Although it be a maxim much agreeable to wisdom, that just deeds are the best answer to injurious words; and actions of whatever sort, their own plainest interpreters; yet since our enemies can find the leisure both ways to offend us, it will be requisite, we should be found in neither of those ways neglectful of our just defence: to let them know, that sincere and upright intentions can certainly with as much ease deliver themselves into words as into deeds.
Having therefore seen of late those articles of peace granted to the papist rebels of Ireland, as special graces and favours from the late king, in reward, most likely, of their work done, and in his name and authority confirmed and ratified by James earl of Ormond; together with his letter to Colonel Jones, governor of Dublin, full of contumely and dishonour, both to the parliament and army: and on the other side, an insolent and seditious representation from the Scots presbytery at Belfast in the North of Ireland, no less dishonourable to the state, and much about the same time brought hither: there will be needful as to the same slanderous aspersions but one and the same vindication against them both. Nor can we sever them in our notice and resentment, though one part entitled a presbytery, and would be thought a protestant assembly, since their own unexampled virulence hath wrapt them into the same guilt, made them accomplices and assistants to the abhorred Irish rebels, and with them at present to advance the same interest: if we consider both their calumnies, their hatred, and the pretended reasons of their hatred to be the same; the time also and the place concurring, as that there lacks nothing but a few formal words, which may be easily dissembled, to make the perfectest conjunction; and between them to divide that island.
As for these articles of peace made with those inhuman rebels and papists of Ireland by the late king, as one of his last masterpieces, we may be confidently persuaded, that no true-born Englishman can so much as barely read them without indignation and disdain; that those bloody rebels, and so proclaimed and judged of by the king himself, after the merciless and barbarous massacre of so many thousand English, (who had used their right and title to that country with such tenderness and moderation, and might otherwise have secured themselves with ease against their treachery,) should be now graced and rewarded with such freedoms and enlargements, as none of their ancestors could ever
These, therefore, by their own foregoing demerits and provocations justly made our vassals, are by the first article of this peace advanced to a condition of freedom superior to what any English protestants durst have demanded. For what else can be the meaning to discharge them the common oath of supremacy, especially being papists, (for whom principally that oath was intended,) but either to resign them the more into their own power, or to set a mark of dishonour upon the British loyalty; by trusting Irish rebels for one single oath of allegiance, as much as all his subjects of Britain for the double swearing both of allegiance and supremacy?
The second article puts it into the hands of an Irish parliament to repeal, or to suspend, if they think convenient, the act usually called Poyning's Act, which was the main, and yet the civilest and most moderate, acknowledgment imposed of their dependence on the crown of England; whereby no parliament could be summoned there, no bill be passed, but what was first to be transmitted and allowed under the great seal of England. The recalling of which act tends openly to invest them with a law-giving power of their own, enables them by degrees to throw of all subjection to this realm, and renders them (who by their endless treasons and revolts have deserved to hold no parliament at all, but to be governed by edicts and garrisons) as absolute and supreme in that assembly, as the people of England in their own land. And the twelfth article grants them in express words, that the Irish parliament shall be no more dependent on the parliament of England, that the Irish themselves shall declare agreeable to the laws of Ireland.
The two and twentieth article, more ridiculous than dangerous, coming especially from such a serious knot of lords and politicians, obtains, that those acts prohibiting to plow with horses by the tail, and burn oats in the straw, be repealed; enough, if nothing else, to declare in them a disposition not only sottish, but indocible, and averse from all civility and amendment: and what hopes they give for the future, who, rejecting the ingenuity of all other nations to improve and wax more civil by a civilizing conquest, though all these many years better shown and taught, prefer their own absurd and savage customs before the most convincing evidence of reason and demonstration: a testimony of their true barbarism and obdurate wilfulness, to be expected no less in other matters of greatest moment.
