fubjection to our own ruin, or hold of them the right of our common fafety, and our natural freedom by mere gift, (as when the conduit piffes wine at coronations) from the fuperfluity of their royal grace and beneficence, we may be fure was never the intent of God, whofe ways are juft and equal; never the intent of nature, whofe works are alfo regular; never of any people not wholly barbarous, whom prudence, or no more but human fente, would have better guided when they firft created kings, than fo to nullify and tread to dirt the reft of mankind, by exalting one perfon and his lineage without other merit looked after, but the mere contingency of a begetting, into an abfolute and unaccountable dominion over them and their pofterity. Yet this ignorant or wilful miftake of the whole matter had taken fo 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 unwillingly) he had paffed, he calls them, as in other places, acts of grace and bounty; fo here "fpecial obligations, favours, to gratify active fpirits, and the defires of that party." Words not only founding pride and lordly ufurpation, but injuftice, partiality, and corruption. For to the Irish he fo far condefcended, as firft to tolerate in private, then to covenant openly the tolerating of popery: fo far to the Scot, as to remove bifhops, eftablith preibytery, and the militia in their own hands; "preferring, as fome thought, the defires of Scotland before his own intereft and honour." But being once on this fide Tweed, his reafon, his confcience, and his honour became to frightened with a kind of falfe virginity, that to the English neither one nor other of the fame demands could be granted, wherewith the Scots were gratified; as if our air and climate on a fudden had changed the property and the nature both of confcience, honour, and reason, or that he found none fo fit as English to be the fubjects of his arbitrary power. Ireland was as Ephraim, the ftrength of his head; Scotland as Judah, was his lawgiver; but over England, as over Edom, he meant to caft his fhoe: and yet fo many fober Englishmen, not fufficiently awake to confider this, like men enchanted C 4 enchanted with the Circæan cup of fervitude, will not be held back from running their own heads into the yoke of bondage. * The fum of his difcourfe is against "fettling of religion by violent means;" which, whether it were the Scots defign upon England, they are beft able to clear themfelves. But this of all may feem ftrangeft, that the king, who, while it was permitted him, never did thing more eagerly than to moleft and perfecute the confciences of moft religious men; he who had made a war, and loft all, rather than not uphold a hierarchy of perfecuting bifhops, fhould have the confidence here to profefs himfelf fo much an enemy of thofe that force the confcience. For was it not he, who upon the English obtruded new ceremonies, upon the Scots a new Liturgy, and with his fword went about to engrave a bloody Rubric on their backs? Did he not forbid and hinder all effectual fearch of truth; nay, like a befieging enemy, ftopped all her paffages both by word and writing? Yet here can talk of "fair and equal difputations:" where, notwithstanding, if all fubmit not to his judgment, as not being "rationally convicted," they muft fubmit (and he conceals it not) to his penalty, as counted obftinate. But what if he himself, and thofe his learned churchmen, were the convicted or the obftinate part long ago; fhould reformation fuffer them to fit lording over the church in their fat bishoprics and pluralities, like the great whore that fitteth upon many waters, till they would vouchfafe to be difputed out? Or fhould we fit difputing, while they fat plotting and perfecuting? Thofe clergymen were not "to be driven into the fold like theep," as his fimile runs, but to be driven out of the fold like wolves or thieves, where they fat fleecing thofe flocks which they never fed. He believes" that prefbytery, though proved to be the only inftitution of Jefus Chrift, were not by the fword to be fet up without his confent;" which is contrary both to the doctrine and the known practice of all proteftant churches, if his fword threaten thofe who of their own accord embrace it. * The fecond edition has fcore. And And although Chrift and his apoftles, being to civil affairs but private men, contended not with magiftrates; yet when magiftrates themfelves, and especially parliaments, who have greatest right to difpofe of the civil fword, come to know religion, they ought in confcience to defend all thofe who receive it willingly, against the violence of any king or tyrant whatfoever. Neither is it therefore true, "that Chriftianity is planted or watered with Chriftian blood;" for there is a large difference between forcing men by the fword to turn prefbyterians, and defending thole who willingly are fo, from a furious inroad of bloody bifhops, armed with the militia of a king their pupil. And if "covetoufnefs and ambition be an argument that prefbytery hath not much of Chrift," it argues more ftrongly againft epifcopacy; which, from the time of her firft mounting to an order above the