AN ANSWER TO Certain Observations of W. BRIDGES, concerning the present War against His MAJESTY.  
Whereby he pretends to justify it against that Hexapla of Considerations.  
viz.  
Theologicall, Historical, Legal, Critical, Melancholy, and Foolish; Wherein, as he saith, it is looked upon by the squinteyed multitude.  
Printed in the Year, 1643.   

To the READER.  
ALthough I am not much in love with Apologies, yet for the prevention of objections in this cavilling age, give me leave to premise a word or two. It may be thought here that I have done too much and too little. Too much in that I have been so large in my Answer unto so short a Preface. Too little in that I have not proceeded to a reply unto the Sermon itself, as well as to the Prooeme. To the first I confess it hath been thought that my pains therein hath exceeded the merit of the Preface. Neither did I intent to bestow the fifth part of that pains about it that I have done; but if I have erred herein, I hope it may deserve a pardon, in that it hath proceeded from a desire to satisfy: nor need it be any wonder that the wedge is so much greater than the knot, since it is the wisest way for them that cannot endure the light to wrap up themselves as close as they can in obscure brevity. They that are to speak in an ill cause had best to take heed they say not too much, for the more they say of it, the more they betray it. Since it is a hard thing for them that have such a task to be so vigilant over their pens, but that in many expressions some discoveries will intrude; it is very difficult to be constant in falsehood, and therefore errors had need have but a narrow way to walk in, lest they betray themselves by their reeling. You can hardly give a lie so good a tire, but if you ty it not up it will betray itself. But for the truth, which is my business, the more it is unfolded the more it is preserved, and indeed, the more closely error is wrapped up and entangled, the more work is necessary for the unraveling it. The work of Master Bridges, as it is a work of darkness, so it is a work of thick darkness, like a thick compacted cloud of errors, incorporated one into another; and my work is to disperse this cloud, and to lay open these errors. And if the dispersion of a cloud take up more room than the thickening or condensation of it, I hope the light that did it is no way to be blamed. Besides, in the persecution of one or a few falsehoods we are many times led into the view of many profitable and necessary truths: and if I have made my journey so much the longer to take them along with me, so that I have not gone much out of my way, I presume the Readers profit may excuse my labour.  
For the second objection, my answer is brief. That the truth is, I find nothing in the Sermon of any danger, and therefore as a toothless dog I might well trust it amongst the nakedst people without a muZZle. And so having said thus much for thy satisfaction, I entreat thee to read without prejudice, with an upright unengaged judgement, with a resolution to embrace the truth where thou findest it, and to relinquish error where thou discover'st it. And so I commend thee to God, and rest.  
An earnest defirer of thy salvation, and of the peace of the Church and State, THO. WARMSTRY   

AN ANSWER TO CERTAIN OBSERVATIONS of W. BRIDGES, concerning the present War against His MAJESTY; whereby he pretends to justify it against that Hexapla of considerations: viZ. Theologicall, Historical, Legal, etc.  
NOt to trouble myself much with those impertinencies, in the beginning of your Preface; where you most rashly and impiously set our blessed Saviour's name in the stile of this unchristianlike design, calling it the business of Christ Jesus his Kingdom: And as you transgress against Piety there, so against Charity too in the same clause, as if your malice were not active enough, if you did not in the same breath and sentence blaspheme God and injure man. You style the good and obedient people of the Land by that scornful title of The squint eyed multitude, as if every eye were asquint that is not bloudshotten like yours. And to let pass your slighting of those books that have been set forth. which you say have had their answers, though I could tell you that all have not been answered that we know of. And for those answers of yours and some others to Doctor Ferne, whom you by't in the margin, their answers have had replies too: nor yet to insist upon your vain promises of delivering the sense of the whole in that of Rom. 13. He that resisteth, etc. which it may be you were afraid to speak out, lest your own pen should transcribe your sentence, and allot unto you that judgement or damnation which the Apostle there denounceth against resisters of the higher powers; and in that of the Evangelist, resist not evil, etc. And to give you leave to pass over, and let go Fathers, Counsels, the Doctrine of our own Bishops, since they are so little for your turn. I leave all these upon your score, and come to observe upon your Observations which you commend unto your Reader.  
And first in the Theological consideration, you observe thus:  
1. That the King must command not only according to God's Law, but man's also.  
Answ. It is most true, That the King is bound in duty to regulate his commands by the rules of the Law of God and the Kingdom, and if he doth otherwise he sins, and is answerable to God for it. But it doth by no means follow that he is answerable unto the Subjects, or corrigible by them, for all correction is to proceed from a Superior; and the King who is acknowledged to be supreme, hath no Superior on earth to judge him.  
2. That if he do not so command, the resistance is not a resistance of power but will.  
Answ. Though the King do exceed the limits of his duty, yet the resistance may be a resistance of his power; for they that judge not superficially of things may easily discern, That a King's power is larger than his duty: And he may exceed his duty in commanding, and yet his authority may enjoin the Subject to obey. Pharaoh exceeded his duty in commanding the Israelites to make brick without straw. And Casar's Officers exceeded the limits both of the Law of God and man, when against the liberty of the Subject they require tribute of our Saviour, yet we have examples of obedience in both. There are somethings unlawful for a Governor to command, which are not unlawful for the Subject to obey, as in the cases before named, and in all tyrannous and frivolous commands; in such cases we may petition, and some admonish and reprove the King, with reverence, and put him in mind of his duty: or in case he will not hear, we may use the weapons of the Church, Preces & lachrymas, we may complain to God who is above the King, and the sole Moderator betwixt Him and Subjects, but we must obey and remember that such commands are the Governors' sin, but our punishment. Indeed, if the Governor command the Subject to do that which the Law of God forbids him to do, he must not yield active obedience, but obey God rather than men. But yet he must not resist by taking up Arms or the like, but patiently submit to suffer the punishment. Otherwise, I pray you resolve me, why the three children yielded their bodies to the furnace, when Nabuchadnezzar commanded them, against the Law of God, to worship the golden Image, if they had held it lawful to resist, they might as well have looked for assistance from Heaven to have made good their party against the Tyrant, as that God should preserve them in the midst of the fire? But the Text notes it of them, that they yielded their bodies, which implies a voluntary submission. And yet the command was against the Law of God; and Nabuchadnezzar aswell as King CHARLES ought to have commanded, not only according to the Law of God, but of man also. If you are wise and peaceable, you ought to consider, that as the King's duty is to regulate him, upon pain of God's displeasure; so his power is to regulate us; sometimes where he exceeds his duty; and if where he transgresses the Law of God, much more where he transgresses the limits of humane Laws, which notwithstanding he is bound in conscience to observe.  
3. That to say such a resistance must be only defensive is nonsense, for so a man may be resisting ever and never. Resist like the silly women, of whom the Apostle saith, They are ever learning, and never attain the truth.  
Answ. Nor never are like to do, unless they meet with better teachers than you appear to be; for indeed here you speak the plainest falsehood of any the most impudent advocate, that for aught I know hath pleaded in that cause you are feed in: and we are to thank you for your plain dealing, it is honestly done however that you will speak your mind; if all men should do so, I am persuaded we should have a speedy end of the business. I was in doubt the people should have been borne in hand, that this war against the King had been only defensive, but you have drawn the curtain, and will justify it seems the legality of it as an offensive war. That it is lawful to set up an offensive resistance against the King, in case he command either against the Law of God or man. And your reason indeed drawn from nonsense, Argumentum ab absurdo it is I confess; it is nonsense say you, to hold that we may in such case resist the King, only by a defensive resistance. This if any is the sense of your Observation, and how do you make this good? Why thus, an't please you; for so say you a man may be resisting ever, and never resist. Indeed I confess that is plain nonsense to say, that a man should be ever resisting and yet never resist; as well you may be ever a good Subject, and yet never obey your Prince. Yea, indeed upon the point it is the very same, to be ever resisting and never resist; as to be ever resisting and yet to be a good Subject: since not to resist is essential to a good Subject. And therefore in styling this nonsense you accuse yourself, since that is the main business. You are about to make us believe that resistance and subjection may well stand together: so that if that be nonsense, as you style it, there is but little sense in the main attempt of your discourse. And I can see no more reason for you to say, that it is no more sense to admit of desensive resistance without an offensive, then to say a man may ever and never resist. Or is there no difference between a shield and a sword: nature and reason allows a servant to save his head if he can from his master's cudgel, and I know no Law either of God or man that forbids it. But yet you must take heed how you allow a servant to deal offensively against his master, lest you set houses on fire as well as the commonwealth. It is no nonsense to admit of one thing with the denial of another, in assertion or discourse, which may and ought sometimes to be done without the other, in action and performance. But it seems there is no sense, reason, nor religion, that doth not comply with your purposes. Those are the only rules of truth and falsehood, good and evil; yet methinks you might have done well to have spared the Apostle, for you seem to be very bold in quoting that saying of his, nay of the Holy Ghost, as a parallel to that which you call nonsense, as if the Apostles saying of silly women (such as your faction leadeth away) That they are ever learning, and never attain to the truth, were no better sense than for a man to be said to be ever resisting, and yet never to resist. It is no wonder that you are overbold with God's Substitute, when you are so sawey with God himself. Remember you have something to answer another day for this: your calling might have admonished you to have dealt more reverently with the Scripture, then to have brought in any part of that as an instance or parallel of nonsense: but howsoever we may know your meaning by this, that if the people please to quarrel at the King's government, or to conceive any of his commands to be against, or not according to the Laws of God or man, they may not only defend their own rights or persons by force and arms, but even offer violence to his Sacred Person in a vindictive way, and in allowing an offensive resistance without any restraint or limitation, you lay a fair ground, for aught any man can see, even for killing the King, either by force or treachery, for this without all question lieth within the generality of an offensive resistance: it was pity you did not live, or were not better known in the beginning of King James his reign, you would have made an excellent Chaplain to Guy Faux, or the rest of the Gunpowder-Traytors. What though they were Papists, that had been no great matter: They whose stomaches can digest such iron principles as these, like enough would not have been very squeamish in point of religion. But for your Argument, Assertion, Observation, or what you will call it, truly it scarce deserves an answer; yet the wise man may seem to admonish me to give you one, lest you should be wise in your own conceit: And therefore I tell you, that the Apostle forbids that any resistance at all should be made against the higher power; and the higher the power is the more wicked the resistance: and therefore to resist your Prince, which is your Supreme, is the most wicked of all resistance. And the Apostle gives you a reason, because it is the ordinance of God; and it is showed before, that resistance even in such case where the Magistrates commands are not according to the Law of God or man, is a resistance of the power as well as of the will of the Magistrate, and therefore is not to be undertaken sub poenâ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, under pain of judgement, or damnation; and they that like the wages let them set up the work. Besides, this is to put a sword as it were into every offender's hand, to provide for his own life or freedom, even by the ruin and destruction of the King or Magistrate, if he can but have faith enough to persuade himself that he is condemned contrary to the Law either of God or man; and certainly he had a very dull brain that could not find colour enough for such a persuasion, in the worst case almost we can imagine, especially if that old note be true, Quod quisque vult id ipsum putat. There needs no great strength of argument to persuade a thief or murderer that he ought not to be hanged, but I doubt I shall take too much pains with you. There's an end of your three Observations of the business, as it is looked on, as you say, in a Theological consideration: and for aught I see, the people may look asquint still for any thing you have yet applied for the rectifying of their sight.  