Yet such as these, and thus affected, the ninth article entrusts with the militia; a trust which the king swore by God at Newmarket he would not commit to his parliament of England, no, not for an hour. And well declares the confidence he had in Irish rebels, more than in his loyalest subjects. He grants them moreover, till the performance of all these articles, that fifteen thousand foot and two thousand five hundred horse shall remain a standing army of papists at the beck and command of Dillon, Muskerry, and other arch-rebels, with power also of adding to that number as they shall see cause. And by other articles allows them the constituting of magistrates and judges in all causes, whom they think fit: and till a settlement to their own minds, the possession of all those towns and countries within their new quarters, being little less than all the island, besides what their cruelty hath dispeopled and laid waste. And lastly, the whole managing both of peace and war is committed to papists, and the chief leaders of that rebellion.
Now let all men judge what this wants of utter alienating and acquitting the whole province of Ireland from all true fealty and obedience to the commonwealth of England. Which act of any king against the consent of his parliament, though no other crime were laid against him, might of itself strongly conduce to the disenthroning him of all. In France, Henry the Third, demanding leave in greatest exigencies to make sale of some crown-lands only, and that to his subjects, was answered by the parliament then at Blois, that a king in no case, though of extremest necessity, might alienate the patrimony of his crown, whereof he is but only usufructuary, as civilians term it, the propriety remaining ever to the kingdom, not to the king. And in our own nation, King John, for resigning, though unwillingly, his crown to the pope's legate, with little more hazard to his kingdom than the payment of one thousand marks, and the unsightliness of such a ceremony, was deposed by his barons, and Lewis, the French king's son, elected in his room. And to have carried only the jewels, plate, and treasure into Ireland, without consent of the nobility, was one of those impeachments, that condemned Richard the Second to lose his crown.
But how petty a crime this will seem to the alienating of a whole kingdom, which in these articles of peace we see as good as done by the late king, not to friends but to mortal enemies, to the accomplishment of his own interests and ends, wholly separate from the people's good, may without aggravation be easily conceived. Nay, by the covenant itself, since that so cavillously is urged against us, we are enjoined in the fourth article, with all faithfulness to endeavour the bringing all such to public trial and condign punishment, as shall divide one kingdom from another. And what greater dividing than by a pernicious and hostile peace, to disalliege a whole feudary kingdom from the ancient dominion of England? Exception we find there of no person whatsoever; and if the king, who hath actually done this, or any for him, claim a privilege above justice, it is again demanded by what express law either of God or man, and why he whose office is to execute law and justice upon all others, should set himself like a demigod in lawless and unbounded anarchy; refusing to be accountable for that authority over men naturally
And how securely, how smoothly, with how little touch or sense of any commiseration, either princely or so much as human, he hath sold away that justice so oft demanded, and so oft by himself acknowledged to be due, for the blood of more than two hundred thousand of his subjects, that never hurt him, never disobeyed him, assassinated and cut in pieces by those Irish barbarians, to give the first promoting, as is more than thought, to his own tyrannical designs in England, will appear by the eighteenth article of his peace; wherein, without the least regard of justice to avenge the dead, while he thirsts to be avenged upon the living, to all the murders, massacres, treasons, piracies, from the very fatal day, wherein that rebellion first broke out, he grants an act of oblivion. If this can be justified, or not punished in whomsoever, while there is any faith, any religion, any justice upon earth, there can no reason be alleged, why all things are not left to confusion. And thus much be observed in brief concerning these articles of peace made by the late king with his Irish rebels.
The letter of Ormond sent to Colonel Jones, governor of Dublin, attempting his fidelity, which the discretion and true worth of that gentleman hath so well answered and repulsed, had passed here without mention, but that the other part of it, not content to do the errand of treason, roves into a long digression of evil and reproachful language to the parliament and army of England, which though not worth their notice, as from a crew of rebels whose inhumanities are long since become the horror and execration of all that hear them, yet in the pursuance of a good endeavour, to give the world all due satisfaction of the present doings, no opportunity shall be omitted.