prefbyters, had no other parents than covetoufnefs and ambition. And thofe fects, fchifms, and herefies, which he fpeaks of," if they get but ftrength and numbers," need no other pattern than epifcopacy and himfelf, to "fet up their ways by the like method of violence." Nor is there any thing that hath more marks of fchifmm and fectarifin than English epifcopacy; whether we look at apoftolic times, or at reformed churches; for "the univerfal way of church-government before," may as foon lead us into grofs errour, as their univerfally corrupted doctrine. And government, by reafon of ambition, was likelieft to be corrupted much the fooner of the two. However, nothing can be to us catholic or univerfal in religion, but what the Scripture teaches; whatsoever without Scripture pleads to be univerfal in the church, in being univerfal is but the more fchifinatical. Much lefs can particular laws and conftitutions impart to the church of England any power of confiftory or tribunal above other churches, to be the fole judge of what is fect or fchifm, as with much rigour, and without Scripture they took upon them. Yet thefe the king refolves here to defend and maintain to his laft, pretending, after all thofe conferences offered, or had with him, "not to fee more rational and religious motives than foldiers carry in in their knapsacks;" with one thus refolved, it was but folly to ftand difputing. He imagines his "own judicious zeal to be moft concerned in his tuition of the church." So thought Saul when he prefumed to offer facrifice, for which he loft his kingdom; fo thought Uzziah when he went into the temple, but was thruft out with a leprofy 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 fet himself fupreme head over the church, or to meddle with ecclefial government, or to defend the church otherwife than the church would be defended; for fuch defence is bondage: nor to defend abufes, and ftop all reformation under the name of "new moulds fancied and fashioned to private defigns." The holy things of church are in the power of other keys than were delivered to his keeping. Chriftian liberty, purchased with the death of our Redeemer, and established by the fending of his free spirit to inhabit in us, is not now to depend upon the doubtful confent of any earthly monarch; nor to be again fettered with a prefumptuous 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 confciences, who therefore complains now of that most just defenfive force, because only it removed his violence and perfecution. If this be a violation to his confcience, that it was hindered by the parliament from violating the more tender confciences of fo many thousand good Chriftians, let the ufurping confcience of all tyrants be ever fo violated! He wonders, fox wonder! how we could fo much "diftruft God's affiftance," as to call in the proteftant aid of our brethren in Scotland: why then did he, if his truft were in God and the juftice of his cause, not fcruple to folicit and invite earnestly the affiftance both of papifts and of Irish rebels? If the Scots were by us at length fent home, they were not called to stay here always; neither was it for the people's ease to feed fo many legions longer than their help was needful, 3 "The "The government of their kirk we despised" not, but their impofing of that government upon us; not presbytery, but archprefbytery, claffical, provincial, and diocefan prefbytery, claiming to itfelf a lordly power and fuperintendency both over flocks and paftors, over perfons and congregations no way their own. But thefe debates, in his judgment, would have been ended better "by the beft divines in Chriftendom in a full and free fynod." A moft improbable way, and fuch as never yet was used, at leaft with good fuccefs, by any proteftant kingdom or ftate fince the reformation: every true church having wherewithal from Heaven, and the affifting fpirit of Chrift implored, to be complete and perfect within itself. And the whole nation is not eafily to be thought fo raw, and fo 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 fo familiar as church-government. In fine, he accufes Piety with the want of Loyalty, and Religion with the breach of Allegiance, as if God and he were one mafter, whofe commands were fo often contrary to the commands of God. He would perfuade the Scots, that their "chief intereft confifts in their fidelity to the crown." But true policy will teach them, to find a safer intereft in the common friendship of England, than in the ruins of one ejected family. XIV. Upon the Covenant. UPON this theme his difcourfe is long, his matter little but repetition, and therefore foon antwered. First, after an abufive and ftrange apprehenfion of covenants, as if men "pawned their fouls" to them with whom they covenant, he digreffes to plead for bithops; firft from the antiquity of their "poffeffion here, fince the firft plantation of chriftianity in this ifland;" next from " a univerfal prefcription fince the Apoftles, till this laft century." But what avails the most primitive antiquity against the plain fenfe of Scripture? which, if the laft century have best followed, |