The next survey you are pleased to take of the matter, is to correct the errors of the people in their Historical view of it: you conceive their complaints to be groundless, when they conceive and say, Never such times, such taxations, such precedents, such a war, etc. never? Yes, you can tell them of the twentieth part, fifteenth part, seventh part, as in the reign of King John, and others. And you cite the Chronicle too of Edw. 2. in the margin: truly I have scarce leisure for the present to examine the Chronicle to confute you. We read indeed of a sixth penny levied of temporal men's goods, in the time of Edw. 2. and what others you have found out in your Historical translations, it makes no great matter if they be of the same stamp. But can you find a precedent of a twentieth part imposed by an Ordinance of the two Houses of Parliament, without and against the King, and for the maintenance of so unnatural a war? can you find any precedent for those legal robberies, that authentical thee very under the name of plundering and that working of iniquity by a Law? But however you seem to take the people for pretty easy and tame fools, while you would persuade them to lie down whilst they are loaded, because their forefathers perhaps have gone before them in suffering the like or more grievous pressures. What? do you mean to prescribe for tyranny and oppression? But to come to your Observations, you will have those that are willing to learn, to know,  
1. That if some be taken away, it is to preserve them and the rest.  
Answ. That's more than you can assure them: rather it may seem to be for the destruction both of themselves and the residue of their estates, since it is but oil cast into that fire, which is likely if not quenched, to expose all unto desolation. And if those madmen that have hitherto fed that flame with the expense of their estates, were they not jurati in insaniam, they have had experience enough to have been as good as a Bedlam to them, and make them now at length to grow wiser, and even let that go which is already gone, until the public faith shall come to her lands, and make much of that wit they have received for interest. and shut up their hungry purses and coffers with that motto of the Poet, Scelus est post omnia perdere naulum: That they may at least keep something to bury them. Yea, it may prove a great blessing if those purges they have received of that overmuch fullness, which hath made them swell so much with pride, to the disturbance of the State, may now leave them in a more healthful temper of humility, to the quieting thereof. This would enrich them much more in their minds, than they are impoverished in their estates, and be an excellent recompense for all their losses. But little do you think what an excellent Observation this of yours might have been, had you vented it but two or three year's sooner, for the justification of Ship money. And yet I doubt it would scarce have gone for weight then, and we had best look well to the scales,  we accept it for so now, lest if this once go for currant, it be made a common colour for the greatest oppressions, and most injurious and perpetual taxations of the people, though (if it be possible) more illegal than that of the imposition of the twentieth part, if it be enough to bear the people in hand; That if some be taken away, it is to preserve them and the rest. But what an age of fancies do we live in? can you tell the people who it is that would take away either their estates or their lives; or if you could, is there any honesty in it, That you should take away the people's goods without Law, and please them by telling them no body else should rob them? Or to persuade them to throw their estates into the fire, to keep them out of the hands of thiefs; small comfort in this. What is the next Observation to make the matter fair in the Historical prospect?  
The second Observation is by way of question,  
Whether they had rather part with it to the Parliament, or that and their lives too to the Cavaleirs?  
Answ. Truly this is a hard question. A pitiful necessity that the poor people are brought into: it were worth the while to consider who they are that have shut them up into such an uncomfortable Dilemma, and what is the cause that they are so concluded: and sure it is no hard matter to discern. We can yet remember that there was a time not long since, when there was no necessity of either of these, when the Royal Authority of His Majesty, and the known Laws of the Kingdom were in force, and yielded the due protection to the Subjects; and they returned their due obedience unto them, till these hedges were broken down, under the pretence of mending the gaps in them: there was no room for so sad a question. And therefore the people may know whom they have to thank for it, even those that for the bringing to pass of their own ambitious and turbulent designs, have removed those ancient landmarks, and demolished those known and certain bounds and fences, and instead thereof brought in a new ambulatory, uncertain Government by Ordinances of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament, in opposition to the ancient and settled fundamental Laws of the Kingdom, and without and against the Royal Authority of the King. And now it seems the people (if you may be Judge) are left only to this lamentable choice, from whose hand they shall receive their ruin: or whether they will undergo a voluntary slavery on the one side, or an enforced one on the other. This is not much unlike that miserable choice that David was put unto, in the 2d of Samuel, 24. chapter, and the 13. and 14. verses. Whether the sword, or the famine, or the pestilence should be the reward of numbering of the people. That David was indeed to submit unto, (though as he saith he was in a great strait) because it was sent unto him by God, by the Prophet Gad, a Prophet of the Lord. And David wisely makes it his choice to fall into the hands of God, and not into the hands of men. And truly the straight that you put the people into, me thinks is worse in some respect than david's. They must needs it seems by you fall into the hands of men. And indeed I confess we do well deserve it, because the hand of the Lord in the plague and pestilence, which hath been so long and so often upon us of late in this Kingdom; and I think scarce yet removed, though it is as it were drowned in a greater judgement, hath done so little or no good upon us. But what Divinity is it, I beseech you, that sent you upon this errand upon the people, or who made you to be a Prophet Gad unto them, to circumscribe them within the limits of so hard an election? Or how long have they been Gods, into whose hands you would have them fall? Or what do you mean by those strange unheard of monsters, the Cavaleirs, that you make such bugbears to fright the people with? Or how comes this name of honour and dignity to be made by you, and others of your party, a name of reproach and disgrace? I pray you tell us what this strange word signifies, that we may know these horrid creatures by their names: let me tell you, it little becomes one that is a pretender to learning, to give his vote to so foolish a denomination, to so injurious a debasement and misacception of an innocent and honourable term. Foolish it is, let whose will be the Nomenclator, for names or titles are imposed for distinction, and to set forth unto us the nature of things as they differ from others; and that either according to the importance of the word or title, which doth in the etymology or sense of it represent the thing entitled thereby; or else according to a customary received use and acception of the word or stile, whereby it is by usurpation drawn from that which it properly signifies to represent some other thing, either by limiting the signification thereof, or diverting it to something that hath some resemblance or analogy unto the proper signification, or perhaps through mere ignorance of barbarism, or a blind and wilful prescription of custom, embraced by the people at all adventures; which notwithstanding when it is once grown currant, it is no wisdom in any to contradict, so that it be but an harmless absurdity: or else sometimes names or styles are imposed upon individuals which are of that multitude, and their personal properties so obscure, that they can hardly be all known, or designed by proper attributes, upon such sometimes, and indeed most commonly, unless by some extraordinary providence they are employed by those that have the power, ex instituto, of mere voluntary choice of the imposers, without any regard unto any similitude or proportion that the name beareth unto the person, upon which it is imposed as a mere voluntary mark upon them, to distinguish them from others; or sometimes they are imposed as common marks upon those that are of the same stock and kindred, either by original descent, or by translation, or engraffing, as by matrimonial contract, adoption, or the like. But this stile as you have no ground at all to make this a stile of ignominy unto any, indeed as a name of honour, so it hath been used as Eques which is a Cavalier in Latin, was an ordinary and almost the only usual word to signify a Gentleman, or Nobleman amongst the Romans; and so you may plead the usage of the word to apply it to His Majesty's Army, where you may find almost all the Gentry, and the greatest part of the Nobility of the Kingdom, whom you may not amiss in this sense style the Cavaliers, in opposition to that Rabble of the meaner sort of discontented people, that make up the Bellum servile on the other side. So indeed it is very proper to design forth those noble and honourable Commanders of His Majesty, whose veins are full of Princely and Noble blood, that can admit of no taint of disloyalty, in opposition to those right honourable Button-makers, and the rest of those right famous mechanic Commanders, who are of late become intolerable fumblers in this strange and new trade of war, to the great danger of their forgetting of their occupations. But how than doth it become a name of reproach amongst you? surely we may well guess what care you have, and the rest of your party, to maintain the honour and dignity of the State, when you go about to make the very terms of honour to become contumelies and reproaches. Is it not enough for you to put confusion into the frame of the State, but you must also confound the language of the Commonwealth. But indeed you may be excused perhaps in point of policy, for you were somewhat hard driven to find out a stile for the designation of that party whom you oppose; and therefore it is no wonder if in so great necessity you take the boldness to make a force upon the language, as well as the estates and liberties of the Subject, by drawing the one by violence from their proper signification, as well as the other from their proper possessors; for indeed what should we call them. Rebels? Surely that might have done well, but it seems your consciences could not digest so great and palpable a misapplication: you know well to whom that stile did properly belong it's like, and you could not be so injurious unto them, as to make so unjust an alienation of their property. What than? should you call them the Royalists, or the King's party? No. There was no policy in that, for it was nece●●●●y for you to use His Majesty's name, that you might not fright the people with a barefaced rebellion; but therein indeed you do exceedingly discolour it, and in going about to hid it, you lay the wickedness thereof so much the more bare unto any discerning eye. The very stile of your war condemns the very action of it, and declares you to be ashamed of your own enterprise, since you are feign to mask over the face of it with an empty veil of a pretence of loyalty, and therein you fulfil that saying of our Saviour; He that doth evil hateth the light, neither cometh unto the light, because their deeds are evil. Oh that you durst be but so honest, so ingenuous in your wickedness, as to aver that you do in plain terms. Surely this skulking under false colours, and hiding of yourselves behind a thread, makes but little for the credit of your design, if you dare justify what you do speak plainly; and let the people know it, lest hereafter when they find how they have been deceived, they fall to curse you for your collusion, when they shall lie weltering in their own blood, and shall expire in the votes of your damnation. But it is the nature of vice to be so conscious of its deformity, as not to dare to come abroad but under the name of virtue. Treason dares as well be hanged, drawn, and quartered, as be seen abroad without a disguise. And therefore however you (I speak not of you all) may seek the ruin of His Majesty's Person or Government, yet you will protest to maintain His Majesty's Person, and His Honour and Estate too: And your stile must be for the King and Parliament, wherein indeed you let us know if we had eyes, that you ought to be for the King, and in being against him, your own title confesseth you to be—. But I pray you by the way, why is not for God and the King as good, as for the King and Parliament? I pray you tell us why you unsheathed you swords against those that come under that motto into your hands, is it because you are against God? or against the King? or are you for them severally, or against them when together? Methinks such a conjunction should make no separation. Well, but however you are for the King: you durst not trust the queazinesse of the people's stomaches without this allay of His Majesty's name upon that hard diet you prescribe them. But indeed we may thank them for it, for had they been but of so strong a constitution as you could have wished, it's probable they should ne'er have had that sauce unto their meat, but the name as well as the authority of His Majesty should have been forgotten amongst you, unless sometimes you had thought good to talk of him in reproach, or so. I remember a pretty trial that was once made upon the people unto this purpose; perhaps it was not so well noted by all men. When that strange Ordinance of the Militia was to be put in execution in the County of Warwick, by the late Lord Brookes, and some others that were put in commission for that purpose, the Warrants for the drawing together of that County, were first sent abroad without His Majesty's name, to feel the people, as it may seem, whether they would digest it or no; and if it had passed for currant, it's a great question whether the King should have been heard of any more in the business. But when the Commissioners found the dislike of the people, and that the Warrants were excepted against as invalid, for want of the mention of the King's Authority: they could readily then pretend it as an oversight, and mistake in the drawing of the Warrants, and it was presently mended. And ever since the King's name (if I may so speak) hath been taken in vain, and is set as a lie unto the whole business. But, I pray you, give me leave a little, is there any likely hood that that was an oversight? did they employ men of no better trust and discretion in the transcribing and sending abroad of their Warrants, that none of them could discern the error? or could they be so strangely constant in a mistake in a matter of so great moment, as to let it pass through such a multitude of Warrants, as were then sent abroad into that County, and no man amongst them all so wise as to reform it in any one of them? Things that are done by mistake and oversight are commonly found but rare and inconstant: but when the same error goes through a whole business, it leaves a dangerous conjecture that it was purposely committed; and then certainly that had more of the Fox, than of the Lyon. But what a strange unlucky thing it was, that they could light upon no error but that, that they must needs leave out the principal sinew of the Warrant? Surely a man may doubt the King and his authority was but very slightly fixed in their thoughts, that they could not so much as dream of him in the writing out of so many Warrants. What confidence can the people have, that the great business they look after shall be well managed in the hands of those that are so apt to oversee? They had need to take heed how they follow them at a venture, or how they commit their consciences unto their guidance. But sure if it were an oversight, it would make a man guess that there was Digitus Dei in it, to make them speak plainly their intentions against their wills, and that God suffered them in their haste to send the hag abroad undressed, and without her veil. That the people, if they would not be wilfully blind, might see what a beautiful business they were invited to admit into their embraces. And that they might behold this rebellion in its own colours, and learn to hate and abhor it with their souls, for surely the face is the same still, though the mask be on; and they that are so easy as to believe otherwise, are doubly abused, and made at once not only Rebels, but even stark fools and Idiots. But the people disliked it naked, and so the veil was quickly put on again, and all was well. Now they must believe there is nothing but beauty in it: the King's stile walks fairly in the front of the business, and they must rebel against the King, for the King and Parliament. And so they must by no means call them that are truly for His Majesty, the King's party, or by any name like unto that; but the name of Cavaliers must be their stile, and, though without sense or reason, their contumely and reproach too. But a man of your learning should not have subscribed to such an absurd and senseless injury, done unto a harmless and honourable term.  