He accuses first, ‘That we are the subverters of religion, the protectors and inviters not only of all false ones, but of irreligion and atheism.’ An accusation that no man living could more unjustly use than our accuser himself; and which, without a strange besottedness, he could not expect but to be retorted upon his own head. All men, who are true protestants, of which number he gives out to be one, know not a more immediate and killing subverter of all true religion than Antichrist, whom they generally believe to be the pope and church of Rome; he therefore, who makes peace with this grand enemy and persecutor of the true church, he who joins with him, strengthens him, gives him root to grow up and spread his poison, removing all opposition against him, granting him schools, abbeys, and revenues, garrisons, towns, fortresses, as in so many of those articles may be seen, he of all protestants may be called most justly the subverter of true religion, the protector and inviter of irreligion and atheism, whether it be Ormond or his master. And if it can be no way proved, that the parliament hath countenanced popery or papists, but have every where broken their temporal power, thrown down their public superstitions, and confined them to the bare enjoyment of that which is not in our reach, their consciences; if they have encouraged all true ministers of the gospel, that is to say, afforded them favour and protection in all places where they preached, and although they think not money or stipend to be the best encouragement of a true pastor, yet therein also have not been wanting nor intend to be, they doubt not then to affirm themselves, not the subverters, but the maintainers and defenders of true religion; which of itself and by consequence is the surest and the strongest subversion, not only of all false ones, but of irreligion and atheism. For ‘the weapons of that warfare,’ as the apostle testifies, who best knew, ‘are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds, and all reasonings, and every high thing exalted against the knowledge of God, surprising every thought unto the obedience of Christ, and easily revenging all disobedience,’ 2 Cor. x. What minister or clergyman, that either understood his high calling, or sought not to erect a secular and carnal tyranny over spiritual things, would neglect this ample and sublime power conferred upon him, and come a begging to the weak hand of magistracy for that kind of aid which the magistrate hath no commission to afford him, and in the way he seeks it hath been always found helpless and unprofitable. Neither is it unknown, or by wisest men unobserved, that the church began then most apparently to degenerate, and go to ruin, when she borrowed of the civil power more than fair encouragement and protection; more than which Christ himself and his apostles never required. To say therefore, that we protect and invite all false religions, with irreligion also and atheism, because we lend not, or rather misapply not, the temporal power to help out, though in vain, the sloth, the spleen, the insufficiency of churchmen, in the execution of spiritual discipline over those within their charge, or those without, is an imputation that may be laid as well upon the best regulated states and governments through the world: who have been so prudent as never to employ the civil sword further than the edge of it could reach, that is, to civil offences only; proving always against objects that were spiritual a ridiculous weapon. Our protection therefore to men in civil matters unoffensive we cannot deny; their consciences we leave, as not within our cognizance, to the proper cure of instruction, praying for them. Nevertheless, if any be found among us declared atheists, malicious enemies of God, and of Christ; the parliament, I think, professes not to tolerate such, but with all befitting endeavours to suppress them. Otherways to protect none that in a larger way may be taxed of irreligion and atheism, may perhaps be the ready way to exclude none sooner out of protection, than those themselves that most accuse it to be so general to
He passes on his groundless objectures, that the aim of this parliament may be perhaps to set up first an elective kingdom, and after that a perfect Turkish tyranny. Of the former we suppose the late act against monarchy will suffice to acquit them. Of the latter certainly there needed no other pattern than that tyranny, which was so long modelling by the late king himself, with Strafford, and that archprelate of Canterbury, his chief instruments; whose designs God hath dissipated. Neither is it any new project of the monarchs, and their courtiers in these days, though Christians they would be thought, to endeavour the introducing of a plain Turkish tyranny. Witness that consultation had in the court of France under Charles the IXth at Blois, wherein Poncet, a certain court-projector, brought in secretly by the chancellor Biragha, after many praises of the Ottoman government, proposes means and ways at large, in presence of the king, the queen regent, and Anjou the king's brother, how with best expedition and least noise the Turkish tyranny might be set up in France, It appears therefore, that the design of bringing in that tyranny, is a monarchical design, and not of those who have dissolved monarchy.
