so decreed; but to show that this his homily hath more craft and affectation in it, than of sound doctrine.

But it was happy that his going into Ireland was not consented to; for either he had certainly turned his raised forces against the parliament itself, or not gone at all; or had he gone, what work he would have made there, his own following words declare. "He would have punished some;" no question; for some, perhaps, who were of least use, must of necessity have been sacrificed to his reputation, and the convenience of his affairs. Others he "would have disarmed;" that is to say, in his own time: but "all of them he would have protected from the fury of those that would have drowned them, if they had refused to swim down the popular stream." These expressions are too often met, and too well understood, for any man to doubt his meaning. By the "fury of those," he means no other than the justice of parliament, to whom yet he had committed the whole business. Those who would have refused to swim down the popular stream, our constant key tells us to be papists, prelates, and their faction; these, by his own confession here, he would have protected against his puritan parliament: and by this who sees not that he and the Irish rebels had but one aim, one and the same drift, and would have forthwith joined in one body against us?

He goes on still in his tenderness of the Irish rebels, fearing lest" our zeal should be more greedy to kill the bear for his skin, than for any harm he hath done." This either justifies the rebels to have done no harm at all, or infers his opinion that the parliament is more bloody and rapacious in the prosecution of their justice, than those rebels were in the execution of their barbarous cruelty. Let men doubt now, and dispute to whom the king was a friend most-to his English parliament, or to his Irish rebels.

With whom, that we may yet see further how much he was their friend, after that the parliament had brought them everywhere either to famine or a low condition, he, to give them all the respite and advantages they could desire, without advice of parliament, to whom he himself had committed the managing of that war, makes a cessation; in pretence to relieve the protestants, "overborne there with numbers;" but, as the event proved, to support the papists, by diverting and drawing over the English army there, to his own service here

against the parliament. For that the protestants were then on the winning hand, it must needs be plain; who, notwithstanding the miss of those forces, which at their landing here mastered without difficulty great part of Wales and Cheshire, yet made a shift to keep their own in Ireland. But the plot of this Irish truce is in good part discovered in that declaration of September 30, 1643. And if the protestants were but handfuls there, as he calls them, why did he stop and waylay, both by land and sea, to his utmost power, those provisions and supplies which were sent by the parliament? How were so many handfuls called over, as for a while stood him in no small stead, and against our main forces here in England?

Since therefore all the reasons that can be given of this cessation appear so false and frivolous, it may be justly feared, that the design itself was most wicked and pernicious. What remains then? He" appeals to God," and is cast; likening his punishment to Job's trials, before he saw them to have Job's ending. But how could charity herself believe there was at all in him any religion, so much as but to fear there is a God; whenas, by what is noted in the declaration of "No more addresses," he vowed solemnly to the parliament, with imprecations upon himself and his posterity, if ever he consented to the abolishing of those laws which were in force against papists; and, at the same time, as appeared plainly by the very date of his own letters to the queen and Ormond, consented to the abolishing of all penal laws against them both in Ireland and England? If these were acts of a religious prince, what memory of man, written or unwritten, can tell us news of any prince that ever was irreligious? He cannot stand "to make prolix apologies." Then surely those long pamphlets set out for declarations and protestations in his name were none of his; and how they should be his, indeed, being so repugnant to the whole course of his actions, augments the difficulty.

But he usurps a common saying, "That it is kingly to do well, and hear ill." That may be sometimes true; but far more frequently to do ill and hear well; so great is the mul titude of flatterers, and them that deify the name of king! Yet not content with these neighbours, we have him still a perpetual preacher of his own virtues, and of that especially which who knows not to be patience perforce? He "believes

it will at last appear, that they who first began to embroil his other kingdoms, are also guilty of the blood of Ireland." And we believe so too; for now the cessation is become a peace by published articles, and commission to bring them over against England, first only ten thousand by the Earl of Glamorgan, next all of them, if possible, under Ormond, which was the last of all his transactions done as a public person. And no wonder; for he looked upon the blood spilt, whether of subjects or of rebels, with an indifferent eve, as exhausted out of his own veins;" without distinguishing, as he ought, which was good blood and which corrupt; the not letting out whereof endangers the whole body.

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And what the doctrine is, ye may perceive also by the prayer, which, after a short ejaculation for the "poor protestants," prays at large for the Irish rebels, that God would not give them over, or "their children, to the covetousness, cruelty, fierce and cursed anger" of the parliament. He finishes with a deliberate and solemn curse 6. upon himself and his father's house." Which how far God hath already brought pass, is to the end, that men, by so eminent an example, should learn to tremble at his judgments, and not play with imprecations.

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CHAPTER XIII.

Upon the calling in of the Scols, and their coming.

IT must needs seem strange, where men accustom themselves to ponder and contemplate things in their first original and institution, that kings, who as all other officers of the public, were at first chosen and installed only by consent and suffrage of the people, to govern them as freemen by laws of their own making, and to be, in consideration of that dignity and riches bestowed upon them, the entrusted servants of the commonwealth, should, notwithstanding, grow up to that dishonest encroachment, as to esteem themselves masters, both of that great trust which they serve, and of the people that betrusted them; counting what they ought to do, both in discharge of their public duty, and for the great reward of honour and revenue which they receive, as done all of mere grace and favour; as if their power over us were by nature, and from themselves, or that God had sold us into their hands.

VOL. I.

2 B

Indeed, if the race of kings were eminently the best of men, as the breed at Tutbury is of horses, it would in reason then be their part only to command, ours always to obey. But kings by generation no way excelling others, and most commonly not being the wisest or the worthiest by far of whom they claim to have the governing; that we should yield them subjection to our own ruin, or hold of them the right of our common safety, and our natural freedom by mere gift, (as when the conduit pisses wine at coronations,) from the superfluity of their royal grace and beneficence, we may be sure was never the intent of God, whose ways are just and equal; never the intent of nature, whose works are also regular; never of any people not wholly barbarous, whom prudence, or no more but human sense, would have better guided when they first created kings, than so to nullify and tread to dirt the rest of mankind, by exalting one person and his lineage without other merit looked after, but the mere contingency of a begetting, into an absolute and unaccountable dominion over them and their posterity.

Yet this ignorant or wilful mistake of the whole matter had taken so deep root in the imagination of this king, that whether to the English or to the Scot, mentioning what acts of his regal office (though God knows how unwillingly) he had passed, he calls them, as in other places, acts of grace and bounty; so here" special obligations, favours, to gratify active spirits, and the desires of that party.' Words not only sounding pride and lordly usurpation, but injustice, partiality, and corruption. For to the Irish he so far condescended, as first to tolerate in private, then to covenant openly the tolerating of popery: so far to the Scot, as to remove bishops, establish presbytery, and the militia in their own hands; preferring, as some thought, the desires of Scotland before his own interest and honour." But being once on this side Tweed, his reason, his conscience, and his honour became so frightened with a kind of false virginity, that to the English neither one nor other of the same demands could be granted, wherewith the Scots were gratified; as if our air and climate on a sudden had changed the property and the nature both of conscience, honour, and reason, or that he found none so fit as the English to be the subjects of his arbitrary power. Ireland was as Ephraim, the strength of his head; Scotland

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as Judah was his lawgiver; but over England, as over Edom, he meant to cast his shoe: and yet so many sober Englishmen, not sufficiently awake to consider this, like men enchanted with the Circæan cup of servitude, will not be held back from running their own heads into the yoke of bondage. 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 he 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 sit 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