At least a man of your calling should have been wary how you had contributed to the present and future distempers of the people, by setting your hand to the pass of an odious term. that serves for nothing, as it is now used, but to maintain rancour and hatred amongst those that you should endeavour to unite in the bosom of the same Church, and in the body of the same Commonwealth. For my part, I believe those two names of Cavaliers and Roundheads, as they are now in use amongst some, were the inventions of the Arch-enemy of mankind, to blow the fire of division withal amongst us, and to nurse up an irreconcilable variance in this Nation. And therefore I could wish there were a Law made for the utter abolishing of both those names, as they are now used for names of opposition, lest the Devil and his complices under the one cast an odium upon the service of God, and under the other upon loyalty to our Prince. For my part I will endeavour to keep them both out of my mouth in any such odious acception, sigh I conceive them to be full of uncharitable non-sens. And I am sure you did not well to become the Devil's fueller, by contributing to the passage of that odious title as it is made, whereby you here entitle the King's Subjects: it were more proper work for you to quench fires, then to foment them. But we know well enough who you mean, and is it necessary then that we must be devoured by the Cavaliers, as you call them; or the Parliament? Is our great expectation of the redress of our grievances come to this? Is this the fruit of two year's consultation? Is this all the advantage that hath been made unto the poor abused people of the Land, of all those large and happy opportunities, that have been afforded this Parliament for the procurement of the good and safety of Church and State: that out of our fears and doubts we should be now concluded and shut up unto an unavoidable ruin? Sure if it be so, we must needs conclude, that the wisdom of humane Counsels is not omnipotent; and that the Argos eyes of the greatest politic bodies may be sometimes so charmed asleep, as to betray their charge unto danger, especially when they intercept the free intercourse betwixt themselves and the head, and that there is no confiding even in Parliaments themselves. And it may be God is now about to teach us this lesson, That we may learn to rely upon none but him; and that he hath now suffered us to fail of our hopes, that he may instruct us by experience to place them better, than upon the wisdom or power of any concurrence of humanity, even upon none, but upon that indefeatable power, and that incorruptible wisdom that is in God himself. And indeed this lesson if it be well learned may be worth more to us than any other good that we gaped for, since there can be no greater strengthening unto a Nation or People, then to teach them to deny all strength in the creature, and to cast themselves totally upon God. I confess for my own part I once thought with the rest, That the calling of a Parliament had been almost that Panchreston, that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, that universal medicine, that would have brought with it a cure for all our diseases. Yea, and I yet think, that if we take a Parliament in the right and genuine sense, as it is, or aught to be, an entire body, unmaymed, unmangled, and undivided, it is one of the best grounds for a confidence to rest on, that the sphere of mortality can yield us. And therefore if we be not altogether indocible, the Lord hath hereby taken the most absolute and summary course, to beat off our dependence upon any earthly thing that we can almost possibly imagine; since he hath hereby showed us the failing of that, which of most things that the world can afford, was most likely to yield an all-sufficiency to our hopes. But I could wish, if it had pleased God, that we might have learned this document by some more gentle means, and that we had not deserved to have such a curse sent upon that which we took for the greatest of our blessings, as to be put into such a miserable strait between the devouring jaws of two inevitable destructions, like the poor Israelites between the Egyptians and the Sea; or like the miserable Britain's infested by the Picts, between the slaughter of the enemy, and the devouring of the waves, when they sent that lamentable complaint unto the Romans, To Agilius thrice Consul the sighs of the Britain's. The enemy drives us to the Sea, the Sea drives us bacl again to the enemy, so between both we are either drowned or slain: but yet we hope better for all your Augury, God can open a passage where you can see none, for the escaping of both these dangers. To conclude this point, we have two Answers to your Observation. First, it is but your groundless presumption and surmise, or rather it may be your excogitated pretence; That if those you speak of should yet be so just as to let men alone with their propriety and liberties, they should then necessarily be made a prey both in their goods and lives unto those you style Cavaliers. Nay, we do firmly believe, that if they might be suffered to retain their own, and not forced or persuaded by you and your like, to contribute to that unjustifiable design which is on foot, they might have a fare more comfortable enjoyment of their estates and lives too, by the protection of His Majesty's goodness and justice, than you can promise them by that course you advise them to: whether it be that you would have them be content to be plundered, or willingly to offer up their rights. Neither do those that have experience of them find the Cavaliers (as you style them) such ravenous beasts as you would make them, I could name some places where they have most to do, where the people enjoy both their lives and goods fare more peaceably and quietly upon the terms and obedience and subjection to their Prince, then as we believe you in London can boast of, or any other places where your party hath long settled. Witness Oxford, Worcester, and the rest. We hear not in those places of any such violence offered to men in their estates and liberties, as you have so frequent amongst you in other places.  
But if the danger were as great as you would make it. In the second place it is but a poor miserable comfort that you offer unto the poor people, when you would have them give up their estates unto your party, that they may be free from the Cavaliers. Ne moriare mori is a strange kind of medicine, you would not like such a recipe from your Physician, I believe. This is in a sort to advise a man to drown himself, and tell him it is a sure way to scape hanging: or to cast his goods into the Sea, to keep them from a Pirate. Or as if one should meet me upon the highway, and advise me to give him my purse upon fair terms, lest another that comes after may take it by force: it is indeed to persuade the people to embrace a certain ruin to avoid a possible one. But thirdly, what justice is it in your party to take upon them to deprive the Subjects of their rights and liberties, under the pretence of preventing others from doing them the like, or a greater mischief. That conscience walks by no perfect rule that thinks it lawful to commit the least injustice, to prevent another from doing a greater. And therefore this your Observation is a very poor allay, either unto the people's misery and oppression, or unto the guilt of those that act it upon them: and your question upon the matter in the Historical consideration, Whether they had rather part with it, that is, with their estates to the Parliament, or that and their lives too to the Cavaliers, makes not a mite either to the comfort of their wretched condition, or to the justice of their illegal taxations, which yet we believe in all things considerable, is unparallelled in any History. And therefore notwithstanding all that you have said, they may still cry out, never such times, such taxations, such precedents, such a war. And so I have done with your second sort of Observations.  
The third classis of your Commentations, is upon the business in a legal consideration, wherein you offer some Propositions to those your Malignants, as you call them, that are skilled in the Law.  
The first is, Whether you had better trust to your own strength, or another man's favour for your defence?  