As for parliaments by three estates, we know, that a parliament signifies no more than the supreme and general council of a nation, consisting of whomsoever chosen and assembled for the public good; which was ever practised, and in all sorts of government, before the word parliament or the formality, or the possibility of those three estates, or such a thing as a titular monarchy, had either name or being in the world. The original of all which we could produce to be far newer than those ‘all ages’ which he vaunts of, and by such first invented and contrived, whose authority, though it were Charles Martel, stands not so high in our repute, either for himself, or the age he lived in, but that with as good warrant we may recede from what he ordained, as he ordain what before was not. But whereas besides he is bold to allege, that of the three estates there remains only a small number, and they the ‘dregs and scum of the house of commons;’ this reproach, and in the mouth of an Irishman, concerns not them only; but redounds to apparent dishonour of the whole English nation. Doubtless there must be thought a great scarcity in England of persons honourable and deserving, or else of judgment, or so much as honesty in the people, if those, whom they esteem worthy to sit in parliament, be no better than scum and dregs in the Irish dialect. But of such like stuff we meet not any where with more excrescence than in his own lavish pen; which feeling itself loose without the reins of discretion, rambles for the most part beyond all soberness and civility. In which torrent he goes on negotiating and cheapening the loyalty of our faithful governor of Dublin, as if the known and tried constancy of that valiant gentleman were to be bought with court fumes.
He lays before him, that ‘there remains now no other liberty in the subject, but to profess blasphemous opinions, to revile and tread under foot magistracy, to murder magistrates, to oppress and undo all that are not like-minded with us.’ Forgetting in the mean while himself to be in the head of a mixed rabble, part papists, part fugitives, and part savages, guilty in the highest degree of all these crimes. What more blasphemous, not opinion, but whole religion, than popery, plunged into idolatrous and ceremonial superstition, the very death of all true religion; figured to us by the Scripture itself in the shape of that beast, full of the names of blasphemy, which we mention to him as to one that would be counted protestant, and had his breeding in the house of a bishop? And who are those that have trod under foot magistracy, murdered magistrates, oppressed and undone all that sided not with them, but the Irish rebels, in that horrible conspiracy, for which Ormond himself hath either been or seemed to be their enemy, though now their ringleader? And let him ask the Jesuits about him, whether it be not their known doctrine and also practice, not by fair and due process of justice to punish kings and magistrates, which we disavow not, but to murder them in the basest and most assassinous manner, if their church interest so require. There will not need more words to this windy railer, convicted openly of all those crimes,
We have now to deal, though in the same country, with another sort of adversaries, in show far different, in substance muchwhat the same. These write themselves the presbytery of Belfast, a place better known by the name of a late barony, than by the fame of these men's doctrine or ecclesiastical deeds: whose obscurity till now never came to our hearing. And surely we should think this their representment far beneath considerable, who have neglected and passed over the like unadvisedness of their fellows in other places more near us, were it not to observe in some particulars the sympathy, good intelligence, and joint pace which they go in the north of Ireland, with their copartning rebels in the south, driving on the same interest to lose us that kingdom, that they may gain it themselves, or at least share in the spoil: though the other be open enemies, these pretended brethren.
The introduction of their manifesto out of doubt must be zealous; ‘Their duty,’ they say, ‘to God and his people, over whom he hath made them overseers, and for whom they must give account.’ What mean these men? Is the presbytery of Belfast, a small town in Ulster, of so large extent, that their voices cannot serve to teach duties in the congregation which they oversee, without spreading and divulging to all parts, far beyond the diocese of Patrick or Columba, their written representation, under the subtle pretence of feeding their own flock? Or do they think to oversee, or undertake to give an account for, all to whom their paper sends greeting? St. Paul to the elders of Ephesus thinks it sufficient to give charge, ‘That they take heed to themselves, and to the flock over which they were made overseers,’ beyond those bounds he enlarges not their commission. And surely when we put down bishops and put up presbyters, which the most of them have made use of to enrich and exalt themselves, and turn the first heel against their benefactors, we did not think, that one classic fraternity, so obscure and so remote, should involve us and all state-affairs within the censure and jurisdiction of Belfast, upon pretence of overseeing their own charge.
