yet both in an error touching their priests. Household and private orisons