Answ. This question I can scarce see how it is very pertinent to the business in hand, but whilst you are obscure, you think perhaps that we are bound to take you to be wise; but as it is you may take this answer to it. That it is not very good for you to trust either to your own strength, or another man's favour for your safety: and I would advise you to write more divine like hereafter, then to build upon such suppositions of carnal confidence. The best way is for you to trust God alone for your safety, and that you may have comfort in that, to live in that subjection and obedience to your lawful Sovereign, his immediate substitute, as the Lord requires at your hands; and that's the safest way for the people too; for they are like to find but little advantage to themselves, that go about to work out their own security by resisting the divine ordinance: leave therefore these carnal contrivances, and if you are wise and honest, show it in advising the people to live in that obedience unto His Majesty, that God, who hath placed Him over them, looks for from them; teach them without consulting with the flesh, to do that God requires of them, who is best able to secure them against all dangers that can befall them in their duties unto Him: and yet let me tell you withal, that though we must not trust upon the favour of any other for our safety, yet where God hath so ordered it in his providence, and enjoined it by his authority, we must make use of the favour of another, or at least of the justice and authority of another for our defence and safeguard, and not altogether of our own strength; or otherwise, what confusion would it not bring into the world, if every man must stand or fall by his own strength, the weakest would be sure then to go to the wall, and every man that were more powerful than another, might be ready to build up his own security by the danger and ruin of others that had less strength than he, though fare greater right; but you tell us what you mean here by strength, My strength (say you) is the Law, against which if the Government command, it does me wrong, if I obey, I do myself wrong. To this I answer, that it is true in some sense, that the strength of the Subject is the Law under God; but yet this strength which is the law is not to be managed or enforced by every private hand; but by him principally to whom God hath principally given the charge of it, within this Kingdom is his Majesty, whose authority and power is to give life unto the law, either immediately by himself, or by his subordinate instruments, unto whom authority is derived from him to that purpose: for the law is dead in a sort, but when it is in the Magistrate's hand, whose power is as it were the soul of the law, otherwise the law would quickly become destructive unto itself, if every private man might take upon him to set the force of it in motion. And therefore though private men know the law never so well, yet they may not ordinarily be their own carvers by it, but must be content to receive the benefit thereof from the Magistrates hand, otherwise our Saviour might seem to ask an impertinent question, who made me a judge or a Ruler over you? And therefore though the law be the strength of the people, yet the people must expect to receive this their strength by the dispensation of the supreme Magistrate and his substitutes, and not at their pleasure to carve it out unto themselves, otherwise the office of a Magistrate were to little purpose in the Commonwealth. But yet this law is to be the rule of government, and as you say truly, if the Government command against, it does you wrong, if you obey, you do yourself wrong: and why then do you countenance those illegal Ordinances, and other commands that are now on foot, which are directly contrary to the known law of the Kingdom, and so clearly and directly injurious to the Subject? Or why do you woe the people to obey them, and so to become accessaries to their own wrong? And yet let me tell you, as for the supreme Magistrate, who hath none above him upon earth that can authorise you against him, this will by no means infer the lawfulness of a resistance, such a one as is now on foot; for though it be true that if he command contrary to the Law of the Kingdom, he therein doth the Subject wrong, yet he is not accountable therefore unto us, but unto God, since he hath no superior upon earth that hath corrective power over him; and therefore to his judgement we must leave him, who only is above him, since he is acknowledged by Parliament to be supreme upon earth in the government of his Kingdoms. That saying of one herein may seem much to the purpose. Reges si aliquando potestate sibi concessâ abutuntur, non sunt à nobis graviter exasperandi, sed ubi sacerdotum admonitionibus non acquieverunt, Domino judicio sunt reservandi: And therefore it is not in the power of any to take up Arms against him to force him to do right, but we must learn of David to leave them unto God, 1 Sam. 24.12, 15. And though in some cases perhaps you may be said to do wrong unto yourself, if you should obey the command of the King contrary to the Law; yet it is not so in all cases, for we find examples, and one most authentical one, of active obedience unto the Magistrate, even commanding contrary to Law and right: for we find our Saviour paying tribute unto the Officers of Caesar, though they required it unjustly, and contrary to Law and right, and against the liberty of the Subject, as our Saviour intimates, Matth. 17.25. First, there our Saviour shows it to be a freedom belonging unto him. What thinkest thou Simon (saith our Saviour unto Peter) of whom do the Kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers? Peter saith unto him, of strangers? Jesus said unto him, then are the children free. Where our blessed Saviour proves that Caesar could not justly require tribute of him, as is clear unto any man of judgement. Well, what doth our Saviour do then, doth he stand upon his terms, doth he send Peter unto them with an harsh denial? or command him to draw his sword and set them packing? No, he condescends with a non obstante to his own freedom, notwithstanding, (saith that blessed Master of obedience, to the silencing of all rebellious mouths) lest we should offend them. What? Why he will have it paid, both for himself and Peter, and yet we do not find that so much was required, but only of our Saviour himself, as if our Saviour would even almost supererrogate in obedience: nay, he will work wonders but he will do it. And he that would not do a miracle to feed himself when he was hungry, by turning a stone into bread; yet he will do a miracle to give us an example of obedience, and to pay tribute to Caesar, though requiring it against right, by making a fish become his treasurer, to supply his wants for so good a purpose. The riches of the Sea shall be ransacked for it, rather than he will give the least countenance to disobedience; and his watery Subjects shall pay tribute unto him that was King of Kings and Lord of Lords. That he being now in the form of a servant, might pay it to his vassal an earthly Prince, Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, saith he to Peter, Go thou to the Sea and cast in thy hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up, and when thou hast opened his mouth thou shalt find a piece of money, that take and give unto them for thee and me. Mark, I beseech you, though he might have pleaded his liberty, and so, as you speak, might seem to wrong himself in condescending; yet (saith he) lest we should offend them: Vnicuique licet renunciare privilegio suo, and therefore he will rather dispense with his own privilege, then give offence by causing a disturbance in the Kingdom, or by making the least show or appearance of disobedience to Governors, thereby to bring a scandal upon the doctrine that he taught, or upon the Christian religion that he came to plant in the world: from whence for your conversion (if it may be) if not, for your confusion (I doubt it will be) I collect this Observation against yours, That we may and aught to obey the Magistrate, though commanding against the Law; and so wrongfully, to our own private injury, where the disobedience is like to be offensive, in causing a disturbance in the State, or scandal in the Church. Will you have the point clearly discussed, take it then thus. The question is, and indeed it is a main one, how the Subject is to carry himself toward His Majesty, in case he command contrary to the Law? I hope I shall give you a right determination of this doubt in these several propositions. First, I grant it clearly that the King in duty ought not to command any thing contrary to the Law; for the Law is unto the King as the Rule unto the Builder, the Compass unto the Pilot, the Map or Card unto the Traveller, whereby he ought to gauge and square out all his motions and actions of regality and government; and wheresoever his operations are disproportioned unto this rule, they are irregular.  
2. The command of the King or supreme Magistrate may be said to be against the Law two several ways; either so as that it enjoins me to do something which the Law forbids me, or forbids me to do that which the Law enjoins me. Which is against my duty that I own unto the Law; or else in that it commands me to do or leave undone something, which the law gives me freedom not to do, or not to leave undone, which is against the privilege that the law allows me: in the first case I ought not to obey him actively, for the law of the Kingdom is the declared and deliberate will of the supreme Magistrate, and therefore so to obey him, were to disobey him, since thereby (as one hath well said) I should disobey his deliberate will to obey his sudden will, which is unreasonable. Yet in this case I must obey him passively, by submitting unto the punishment that he shall inflict upon me, at least so fare as to forbear all forcible resistance.  
In the second case, I may and ought sometimes to obey him, since therein, though he indeed may seem to break the law in commanding, yet I do not break it in obeying, sigh the law though it allow me, yet it doth not tie me to my privilege, and therefore foregoing it, I do not contradict my duty to the law, but only forgo the liberty that the law gives me, which I may and must forgo (sometimes at least) that I may obey the command of the supreme Magistrate, in case it may make for the obtaining or preserving of some greater good, or for the prevention of greater evil, than the preservation of my liberty can recompense. As where the foregoing my freedom or privilege in my estate may preserve some greater good unto myself, or may make for the peace of the Commonwealth, or for the preservation of some great and notable disturbance in the State, or where it may further the peace of the Church, or prevent scandal from our profession, or impediment from the preaching of the Gospel, or the like. I prove it thus; First, à fortiori, If I ought for these causes to departed from the liberty which the law of God allows me, much more than ought I in such cases to departed from the liberty which I am invested in by the law of man; if from my christian liberty, much more from my civil liberty. But the former is clear, much more than the latter; for there is no man that can reasonably deny but for peace sake, and to avoid scandal, I ought to dispense with my christian liberty; for this, we have both precept and example, precept 1. Cor. 8.8, 9 Galat. 5.13. Rom. 14. from vers. 12. to the end. Examples we have too, and those pregnant ones, as that of Paul dispensing with that liberty which he had in Christ from the ceremonies of the law, for peace sake, and to further the Gospel, and for prevention of scandal, and this we have both in his practice and profession, in his practice, Act. 16.3. where we find him circumcising Timothy for peace sake with the Jews, and that the Gospel might not be hindered: and upon the same ground we find him purifying himself, Act. 21.26. and that by the advice of Saint james and the Elders, his profession you may see also to this purpose, 1 Cor. 8.13. if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend; yea in Act. 15. in that famous Apostolical Synod, we find the Apostles, for peace sake, and to avoid scandal, making a constitution for the abnegement of that freedom in meats and drinks which the Church had obtained in Christ, as you may see in that first and most authentical decretal Epistle which is there recorded, sent from the Apostles and Elders with the whole Church, by the hands of Paul and Barnabas, together with judas and Silas, unto the brethren which were of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia, which examples and precepts if they were well considered, they would teach us more moderation and charity than is found in too many in these days, who are ready to turn the Church upside down, upon every fancied inconvenience that they apprehend in the discipline or ceremonies of the Church, they cry up liberty, liberty, but in the mean time they make havoc of the Church in that that more nearly concerns us, which is peace and unity; whereas the Apostles teach us both by precept and example, that we are rather to part with liberty than peace, and that many other inconveniences, even as great ones as Circumcision was after Christ, may be admitted, rather than the peace disturbed, or the preaching of the Gospel hindered. And if we may and aught upon such terms to part with our christian liberty, then surely it is most reasonable that upon the like terms, (i. e.) for the peace of the Commonwealth, to prevent disturbance, to avoid scandal, or to make way for the Gospel, we ought to departed from our civil liberty; for sicut se habet libertas christiana ad pacem Ecclesiae, sic se habet libertas civilis ad pacem reipubls. And therefore in such case the command of the supreme Magistrate is to be obeyed, though it be contrary to the law, in that that concerns the privilege or liberty of the Subject. Secondly, this is more precisely confirmed here by the example of our Saviour, who to avoid scandal, obeyed Caesar's Officers, and made Peter join with him therein, although it were against his liberty and privilege, as our Saviour seems to intimate. So it appears clearly that our Saviour was free by the law or custom of that Nation, and yet to avoid scandal or offence, he obeyed Caesar's Officers requiring tribute of him, though contrary to the liberty of the Subject; and Christi actio nostra instructio, you cannot walk more safely then in the footsteps of Christ in those things that concern either your civil or spiritual conversation: this will be a fare more authentical guide unto the people, than any rules you can prescribe against it, especially in those things which he did of ordinary dispensation, as this which was not a matter of power but submission, etc. And therefore I may ask, did Christ well or no in paying tribute against the liberty of the Subject, and so in obeying Caesar's Officers command against the law of the Kingdom? I doubt not but you will answer, yes, (unless you are out of love with him too because he is a King) but here he presents himself to us as a subject, well, why than I say unto you, and to every other man, as our Saviour once in another case, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, the demand of tribute against the law was sinful in the Officers, but our Saviour's obedience was good and laudable, (as he did all things well) and therefore imitable by us. Thirdly, this will appear by the rule of reason in three conclusions, which I hope you will not deny: the first is this, That we may and aught to dispense with our private right, where it cannot likely be preserved without a public ruin; nature teacheth the arm to expose itself to a blow to save the head and the whole body; for the general safety is always to be preserved afore the particular, though never so near us.  
Secondly, That the preservation of the Church from scandal, or the Commonwealth from division is the preservation of a public good, and the prevention of a public evil; and both these are in themselves full as good, or better than liberty, and therefore, especially, when they are enlarged by the advantage of the gratuity of them in respect of a private freedom: and this is according to the rule of charity; for as Mr Calvin well hath it, sicut charitas fidei, ita libertas subjicienda est charitati: and therefore although it be granted, that where nothing else is to be considered, the Magistrate doth an injury in commanding you contrary to the law of the Kingdom, and that you do wrong unto yourself in obeying such a command; yet if the command enjoin you nothing that is contrary to the commanding part of the law of God, or the Commonwealth, but only against the permissive part thereof, not against duty but privilege, you ought to obey in such case rather than give occasion of scandal upon the Church, or bring reproach to your profession, or disturbance to the peace of the State wherein you live. And in such case, your obedience is no wrong to yourself, but your disobedience a wrong to the Church and Commonwealth.  