We very well know, that church-censures are limited to church-matters, and these within the compass of their own province, or to say more truly, of their own congregation: that affairs of state are not for their meddling, as we could urge even from their own invectives and protestations against the bishops, wherein they tell them with much fervency, that ministers of the gospel, neither by that function, nor any other which they ought accept, have the least warrant to be pragmatical in the state. And surely in vain were bishops for these and other causes forbid to sit and vote in the house, if these men out of the house, and without vote, shall claim and be permitted more license on their presbyterial stools, to breed continual disturbance by interposing in the commonwealth. But seeing that now, since their heaving out the prelates to heave in themselves, they devise new ways to bring both ends together, which will never meet; that is to say, their former doctrine with their present doings, as ‘that they cannot else teach magistrates and subjects their duty, and that they have besides a right themselves to speak as members of the commonwealth;’ let them know, that there is a wide difference between the general exhortation to justice and obedience, which in this point is the utmost of their duty, and the state-disputes wherein they are now grown such busy-bodies, to preach of titles, interests, and alterations in government: more than our Saviour himself, or any of his apostles, ever took upon them, though the title both of Caesar and of Herod, and what they did in matters of state, might have then admitted controversy enough.
Next, for their civil capacities, we are sure, that pulpits and church-assemblies, whether classical or provincial, never were intended or allowed by wise magistrates, no, nor by him that sent them, to advance such purposes, but that as members of the commonwealth they ought to mix with other commoners, and in that temporal body to assume nothing above other private persons, or otherwise than in a usual and legal manner: not by distinct remonstrances and representments, as if they were a tribe and party by themselves, which is the next immediate way to make the church lift a horn against the state, and claim an absolute and undepending jurisdiction, as from like advantage and occasion (to the trouble of all Christendom) the pope hath for many ages done; and not only our bishops were climbing after him, but our presbyters also, as by late experiment we find. Of this representation therefore we can esteem and judge no other than of a slanderous and seditious libel, sent abroad by a sort of incendiaries, to delude and make the better way under the cunning and plausible name of a presbytery.
A second reason of their representing is, ‘that they consider the dependence of that kingdom upon England,’ which is another shameless untruth that ever they considered; as their own actions will declare, by conniving, and in their silence partaking, with those in Ulster, whose obedience, by what we have yet heard, stands dubious, and with an eye of conformity rather to the north, than to that part where they owe their subjection; and this in all likelihood by the inducement and instigation of these representers: who so far from considering their dependence on England, as to presume at every word to term proceedings of parliament, ‘the insolences of a sectarian party, and of private men.’ Despising dominion, and speaking evil of dignities, which hypocritically they would seem to dissuade others from; and not fearing the due correction of their superiors, that may in fit season overtake them. Whenas the least consideration of their dependence on England, would have kept them better in their duty.
The third reason which they use makes against them; the remembrance how God punished the contempt of their warning last year upon the breakers of covenant, whenas the next year after they forget the warning of that punishment hanging over their own heads for the very same transgression, their manifest breach of covenant
And thus we have their preface supported with three reasons; two of them notorious falsities, and the third against themselves; and two examples, ‘the province of London, and the commissioners of the kirk-assembly.’ But certain, if canonical examples bind not, much less do apocryphal. Proceeding to avouch the trust put upon them by God, which is plainly proved to be none of this nature, ‘they would not be looked upon as sowers of sedition, or authors of divisive motions; their record,’ they say, ‘is in heaven,’ and their truth and honesty no man knows where. For is not this a shameless hypocrisy, and of mere wolves in sheep's clothing, to sow sedition in the ears of all men, and to face us down to the very act, that they are authors of no such matter? But let the sequel both of their paper, and the obedience of the place wherein they are, determine.
Nay, while we are yet writing these things, and foretelling all men the rebellion, which was even then designed in the close purpose of these unhallowed priestlings, at the very time when with their lips they disclaimed all sowing of sedition, news is brought, and too true, that the Scottish inhabitants of that province are actually revolted, and have not only besieged in Londonderry those forces, which were to have fought against Ormond and the Irish rebels; but have in a manner declared with them, and begun open war against the parliament; and all this by the incitement and illusions of that unchristian synagogue at Belfast, who yet dare charge the parliament, ‘that, notwithstanding specious pretences, yet their actings do evidence, that they love a rough garment to deceive.’ The deceit we own not, but the comparison, by what at first sight may seem alluded, we accept: for that hairy roughness assumed won Jacob the birthright both temporal and eternal; and God we trust hath so disposed the mouth of these Balaams, that, coming to curse, they have stumbled into a kind of blessing, and compared our actings to the faithful act of that patriarch.
But if they mean, as more probably their meaning was, that ‘rough garment’ spoken of Zach. xiii. 4, we may then behold the pitiful store of learning and theology, which these deceivers have thought sufficient to uphold their credit with the people, who, though the rancour that leavens them have somewhat quickened the common drawling of their pulpit elocution, yet for want of stock enough in scripture-phrase to serve the necessary uses of their malice, they are become so liberal, as to part freely with their own budge-gowns from off their backs, and bestow them on the magistrate as a rough garment to deceive; rather than not be furnished with a reproach, though never so improper, never so odious to be turned upon themselves. For but with half an eye cast upon that text, any man will soon discern that rough garment to be their own coat, their own livery, the very badge and cognizance of such false prophets as themselves, who, when they understand, or ever seriously mind, the beginning of that 4th verse, may ‘be ashamed every one of his lying vision,’ and may justly fear that foregoing denouncement to such ‘as speak lies in the name of the Lord,’ verse 3, lurking under the rough garment of outward rigour and formality, whereby they cheat the simple. So that ‘this rough garment to deceive’ we bring ye once again, grave sirs, into your own vestry; or with Zachary shall not think much to fit it to your own shoulders. To bestow aught in good earnest on the magistrate, we know your classic priestship is too gripple, for ye are always begging: and for this rough gown to deceive, we are confident ye cannot spare it; it is your Sunday's gown, your every day gown, your only gown, the gown of your faculty; your divining gown; to take it from ye were sacrilege. Wear it therefore, and possess it yourselves, most grave and reverend Carmelites, that all men, both young and old, as we hope they will shortly, may yet better know ye, and distinguish ye by it; and give to your rough gown, wherever they meet it, whether in pulpit, classis, or provincial synod, the precedency and the pre-eminence of deceiving.
They charge us next, that we have broken the covenant, and loaden it with slighting reproaches. For the reproaching, let them answer that are guilty, whereof the state we are sure cannot be accused. For the breaking, let us hear wherein. ‘In labouring,’ say they, ‘to establish by law a universal toleration of all religions.’ This touches not the state; for certainly were they so minded, they need not labour it, but do it, having power in their hands; and we know of no act as yet passed to that purpose. But suppose it done, wherein is the covenant broke? The covenant enjoins us to endeavour the extirpation first of popery and prelacy, then of heresy, schism, and profaneness, and whatsoever shall be found contrary to sound doctrine and the power of godliness. And this we cease not to do by all effectual and proper means: but these divines might know, that to extirpate all these things can be no work of the civil sword, but of the spiritual, which is the word of God.
No man well in his wits, endeavouring to root up weeds out of his ground, instead of using the spade will take a mallet or a beetle. Nor doth the covenant any way engage us to extirpate, or to prosecute the men, but the heresies and errors in them, which we tell these divines, and the rest that understand not, belongs chiefly to their own function, in the diligent preaching and insisting upon sound doctrine; in the confuting, not the railing down, errors, encountering both in public and private conference, and by the power of truth, not of persecution, subduing those authors of heretical opinions; and lastly in the spiritual execution of church-discipline within their own congregations. In all these ways we shall assist them, favour them, and as far as appertains to us join with them, and moreover not tolerate the free exercise of any religion, which shall be found absolutely contrary to sound doctrine or the power of godliness; for the conscience, we must have patience till it be within our
And whereas they affirm, that the tolerating of all religions, in the manner that we tolerate them, is an innovation; we must acquaint them, that we are able to make it good, if need be, both by Scripture and the primitive fathers, and the frequent assertion of whole churches and protestant states in their remonstrances and expostulations against the popish tyranny over souls. And what force of argument do these doctors bring to the contrary? But we have long observed to what pass the bold ignorance and sloth of our clergy tends no less now than in the bishop's days, to make their bare sayings and censures authentic with the people, though destitute of any proof or argument. But thanks be to God, they are discerned.