Thirdly, By way of corollary to prevent an evasion, lest any should object that the public liberty is endangered by suffering entrenchments to be made upon the private. The third conclusion is this, that as public good is to be preferred afore private, so amongst public and private goods, peace is more necessary than liberty, as that which concerneth the very being of a body is more necessary than that which concerneth only the well being: now that peace concerneth the very being of a State, our Saviour himself seems to instruct us, when he tells us, That a Kingdom divided cannot stand. But we cannot say so of liberty, and therefore even the public liberty is to be dispensed with for public peace: we must dispense with commodities for preservation of essences. Besides that we have learned by lamentable experience, that when liberty is built up upon the ruins of peace, it cannot stand long upon such a foundation, but is quickly buried in the ruins which it hath made: Pax est custos libertatis, The peace of the Kingdom is the nurse and guardian of the liberty and freedom of the State; and if you take away that to preserve this, it is as if you should pull down the foundation to enlarge the building: or, as if you should send away the nurse for the preservation of the child, or remove the fuel to maintain the fire. And truly I conceive this rule may be well observed, for the discovery and prevention of one main plot of the Devil, who hath been ever and anon setting liberty against peace, and exposed this to ruin by the intemperate desire of that. This is the ordinary stratagem of Satan to set Schism afoot in the Church liberty; liberty hath cried down peace there. This is the very engine whereby he doth usually convey sedition and faction into the body of the State; liberty, liberty, it that popular voice, together with a pretence of Religion, whereby the peace of the State hath been so often demolished and cast down: for my part I wish there may be a perpetual contract between peace and liberty, but if one must go, we had fare better part with liberty than peace. And therefore by the way we may note, that they are no better Politicians than they are Christians, that go about to preserve or recover liberty by Sedition; their first care should be to preserve the integrity of the body, and then that it may be fat and well-liking. And now it is very easy for me to bring it home unto you, since it is as clear as the light. That however the commands of His Majesty have been either with or against the Law of the Kingdom, as concerning matter of privilege & liberty; the disobedience, and much more the active resistance of you and your party is most clearly, to the great disturbance of the State, yea even almost to the destruction thereof, whither it is still drawing nearer and nearer by that means, and how foone it may come to that unhappy period we know not. And it is as clear, that it hath been very scandalous to the Church and our profession, and given as much or more occasion to the enemies of God to blaspheme, and exposed the Protestant Religion, yea the whole profession of Christianity, more to ignominy and reproach; and to an odium with interest, than any action, that hath been publicly carried by the professors of the Protestant Religion, since the Reformation, hath ever done: And therefore you must either profess yourselves to be much more wise than our Saviour, which I hope you dare not aver; or to be much more wicked than becometh those that profess to be his Disciples, which I doubt you will not admit. But, I pray you, what commands do you find enjoined you by His Majesty, contrary to the Law of the Kingdom, as concerning the commanding part thereof? or when against the privilege or liberty that he denyeth to them? If you should ask me the like question on the other side, I believe I could furnish you with store of instances. Since I take it, it may be easily proved, that the whole business, and the main body of that design which is now in hand against His Majesty, is a bastard issue, and can derive no pedigree from the Law either of God or man to make it legitimate. As for His Majesty, He desires nothing but that Authority to be acknowledged in Him, which the Law hath placed in Him: He desires to make the known Law of the Kingdom the only rule of His rule and Government. But it is by no means so on the other side, if they can find any colours from the Laws that may put any plausible appearance of legality upon their business, well and good: but if not, let the Law cry never so loud, A monstrous headless vote of the dismembered Houses of Parliament, or for a need of the House of Commons alone, without or against the King and the House of Lords, shall be countenance, though to set forward the prosecution of their most illegal purposes. And to make good their Protestation for the maintenance of the true Protestant Religion, the Honour and Estate of His Majesty, the Privileges of Parliament, the Laws of the Kingdom, and the Liberty of the Subject; The Protestant Religion must be scorned and reproached, by Brownists, Anabaptists, and Atheists; The Honour and State of His Majesty must be exposed to the contempt of the vilest of the people; The Privileges of Parliament must be perpetually trampled on at the pleasure of some few that are predominant in the Houses, by casting out the Members, by mere arbitrary Votes, for nothing but because they make use of that privilege which the Law allows, and the Houses themselves begged and obtained of His Majesty at their first entrance upon their consultation for a freedom of speech, (nay sometime a whole side as it were of the House of Lords, first forced out by terror and tumult, and then voted out upon mere pleasure.) And the power and authority of the House of Commons, to a most palpable abusing and betraying of the trust reposed in them by His Majesty and the people of the Land, reduced to a close Committee of about 15 or 16 persons: some strange design sure that they have in hand, that they must get into such corners, and have such clouds over them to cover it. And they say the business is made a nightwork too, it seems they dare not trust the Sun with it, a fit time to consult about a work of darkness. But they must remember either now or hereafter, that there is a light over them that they see not, that discovers all their secrets. There is one still amongst them that they cannot vote out neither, to whom light and darkness are both alike, and the night is as clear as the day. There is an invisible notary too that takes our records of all their determinations and plots; and truly they had best find him out, and prevail with him if they can to take an oath of secrecy: (which they can never do) before they proceed any farther in the business; for as sure as they live he'll reveal all else, and a thousand to one will undo all their plots by some counterplot or other, and will be as bad as an Elisha to the King of Syria, to defeat and disappoint their most secret designs. They may guess at some thing if they will by what hath already fallen out; they have had divers experiments how unprosperously their counsels thrive: And therefore methinks Master Pym might well propose that question, that the King of Syria did unto his servants, upon the several defeats that he observed to have befallen him in his enterprises against Israel. Will ye not show me which of us is for the King? But to save him a labour, let him but the next time they meet read the 12 first verses of the 139 Psalm, and a hundred to one that will be as good as any charm they can use to discover him who it is that doth thus secretly intrude into their counsels, and that doth thus defeat and make void all their most subtle contrivances, so that hitherto for the most part they have brought forth nothing but wind, though I confess it hath been a whirlwind that hath disturbed and shaken the frame both of Church and State. Even the very same that defeated the Counsel of Achitophel against David; little do they think how he sits and laughs at their most wise plots and contrivances of wickedness. Let them but look into the second Psalm, and they may see him at it methinks, if they could but put on the spectacle of the Psalmist. They may there see him as it were deriding at them, and laughing at their grave and prudent madness, whilst they with such confidence sit together, as if all the wisdom in the world were in their breasts, striving to break off from themselves and others, the bonds and cords of the Lords Anointed. Little do they see how he blasts all their consultations? how he damps all their purposes, even as fast as they give them issue: read Is. 8.9, 10.  
Oh that they would at length be wise indeed, and remember that woe of the Prophet, Is. 29.15. Woe be to them that seek deep to hid their counsel from the Lord, and their works are in the dark; and they say, Who seethe us? and who knoweth us? Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay. But is this to maintain the privileges of Parliament, to divest the Members of that power and trust reposed in them by His Majesty and the people, and to commit the managing of the affairs of the Kingdom, to your new device of a close Committee? And to make them not only the Masters of the rest of the Members of the Houses, and them their slaves and shadows; but to make them Lords Paramount over the King and the whole Kingdom, to require oaths of Allegiance unto them, as of late hath most insolently and impiously been done in London, (if we are not misinformed:) and to put the lives, liberties, and estates of all the people of the Land, into the disposing of a matter of 15 men, that have no such power given them either by King or Subjects; and those for ought we know, neither Angels, nor Saints, nor of the best sort of men, that they may sacrifice all at their pleasure to their passions; and no man must so much as ask a reason of them, for fear of pressing into a secret of State? Was there ever a Nation so befooled? Was there ever a people brought to such a pass? Is the famous and flourishing Government of this Nation, by the King and the States of the Kingdom under him, brought now to an Oligarchy, a mere usurpation, a most tyrannical and arbitrary rule of 15 men, that are made as it were absolute Lords of the Laws, the liberties, the lives and estates of the whole Nation? Sure they have played their cards well, they have showed themselves excellent projectors; so handsomely and undescried, to set up a Monopoly in themselves, both of Regal and Parliamentary power; a Monopoly upon the point of all the wealth and estates of the Kingdom. They have carried the business very cunningly, to bring things unto this pass, and when they have done to make such fools of the poor people (whom they ride in the business, and likely enough laugh at them in their sleeves, to see how silly and simple the poor fools are to be led so gently by the nose of them) as to get them out of conscience to undo themselves, their wives and children, to furnish them with money, and to expose their lives unto the greatest dangers, to the loss of so many thousands of them: and all to make good their own bondage and slavery to these Masters of the Close Committee. En quo discordia cives perduxit miseros! We have quarrelled ourselves into a pretty condition. But shall we be mad still? Have the people of the Land abjured their senses and reason with their consciences? Will they never be weary of such a miserable slavery? Now for the Liberty of the Subject and the Laws of the Kingdom, you may easily guess what becomes of them, when the Privileges of Parliament are trampled on by their own feet. Qui sibi nequam, cui bonus? if they make so bold with their own, you may well imagine what they do with ours. Or where, I beseech you, is the Magna Charta, is not that a Law of the Kingdom? When contrary to the very first words of that Charter, the liberties of the Church are professedly invaded, etc. Or what is become of the Petition of Right? which was so much talked of heretofore, when at the pleasure of these men without any due process at Law, the estates, nay, the lives of the Subject must be taken away by force and violence: witness the late murder of His Majesty's Subjects at Bristol and at London by Martial Law, (which no Law putteth into their hands, either without or against His Majesty's Authority) for that loyal design of theirs to have delivered up those Cities unto His Majesty. Or where is the Law for the Militia, or for the taking away of His Majesty's Ships and Forts? Or where is there any Law to enable them to command any of the King's Subjects to take up Arms against the King, whose Subjects they themselves confess themselves to be in their language, though they do indeed most clearly deny it in their practice. Or is it subjection to seek the ruin of a Prince's Authority and His life by open force and hostility; if this be subjection, I pray you tell me what is rebellion? or why do they dissemble with God and man in styling themselves His Majesty's most humble and obedient Subjects, when they are in actual opposition against Him, and will neither obey Him nor the Law by which he governs: if this be subjection, Jack Cade had a great deal of wrong, and Wat Tyler too. And Percy and Catesby were a couple of fools, that they would not come in to justify themselves to be the King's humble and obedient Subjects. But it seems it is no wrong at all done by the people to themselves, when they obey the most unlawful and most unreasonable commands of your party. But if you obey the King against the Law, you consent unto your own wrong: but we cannot so much forget our reason as to believe it. Or do you mean to bring in a new reason, as well as a new religion? But I beseech you, what if I am not bound to obey him; nay, what if I am bound not to obey him, as in some cases I confess I am, if His Majesty should command me contrary to the Law of God, etc. must I needs then take up Arms? no certainly, in such case I must submit to His Authority, in the willing suffering of that punishment he shall inflict, as is aforesaid. Or did our Saviour wrong himself in submitting unto Pilate? or did those good Christians in the Primitive times wrong themselves, when they glorified God so much in their cheerful sufferings upon this very ground. If you may be Judge they shall all have actions of the case against themselves, and were Martyrs in their own wrong: indeed I doubt you'll never be guilty of such a sin. And so I have done with your first Proposition that you propose to the Malignants, as you most malignantly style them, that are the King's good Subjects. And now let us see what instruction you give us in your second, (Cum bonis avibus) What is it? The great offence of Authority is whatsoever is committed against the State: spoken like a Politician. And what is this to your purpose. The great offence of Authority you say is whatsoever is committed against the security of the State. And I say so too, and infer upon it, that therefore that design which you are about, and would justify, is one of the great offences against Authority; for what greater offence against the security of the State, then to incense a people to rebel against their Governor, or to teach them to trample under foot that supreme power of the Magistrate, and those Laws of the Kingdom, upon which the safety and security of the State is established. Talk what you will of the danger and oppression of a tyranny, you may see if you will in the fruit of this your bloody design, that one rebellion and civil war may bring in more mischief against the safety and security of the State, then half a dozen Tyrants would likely have done: for show me any Tyrant that ever reigned in this or any other Kingdom, that by his single oppression brought a Kingdom to the sixth part of that consusion, that this ungodly design now on foot hath brought our Kingdom unto. Great complaint there was of the tyranny of Ship-money and Loans, etc. and are they not all reduced? But for my part (I care not who knows my mind) though I cannot justify the things, nor those that advised them, yet I conceive it had been much better for us to have borne Ship-money, Loans, Monopolies, and many more oppressions, then to have changed those burdens for such a confusion as is now brought into the State, which is like without God's great mercy, to end in the ruin and destruction of the Nation: And therefore you are no good Counsellor for the safety and security of the State, for though that grand principle which is so much abused, be admitted for true, That Salus populi suprema lex, yet I can tell you it will make little for your purpose, since it is no way for the safety of the people, (as you see written in blood before your eyes, upon Edge-hill, and at Braynceford, & many other places) that they should enabled to take up Arms against their Prince, as often as they shall fancy, or be persuaded by any others, that mean to plough with them for a crop to their own ambition. That the Prince hath broken his covenant with them, or transgressed the limits and bounds of his Government. The people's safety is never at greater hazard, then when it is put into their own hands: show me a Commonwealth that ever suffered so much in the gripe of a Tyrant as many have done by the feet of a multitude, & otherwise your Observation will be turned against yourself. And your own pen will condemn you for a great offender against the security of the State, when you incense the people to maintain Sedition: you see the Malignants are but little the wiser for this your second Proposition.  