Their next impeachment is, ‘that we oppose the presbyterial government, the hedge and bulwark of religion.’ Which all the land knows to be a most impudent falsehood, having established it with all freedom, wherever it hath been desired. Nevertheless, as we perceive it aspiring to be a compulsive power upon all without exception in parochial, classical, and provincial hierarchies, or to require the fleshly arm of magistracy in the execution of a spiritual discipline, to punish and amerce by any corporal infliction those whose consciences cannot be edified by what authority they are compelled, we hold it no more to be ‘the hedge and bulwark of religion,’ than the popish or prelatical courts, or the Spanish inquisition.
But we are told, ‘we embrace paganism and Judaism in the arms of toleration.’ A most audacious calumny! And yet while we detest Judaism, we know ourselves commanded by St. Paul, Rom. xi., to respect the Jews, and by all means to endeavour their conversion.
Neither was it ever sworn in the covenant, to maintain an universal presbytery in England, as they falsely allege, but in Scotland against the common enemy, if our aid were called for: being left free to reform our own country according to the word of God, and the example of best reformed churches; from which rule we are not yet departed.
But here, utterly forgetting to be ministers of the gospel, they presume to open their mouths, not ‘in the spirit of meekness,’ as like dissemblers they pretend, but with as much devilish malice, impudence, and falsehood, as any Irish rebel could have uttered, and from a barbarous nook of Ireland brand us with the extirpation of laws and liberties; things which they seem as little to understand, as aught that belong to good letters or humanity.
‘That we seized on the person of the king;’ who was surrendered into our hands an enemy and captive by our own subordinate and paid army of Scots in England. Next, ‘our imprisoning many members of the house.’ As if it were impossible they should deserve it, conspiring and bandying against the public good; which to the other part appearing, and with the power they had, not resisting had been a manifest desertion of their trust and duty. No question but it is as good and necessary to expel rotten members out of the house, as to banish delinquents out of the land: and the reason holds as well in forty as in five. And if they be yet more, the more dangerous is their number. They had no privilege to sit there, and vote home the author, the impenitent author, of all our miseries, to freedom, honour, and royalty, for a few fraudulent, if not destructive, concessions. Which that they went about to do, how much more clear it was to all men, so much the more expedient and important to the commonwealth was their speedy seizure and exclusion; and no breach of any just privilege, but a breach of their knotted faction. And here they cry out, ‘an action without parallel in any age.’ So heartily we wish all men were unprejudiced in all our actions, as these illiterate denouncers never paralleled so much of any age as would contribute to the tithe of a century. ‘That we abolish parliamentary power, and establish a representative instead thereof.’ Now we have the height of them; these profound instructors, in the midst of their representation, would know the English of a representative, and were perhaps of that classis, who heretofore were as much staggered at triennial. Their grand accusation is our justice done on the king, which that they may prove to be ‘without rule or example,’ they venture all the credit they have in divine and human history; and by the same desperate boldness detect themselves to be egregious liars and impostors, seeking to abuse the multitude with a show of that gravity and learning, which never was their portion. Had their knowledge been equal to the knowledge of any stupid monk or abbot, they would have known at least, though ignorant of all things else, the life and acts of him, who first instituted their order: but these blockish presbyters of Clandeboy know not that John Knox, who was the first founder of presbytery in Scotland, taught professedly the doctrine of deposing and of killing kings. And thus while they deny that any such rule can be found, the rule is found in their own country, given them by their own first presbyterian institutor; and they themselves, like irregular friars walking contrary to the rule of their own foundation, deserve for so gross an ignorance and transgression to be disciplined upon their own stools. Or had their reading in history been any, which by this we may be confident is none at all, or their malice not heightened to a blind rage, they never would so rashly have thrown the dice to a palpable discovery of their ignorance and want of shame. But wherefore spend we two such precious things as time and reason upon priests, the most prodigal misspenders of time, and the scarcest owners of reasons? It is sufficient we have published our defences, given reasons, given examples of our justice done; books also have been written to the same purpose for men to look on that will; that no nation under heaven but in one age or other hath done the like. The difference only is, which rather seems to us matter of glory, that they for the most part have without form of law done the deed by a kind of martial justice, we by the deliberate and well-weighed sentence of a legal judicature.
But they tell us, ‘it was against the interest and protestation of the kingdom of Scotland.’ And did exceeding well to join those two together: here by informing us what credit or regard need be given in England to a Scots protestation, ushered in by a Scots interest: certainly no more than we see is given in Scotland to an English declaration, declaring the interest of England. If then our interest move not them, why should theirs move us? If they say, we are not all England; we reply, they are not all Scotland: nay, were the last year so inconsiderable a part of Scotland, as were beholden to this which they now term the sectarian army, to defend and rescue them at the charges of England, from a stronger party of their own countrymen, in whose esteem they were no better than sectarians themselves. But they add, ‘it was against the former declarations of both kingdoms,’ to seize, or proceed against the king. We are certain, that no such declarations of both kingdoms, as derive not their full force from the sense and meaning of the covenant, can be produced.
And if they plead against the covenant, ‘to preserve and defend his person:’ we ask them briefly, whether they take the covenant to be absolute or conditional? If absolute, then suppose the king to have committed all prodigious crimes and impieties against God, or nature, or whole nations, he must nevertheless be sacred from all violent touch. Which absurd opinion, how it can live in any man's reason, either natural or rectified, we much marvel: since God declared his anger as impetuous for the saving of King Benhadad, though surrendering himself at mercy, as for the killing of Naboth. If it be conditional, in the preservation and defence of religion, and the people's liberty, then certainly to take away his life, being dangerous, and pernicious to both these, was no more a breach of the covenant, than for the same reason at Edinburgh to behead Gordon the marquis of Huntley. By the same covenant we made vow to assist and defend all those, that should enter with us into this league: not absolutely, but in the maintenance and pursuing thereof. If therefore no man else was ever so mad, as to claim from hence an impunity from all justice, why should any for the king, whose life, by other articles of the same covenant, was forfeit? Nay, if common sense had not led us to such a clear interpretation, the Scots commissioners themselves might boast to have been our first teachers: who, when they drew to the malignance which brought forth that perfidious last year's irruption against all the bands of covenant or Christian neighbourhood, making their hollow plea the defence of his majesty's person, they were constrained by their own guiltiness to leave out that following morsel that would have choked them, ‘the preservation and defence of true religion and our liberties.’ And questionless in the preservation of these we are bound as well, both by the covenant and before the covenant, to preserve and defend the person of any private man, as the person and authority of any inferior magistrate: so that this article, objected with such vehemence against us, contains not an exception of the king's person, and authority, to do by privilege what wickedness he list, and be defended as some fancy, but an express testification of our loyalty; and the plain words without wresting will bear as much, that we had no thoughts against his person, or just power, provided they might consist with the preservation and defence of true religion and our liberties. But to these how hazardous his life was, will be needless to repeat so often. It may suffice, that while he was in custody, where we expected his repentance, his remorse at last, and compassion of all the innocent blood shed already, and hereafter likely to be shed, for his mere wilfulness, he made no other use of our continual forbearance, our humblest petitions and obtestations at his feet, but to sit contriving and fomenting new plots against us, and, as his own phrase was, ‘playing his own game’ upon the miseries of his people: of which we desire no other view at present than these articles of peace with the rebels, and the rare game likely to ensue from such a cast of his cards. And then let men reflect a little upon the slanders and reviles of these wretched priests, and judge what modesty, what truth, what conscience, what any thing fit for ministers, or we might say reasonable men, can harbour in them. For what they began in shamelessness and malice, they conclude in frenzy; throwing out a sudden rhapsody of proverbs quite from the purpose; and with as much comeliness as when Saul prophesied. For casting off, as he did his garments, all modesty and meekness, wherewith the language of ministers ought to be clothed, especially to their supreme magistrate, they talk at random of ‘servants raging, servants riding, and wonder how the earth can bear them.’ Either these men imagine themselves to be marvellously high set and exalted in the chair of Belfast, to vouchsafe the parliament of England no better style than servants, or else their high notion, which we rather believe, falls as low as court-parasitism; supposing all men to be servants but the king. And then all their pains taken to seem so wise in proverbing serve but to conclude them downright slaves: and the edge of their own proverb falls reverse upon themselves. For as ‘delight is not seemly for fools,’ much less high words to come from base minds. What they are for ministers, or how they