I come to your third. Heathens tell us, that the wise must give as much to the Law as may be, but to the Lawgiver as little; for (says he) he is a man subject to passions, may be miscarried, etc. Had I a mind to cavil, I could quarrel at your Grammar. But let that pass: Heathens tell us, you say, Well said, it is very well done, Heathens are fit Authors for such an heathenish business. But yet you must deal electively amongst them, you may not take them all at adventure, some are too honest to countenance your business, and that's not well where Heathens must correct Christians. And truly I doubt you have mistaken your choice here, for what (I pray you) do these Heathens tell you, That the wise must give as much to the Law as may be, but to the Lawgiver as little, because he is a man subject to passions. What do you mean by the Law, if you mean the authentical constitutions of the Kingdom, made by the King, with advice of the two Houses of Parliament. The quarrel is then His Majesties and ours, who do complain that there is too little given unto the Laws; That they are vilified and despised, battered down and demolished by I know not what arbitrary and illegal Ordinances: give you and your party the Law its due, and there will be quickly an end of the quarrel; then the King shall have His Rights and praeeminences acknowledged which the Laws do give Him, and the Subjects shall have their rights and liberties made good, and their lives secured from plunder and violence, which the Laws allow them; then those offenders that have violated the Laws shall be brought to condign punishment: Then Brownists and Separatists, depravers of the common-prayer-book, and all rebellious and seditious people, shall have their due portions that the Law gives them; and in that distribution I doubt you would have little cause to rejoice: Then the Militia of the Kingdom shall be restored into His hands, unto whose trust the Law hath committed it: Then new Laws shall not be made without the royal assent of His Majesty: Then treason shall be treason again, and loyalty shall be loyalty again: Then the good Subjects of His Majesty shall not be imprisoned, or spoilt of their goods, or deprived of their lives, without a due and a legal trial: Then there shall be no Supersedeas'es' scent out to prohibit or interdict a legal proceeding against any routs or riots in Southwark: Then Habeas Corpus'es' shall be granted unto the Subject upon just and legal causes, without any quarrel against the Judges. But alas, that's the cause that we groan, that you give so little to the Law. I would you were so good an Advocate as to persuade those, whose part you seem to act, to re-establish the Law in its full and authentical force; and I think the King and his party will ask no more of you. But you deal deceitfully with the Law, as well as with His Majesty: you talk much of it; you speak it fair, you give it good words, but in the mean time you make too little account of the force of it, it is with your party no better than Sampsons' withes or cords, at best you use it but as a leaden Lesbian rule, bending it and bowing it to your own purposes; and things never go right when the structure is made the measure of the rule. But I would feign know what you here mean by the Lawgiver, whose portion you would have to be so straitened, as little as may be to be given unto him. Do you mean by the Lawgiver the King? I thank you for that then, for sure that is your meaning. But truly in my opinion you deserve to be complained of to the Close Committee, for giving so much as that stile imports unto His Majesty, for if the King be the Lawgiver, than the Legislative power is not in the Houses, but in the King; for there must be but one Lawgiver, unless you mean to confound the body of the Commonwealth, (as indeed it seems you do) and then what will become of your Ordinances of Parliament? Sure you have much to answer for for this; neither can I see how you will slip the collar, unless you should say, that by Lawgiver here you understand the Houses of Parliament. And then you run into another error, that will deserve the Bar; for sure it will be thought a strange doctrine there, that as little as may be should be given unto the two Houses, that we may give the more unto the Laws. It will seem then that you would have them regulated by the Laws, and not to be left unto such a Godlike power of arbitrary rule, as some seem to affect. Sure this was not well considered, otherwise Master Glyn might have been sent upon another message unto you, then to give you thanks for your Sermon, even to have required you to make a recantation, and the Order before your Book should have ended there. That no man should presume to print your Sermon, and then Andrew Crook might have had the more leisure; but I see wise men may sleep. Indeed we may see plainly here, how they that shoot upward against God or his Substitute, make a mark of their own heads: and here you may note too what a scurvy scab this conscience is, that will speak interlocutory truths for us, even afore we are ware, even when we are bend to the most contrary falsehoods. You might have done well to have looked afore you had leapt into this Dilemma, if you had been more constant in your errors they might perhaps have passed the better. But this reeling shows you to be drunk, whether with malice or ambition, or popularity, I know not: you cannot walk steedily it seems, a giddiness that many of your side are sick of. Now you are on one side, now on another; so here you have clearly forsaken your rote, and reeled clean over the gutter to the other side. However you would be understood, you are a very Royalist in this, though indeed you confound yourself too by contrarieties even in the same period, so that I can scarce tell what to make of you, neither do I believe you very well understood yourself. Do you mean the King must have as little as may be given to him? then you acknowledge the King to be the Lawgiver, and that the Legislative power is in Him. Or do you mean the Houses of Parliament by the Lawgiver? then by your doctrine the Houses of Parliament must have as little given to them as may be. See how you are caught in your own spring, see Pro. 18.7.  
But your good meaning may perhaps save you from the bar, greater faults than these have been looked over, in those in whose affection the Houses have confided. They and we too know your meaning well enough, your meaning is, that the King must have as little as may be given unto him, and perhaps you will leave the honest Philosopher to answer for the term of the lawgiver: but than you must have something to say for the application. But let's go. And I pray you tell me then, would you have the King have less than he hath? I hope those good men whose advocate you are, by this time have done their endeavours to have left him a pretty naked Majesty. They have taken a good competent care, that his Highness should not surfeit, either of revenue, or authority. They have not only been frugal in their gifts, or indeed in their no gifts: but they have done the best they could to purge him of all superfluities. Good fair attempts have been made by some to have drawn out his very blood. As long as his Majesty hath such careful Physicians, you need not fear his being plethorical. But why do you spend time and Paper? briefly, sir, you may know this: That his sacred Majesty (whom we believe against all those slanders, and blasphemies that have been raifed against him) hath professed his intention to govern by the laws only. And we find not that he desires any other power than such as the law gives him, and his ancestors have quietly enjoyed, and such as may enable him to give life unto the law, if this be so then, for aught I know, the more we give to the King, the more we give to the law: and the more unto the law, the more unto the King: if this be not so, prove the contrary, for they that are wife will not take your jealousies for proofs, yea with his Majesty's favour, I durst almost be bold to lay him before you at your mercy thus far. Take not from the law of the Kingdom, and spare not the King, take as much from him as you can. But than you must leave him as much as the law allows him, and I am confident he will be well content with it. Indeed the Philosopher was wise and honest in his rule, and puts us in mind, that the safety of a State doth much depend upon this, That all cases as near as may be, that fall under consideration in Government, should have their clear, full, and positive rules set down in the received laws of the commonwealth, whereby they are to be ruled and managed, that as little as possibly may be may be left to arbitrary government. Where the rule of the magistrate is only his own will and judgement which is subject to be misguided by passions, which the law is not liable unto. And we find not but that this is his Majesty's earnest desire; Persuade you if you can the houses of Parliament to join with him in these designs by leaving of all arbitrary government, by ordinances or otherwise, in opposition to the known constitutions of the Kingdom, and then you need go no further for an umpire. The law will be the day's man of this great quarrel, and will send every one home in peace with his own portion. The King, the Parliament, the Subject shall have all their own. The King shall be the supreme governor: The Parliament the great Council: The Subjects shall have their lives and liberties secured, excepting only such as have forfeited their titles. And God shall have his service duly and peaceably performed. And then instead of a deformation of the Church, and a destruction of the Commonwealth, we may have a full and happy reformation of the one, and a reparation of the other, Quod faxit Deus. And I entreat you in the mean time to remember, that the houses of Parliament are neither Gods, nor Angels, sure some of them are men subject to passions as well as others, otherwise there would never have been such doing and undoing as there hath been, no nor half that ado amongst us that there now is. And therefore I pray you entreat them not to challenge absolute power to themselves, but that they as well as his Majesty may make the laws their rule too, for there is some doubt made, I can tell you, that some of them are carried, and so may be miscarried, by more passions than their own, or else ask the Londoners. Give me leave only to mind you of one thing more, and I have done with this proposition, That if there be little to be given to the Lawgiver, by that wise rule of the heathen, surely much less is to be given to the Subject, and then your proposition is not much for your turn. Hitherto you see you edify but little, the malignants may be as malignant as ever for aught you have said yet, for their conversion.  
But perhaps there's more weight behind: well, we'll endeavour to poise it if there be, let us see then what's your fourth proposition.  
The law say you is the common surety between the King and the subject. I say so too, and wish its credit had been so good that its word might have been taken something better than it hath been, it might have been better security both to King and Subject, as some think, than the public faith: I pray you restore it unto its credit if you can, and the King will be no loser by it, no nor the subject neither, But to help our dull understandings you tell us what you mean, when you say the law is the common surety, etc. that is to say (say you) it binds me to pay the King tribute. That's strange, why do you not do it then, and persuade others thereunto? Sure you nodded here, you had sat up late about the contrivance of these propositions, so zealous were you for the good of the poor foolish malignants if they would but be guided. And here your eyes grew heavy, and your pen it may be for want of their guidance, fell a wand'ring towards the truth, for you seem here to speak here in the person of a subject. And your sense is equivalent to this, that the law binds the subject to pay the King tribute, what is it then I beseech you tell me, for though I am a malignant I am willing to learn, what is it I pray you that binds or allows the Subject, not only not to pay the King tribute, but to rob him of his revenue, to interrupt his rents, to make seizure of his goods, to ransack & make spoil of his exchequer? Do you know what you have said, or whom you here accuse, surely if the law bind the subject to pay the King tribute, there is no law that allows the subject to rob him of his rights. Nay, you are not content with that neither, but you say it binds you to pay the King tribute, etc. What? are you mad now? Take heed of that I beseech you, why, as sure as can be, you are hired by the malignants to plead the King's cause under pretence of opposing him. Do you not yet know what a danger us thing an etc. is? certainly you stole this out of the late Canons. The Law binds you to pay the King tribute etc. why in this etc. you may bind the subject to pay obedience too as well as tribute, and so bring in the heresy of the Christians amongst us again, and root out that wholesome doctrine of the Galileaus, Nay, by this etc. you may take off the edge of all those swords that are lifted up against him, I pray you bethink yourself, hath not the Corrector of the Press abused you? you may do well to get an order for the turning him out of his place if he hath, for this is directly the language of Ashdod as some think: but we take it indeed to be the language of Canaan, if it be rightly interpreted, and the very sense of our Saviour: sure you forgot what you had lately written out of your heathen: That this law giver must have as little as may be given unto him. But perhaps, you'll make him pay dear enough for it, and that ere you have done, he shall have little reason to brag of your bounty. I confess I think so, Well but how do you make amends? why you have bonds for the King too. I pray you let them be golden chains, and then I doubt not but he'll be willing to wear them. The law you say, binds the King that I shall enjoy my protection, your meaning is that the subject shall enjoy his protection, for I hope you do not mean to monopolise protection, your sense then is, that the King is bound by the law to protect the subject, take heed than you prove not a rebel, for than I shall tell you, that your proposition will not hold in those terms that you render it. The King is not bound to protect rebels, but the subject he is, I doubt not but he'll confess it; yea, I am confident would most willingly yield it. But I pray you mistake not: the law binds the King, so that in duty he is bound to perform it, and if he doth it not he is answerable unto God for it, who will most certainly bring him to an account. But let me tell you withal once more for your instruction, that he is answerable unto God alone, since he who is acknowledged to be supreme Governor, and only supreme Governor in all his dominions, hath none other above him but God alone, nay none in his dominions equal unto him. And sure, they that are below him have no power to judge him, and if not to judge him, neither to correct him, or who I pray you, hath made the subject his ruler? or is a Commonwealth reversed now the only fashion for a State? what authority hath the inferior to call the superior to an account? doth the Steward use to call the Master to a reckoning? or where is the Tribunal, at which the King must be judged? Or in whose name shall the Indictment be made against him, or the Writs go forth for the execution of judgement? Or what if the King please to grant himself a pardon, sure you must e'en be content to leave the King unto the judgement of the Lord, yea, and to leave his heart unto his guidance too. The last refuge of the Subject is to make his complaint unto God: And Kings have reason to take good heed how they give occasion of such complaints, for they are like to meet with an impartial Judge, that regardeth not the person of Princes. But for the Subject to take upon them to force the King their supreme Governor to his duty, or to take upon them to correct him, is to thrust into God's office, who is King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, the only ruler of Princes. See whose property this is, Revel. 1.5. & 17.14. & 19.16. See whose virtue it is that hath that name written upon it King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. And take heed how you go about to  any other in his garment, or to part it amongst any: Or how you invest any other with His Authority, for He will not give His glory to another. But alas His Majesty is very hardly dealt with: He is required to protect His people, and yet he is not allowed that Authority, or Power, or Revenue, which is requisite thereunto. They do all they can to disarm Him, and then require Him to defend them. They bind His hands, and when they have done they quarrel with Him, that He doth not use them in his defence, is not this a very Egyptian oppression, to bid him make Brick without straw, or indeed rather it may seem to be a mere jeer of his Majesty, but they had best take heed how they mock at God's Substitute. This I hope may serve for your fourth proposition. Your fifth and last is definitive. And you give us the character of a good Subject in it: In a word, he is a good subject (say you) that looks upward, to see what in God, God's Vicegerent commandeth; and secondly, That looks downward, to see whom the obedience thereunto doth either hurt or hinder. Why, now it seems you would teach them to look a squint, for he that looks upward and downward at once must needs do so: but however I observe, that you would have the subject have his eyes about him, that he may look and see. And so would I: it is my prayer unto God, that he would open the eyes of the subject, of you, and all the rest, that they may see in this design against his Majesty and themselves, how they run headlong upon their own ruin. And I wish they may see with their own eyes, and not with the eyes of other men only, to take all things upon trust that shall be imposed upon them magisterially, by those that seem to deny the use of reason. Secondly, I observe, that you would have them first look upward, and so would I, and to see what in God the Lord's Vicegerent doth command. And wheresoever any thing is commanded by the Vicegerent contrary unto the Lords command, I advise them take that counsel of the Apostles, rather to obey God than men: but yet in such case, I advise you and them according to the example of the Apostles to submit by passive obedience, where they cannot by active performance of his commands. Thirdly, I observe that the King according to your confession is God's Vicegerent, and therefore to despise him is to despise God, and therefore none can divest him but God, whose substitute he is. Fourthly, you would have the Subject look downward too, to see whom the obedience to the Superiors command doth either hurt or hinder. I am afraid there hath been too much looking downward to worldly ends and purposes, to private aims and contrivances, which have made us forget our duty to God and his ordinance, and our regard to the public safety. And this is the ground of all our mischief, and this looking downward is no good posture, if we believe the Psalmist, Psal. 17.11. But yet I would have them to look downward too in a good sense; and first in humility with the Publican, and secondly in Christian charity with the good Samaritane, that with a Christian wariness they may as much as lies in them frame their obedience to the good of others; but not so as to take upon them the power to moderate the commands of their Superior, as if wheresoever they shall be pleased to fancy an inconvenience, either to the public or any private concernment, it should be in their power to deny obedience; for that is the Governors' charge, to look he commands nothing that may disadvantage the Commonwealth, or any part or member thereof: it is not for every private man, nor indeed for any to be the Judge of that, otherwise there could never want pretences for disobedience. There can hardly be found any such inconvenience that can be answerable to that succession of mischief that is like to accrue upon the dissolution of Government; or the exposing the Magistrates command unto the examination of the rude and ignorant multitude, so as to enable them to resist where they shall dream of some hurt or hindrance that may therein accrue unto others, or themselves. We must remember here that the fifth Commandment is the first of the second table: And that that is indeed the guardian of all the rest, and the King's Throne stands highest there even at the very footstool of the Throne of God, which is set up as it were in the first Table of the Law. And therefore so that we do not any act that lieth contrary unto the rest, we must be content to suffer and leave consequences to God; however, you cannot bring in active resistance or rebellion to the definition of a good Subject. So I have done with your Propositions, and come to your confirmation of this last. You tell us that Papists grant you this, (and your margin points me to Bellarmine) That in the Superior three things are concurrent. 1. The place, which is from Christ alone. 2. The person, which is from the choosers. 3. The union of these two, which is from Christ, but by the mediation of a humane act; let Protestants then, say you, have their eyes in their forehead. I could answer you very briefly, by excepting against the force of your argument, which seems to run à majori, as if what Papists say in derogation from Magistrates, must much more be granted by Protestants; or as if they gave more unto obedience than we, which is no such matter; for I would have you know, that maugre all your seditious doctrines, it is yet the glory of the true Protestant Church, which neither you nor Papists shall ever deprive us of, that we according to the judgement and practice of Christ our Master, and the Apostles our leaders, and the Primitive Christians, are the best maintainers of obedience to Kings and Magistrates; and herein we leave behind us both Papists and Schismatics, as two kinds of Foxes tailed together with firebrands of Rebellion betwixt them. And therefore you must not think to drive us from our station, by telling us, that Papists yield this or that. We abhor Popery in this and all other points: Do not you know that the Throne of the Roman Antichrist must be built up upon the ruin of the civil Authority of Emperors and Princes? take heed you play not his game for him. The truth is, you may be ashamed to lay such a scandal upon the Protestant Church, as to give Papists the precedency in point of Allegiance. I do here in the name of the whole Protestant Church of England enter my Protestation against your admission, and do avow it to be clearly against the tenet of the true Protestant Church: That Subjects may upon any pretence take up Arms against their lawful Prince. If any that have called themselves by the name of Protestants have said or done any thing to the contrary, we do so fare disclaim them. Your miscarriages in this point have brought a scandal and reproach upon the name of Protestants, and have opened the mouths of Papists against us, as if we were countenancers of Rebellion, and all because we through (I was about to say) too much charity, have tolerated such as you are amongst us. It is you Schismatics, not we Protestant's that have given this occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme; it is you that like Simeon and Levi have made us, as much as in you lieth, even to the stink amongst the Inhabitants of the world, when even Papists, Turks, and Heathens are ready it may be feared, to lay your mischievous opinions and ungodly practices upon us, as if Protestants were patrons of Rebellion: which we do abhor from the very bottoms of our hearts. Witness the clear Article of our Church of England.  
And therefore it matters not to us what Papists say or do in this point, it hath been an old quarrel between Papists and us, and you may even go and shake hands with them in this point. And yet I see not what great advantage Bellarmine gives you, in that you here quote out of him, I could direct you to some others of them that speak much more plainly to your purpose; and it seems you are yet but a novice in the study of Rebellion, that you are furnished with no more pertinent authorities, for what I beseech you doth Bellarmine grant you here? truly all is scarce worth thanks for aught I see. 1. The place is from Christ alone, then take heed how you despise the authority of that place or office which is derived from Christ. 2. The person is from the choosers, it may be in some sort true in elective Kingdoms: but I pray you remember that the Crown of England is successive and hereditary, and therefore none but God is the chooser here, so that the person is from him too. 3. The union of these two is from Christ, but by mediation of an humane act. What then though it were granted, this would make little for your purpose, for if the union between the person and the place be from Christ, let what humane act soever intercede, none but he that makes the union may take upon him to make a separation, if that rule of the Apostle be authentical, Those whom God hath joined let no man put asunder. Besides, by this act they set him above all their own power, and do part with that very power unto him which was before in them, in designing him for their supreme Governor, and you must show some superior authority to enable the doing of such an act. And now let Protestants have their eyes in their foreheads, and see how grossly you paralogise, to deceive both yourself and others. Did you not find that the people are mad already, a man might think you would scarce venture such stuff amongst them. But let Papists and Schismatics hold what they will at their perils, we Protestants by God's grace will live and die in obedience unto God and our Gracious Prince, whom God long preserve, to the peace of this Kingdom.  
The fourth Consideration you say is critical. I leave you to make good the sense of this title, which for my part I am not so good a critic to understand very well. But to the matter. And herein you seem to lay down one exception of the people against the employment of their estates in this present bloody business that you plead for, and thereto you return your answers, My money shall not help to kill men; that you set down as the voice of the squinteyed multitude as you call them. And now let us see your answer; and indeed here you are liberal, that you may teach them to be so: you give them two answers for failing, and it was but need of your bounty, for both will scarce make up half a good one; one six pence would have been better than two such slips, but what you want in weight it seems you would make up in number. And first you tell them, Their money is none of theirs; if the Lord, the Law, the Liberty, the Cause, or the Defender thereof stand in need thereof, no more than the Ass in the Gospel, or the bread and beef of Nabal. Theirs in the like case.  
Secondly, you tell them, that If they hinder the kill or quelling of those who would both kill and quell you, yours, your Religion, Kingdom, they become friends of God's enemies and yours: and resolve to make peace with them, with whom God is resolved to have war.  
In your first answer your Thesis is true. But it will trouble you to make good your Hypothesis; neither are your proofs so clear and pertinent. I shall endeavour to display your argument thus.  
1. You lay down this for a ground, That where the Lord, or the Law, or the Liberty, or the Cause, or the Defenders thereof have need of our estates, private men's purses are none of their own: That's the meaning of your Thesis.  
Your Hypothesis you term to be understood, and if you speak any thing to the purpose, it is this.  
But in the present design against His Majesty, the Lord, the Law, the Liberty, the Cause, and the Defenders thereof have need of the people's money; and therefore as the case now stands, Their money is not theirs, their property ceaseth, they have no power to deny.  
Your Thesis you make good by two examples or precedents of holy Scripture, The first, out of Matthew 21.3. where we find the Ass delivered up for the supply of our Saviour's necessity, to furnish him for his journey to Jerusalem. The second out of the 1 of Samuel the 25. and the 11. where we find David in his necessity desiring supply of Nabal, and being denied by that unthankful churl, going about to revenge himself upon him by a resolved plunder, and destruction of Nabal and his family.  
1. Give me leave to say something unto your Thesis, and to examine your proofs, and then I shall show the vanity and falsehood of your hypothesis.  
And first I grant you this with all my heart, that every one is bound to part with his private estate where the Lord calls for it, or hath need of it, either for the procurement of his glory, or for the supply of the necessity of the Church, or his poor members, or where the exigency of the public requires it, for the maintenance of the law, the liberty, or the public good: for the defence of a good cause, and the assertors of it, and whosoever doth not part with their estates in a due proportion being legally required, preferring the public good before their private commodity, sins: for the Word of God teacheth us, that the Lord is the chief proprietary of the whole world, and that of him we hold all that we have, and are but Stewards of it to his use, and for his glory. And nature itself teacheth us, that the good of the parts must yield unto the necessity of the whole body: and we find the parts of the universe, though senseless and irrational, putting this rule in practice: as they are swayed in their motions by the invisible hand of divine providence in the government of the world, since even the senseless creatures and elements of the world, are content to forget their own private good, and to forsake their proper motions, to procure and maintain the integrity of the universe, so for the prevention of a vacuum or emptiness, wherein the integrity of the universe is concerned: we find that water will forget itself and its own proper motion, and ascend upward, and air will become retrograde, and descend downward; and I could wish we that are rational creatures had learned this a little better than we have, public matters would not then have been carried with the private spirits of ambition and revenge, as it may be feared, they have been too much in our days, which hath too great a share, it is thought, in our present distempers: public aims procure unity. But dissensions are usually the brood of private resolutions. But yet give me leave to put in a little caution, lest there should be some misunderstanding of the matter, and to desire it may be received sano sensu, & cum grano salis, for though all that be most true, yet give me leave to put you in mind, that the necessity of others or of the public, doth not destroy the propriety of the subject, for we must distinguish here between the power that a man hath over his estate, and the duty that lies upon him in the managing thereof. A man doth not always lose the power of a proprietary over his estate, where his duty engageth him to part with it. I am bound in duty to relieve every poor man that I find to stand in need of my help, and to part with my estate unto him according to my ability, and his necessity, but yet I have still a property in my goods, which I ought so to impart, until I have alienated them by gift. Otherwise you will authorise every one upon pretence of necessity, to become carvers unto themselves of other men's estates, which would be a fine colour to make violence and plunder become authentical, and to take away the thanks of charity and alms, contrary to the Apostles Doctrine, Philemon the 14. who though he had need of Onesimus to minister unto him in his bonds, yet he would not do it without the consent of his Master, that the benefit of Philemon therein unto him, might not be as it were of necessity, but willingly. And in the 9 of the second to the Corinthians, at the 7. verse, speaking of the ministering to the necessity of the Saints, he doth not take upon him to ravish a supply from them, but leaves it to every man to do it, according as he purposeth in his heart. So let him give, saith he, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver. Yea and Saint Peter in the 5. of the Acts, notwithstanding the necessity of the Church, at that time, yet he allows Ananias and Saphira to have had a power and propriety in their lands, until they had sold them, and professed the alienation of the whole price thereof unto the Church, Acts 5. verse 4. whiles it remained, saith Saint Peter to Ananias) was it not thine own, and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? A pregnant place, not only for the purpose we now speak of, but also for the quashing of that pernicious doctrine that is thought to be too busy in the world, as though none but they whom some men please to style the children of God, had any right or propriety in their estates, but that they may rob them at their pleasure as Egyptians, or defraud and cozen them how they list in their deal, so that they deal uprightly with the brethren. A fine trick of the Devil, to teach men to cousin and cheat in sincerity: whereas we find here, the Apostle S. Peter allows Ananias and Sapphira, though wicked and ungodly people, and none of the true professors of the Gospel, yet I say, he allowed them a propriety in their land before it was sold, and in the price of it after it was sold, and such an one, that the necessity of the Church could not make void: had they not declared their consent to an alienation, than indeed the keeping back of any part was both Sacrilege and dissimulation with the Holy Ghost: Sins that I would wish you and your party to take heed of. And if the necessity of the Church doth not destroy propriety, so neither doth the necessity of the Commonwealth, but where consent of the owners, either express or implied doth some way go along with it. And yet in both these and other such like cases, all men in duty are bound to part with their estates: neither doth either of the precedents you bring out of Scripture, infer any thing more than I here set down. Though indeed if they had any thing more in them: we know there was that extraordinary in them, that might very well exempt them from being precedents for us to follow: in the former, we find the mediate Authority of our Saviour who is Lord paramount of the whole world, and the chief and absolute proprietary, if I may so speak, of all men's possessions: who are but tenants at will under him. And therefore that divine power in him that gave away by express donation the goods of the Egyptians unto the Israelites, might well challenge what he pleased unto himself, notwithstanding all private right that any other had in it subordinate unto his. And for David we know it is possible there might be some sin in his attempt, designed upon Nabals' goods, as it is clear enough, there was in his resolution for his destruction, as you may well guess by that thanksgiving that he returns unto God, for sending Abigail to stay him from his purpose. 1 Sam. 25.32, 33. or if not so; we know David was a Prophet subject to extraordinary motions of the free spirit. And you must take heed how you make all such examples your precedents, lest with Samson you pull down the house upon your heads, to be avenged of your enemies, Opera liberi spiritûs non sunt trahenda in exempla communit vitae. But we find in both these examples still a propriety acknowledged in the owners. And therefore we read in Saint Luke's relation of the same passage with that of Matth. 21.3. That the owners thereof said unto them, what do you losing the Colt? neither do we find that our Saviour gave the Disciples commission to take the Ass or the Colt by force, but he tells them, that upon their declaration of his necessity they would send them. And he by his divine power as you may see, plainly there inclined them to consent thereunto, and you know, volenti non fit injuria. There was no destruction of propriety for aught I find, but a voluntary consent of the owners to supply the necessity of our Saviour. And for that passage about Nabal, 1 Sam, 25.11. we do not find but that David in his message doth leave Nabal a propriety in his goods, notwithstanding all the necessity that he was in, or what else you can observe; though perhaps in his passion upon Nabals' refusal to relieve him, he might set upon a design destructive thereunto. But passionate undertake are not good rules. And therefore it is more safe for us, to gather instruction from David in his cool blood, before he was put into a heat by Nabals' churlishness. And then we shall find clearly, that he acknowledgeth Nabal to have a right in his goods. And he desires a supply of courtesy and bounty, doth not challenge it as of right and debt: and therefore he intreateth, not demandeth, I pray thee: and what doth he entreat? not a payment, but a gift. Give I pray thee. And what? not what David pleaseth, but what Nabal shall think fit. You may know him to be a beggar in that he is no chooser: Da quaeso quod obvenerit manui tuae servis tuis, Give I pray thee whatsoever cometh to thine hand, unto thy servants, and to thy son David. Neither did Nabals denial alter the property, as now some may seem to intimate by their practice. They will allow man a property to give unto them, but not to deny them, nor keep to themselves; if they once deny, they forfeit their property. And surely they allow us but a poor interest in our estates, that yield us no more power but only to give them away at their pleasure, to whom they shall think fit. Our Saviour allows a greater privilege to a propriety, and to understand something else by it. when he asks that question in the Gospel, May I not do what I will with mine own. Where he sets forth the power that a propriety gives a man over his own estate, which is, that he may do what he will with it, so as to exclude force to awe or compel him to the contrary. Though I say in duty it is otherwise, for so men may not do what they will with their own, for they are engaged in duty to part with it, to the necessities of the Lord in his poor Members in his Ministry, in his Service, in his House, in his Church, of the Law, of the Liberty, or the public cause, and the defenders thereof: So that if they deny supply unto these, they sin, and are answerable to God for it. But this doth not expose them to a deprivation by violence or plunder, by force or compulsion, otherwise your argument might serve as well for the recalling of Ship-money. But now it seems the case is altered, any thing is of force when it serves your turns; but take heed, you do not know what may be built hereafter upon these foundations that you lay. We must distinguish between the power of Kings over their Subjects, and their duty; and we must distinguish too between the power of Subjects over their estates, and their duty, if we mean to judge aright of either, or to behave ourselves aright toward either, or that they shall behave themselves as they ought to do; for we must know and they must know, that power is larger than duty in both, and duty must set limits unto their power, but those limits must be set by God and themselves, not by others without them. The power of Kings must engage us to subjection, either active or passive, though they use it unjustly. The duty of Kings must teach them subjection to that power of God which is above them, that they may not use their power unjustly.  
And the power of both Kings and Subjects over their Estates and Revenues, must keep us from offering any force or violence to deprive them of their properties, though there be good cause they should impart them as abovesaid, without express or employed consent. And the duty of Kings and Subjects must teach them so to moderate their power of property, as to impart themselves freely and proportionably to God, his Church, and to the Commonwealth, and to what other exigencies, are just and charitable, whensoever the Lord calls them thereunto by giving them occasions and opportunities of performance; otherwise there would scarce be room left for the free practice of virtue, either in Prince or people in the disposition of their estates and powers, if all were to be compelled. But God hath so disposed of things in his wisdom, which for my part I cannot but admire, though I am not able to express it as I would in this particular. That he hath left men some freedom for the practice of virtue: So he hath given King's power to be Tyrants, (I mean so fare as that they they are not to be resisted by their Subjects) that they may have room to show their virtue in performing the duties of good Princes. And he hath given Subjects a power to restrain their liberality, their charity, etc. to abuse their estates (I mean so fare as that others without consent either express or employed, where there is a true and free property, cannot compel them to the contrary) that they may show their free virtue in performing their duties, both in the due employment, and imparting of their estates, that it may be as the Apostle speaketh, a matter of bounty, not of covetousness or necessity; and also in the due and temperate use and husbanding of them, otherwise we might turn all virtue into necessity. And indeed hereby God hath provided for peace, order, and tranquillity in the world, which you and others attempt, even to banish out of the world; whilst either through ignorance you discern not (which in charity I will hope of you) till you make me know the contrary: or through malice you go about to remove these landmarks, which God hath set between King and people, between one Subject and another; for otherwise if Subjects might take upon them to compel Kings to limit their power to what they shall conceive to be duty, this must needs in all probability open a door to perpetual confusion and rebellion, and the case must be the same between the Subjects and Parliaments, as between Subjects and Kings, Et jam vestra res agitur, for you can show no reason to the contrary, I am confident. And on the other side, if others might take upon them to be moderators of my estate, and to compel me to impart at their pleasure, where they shall conceive their exigency requireth, we should hardly ever be free (it may be feared) from such pretences, of necessity, etc. to countenance continual intrusions and violent surprisals of one another's goods, by this rule every poor man that can plead necessity may come and take your purse for aught I know, and you and he both had best take heed of that; remember here that of Solomon, Prov. 6.30. Men do not despise a thief if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry, but if he be found he shall restore sevenfold; he shall give all the substance of his house. You may see there though he deserveth favour, yet his necessity doth not exempt him from being a thief, not from the crime, no nor yet from the punishment, (and God doth not use to prescribe penalties where there's no offence) he shall be fined in a seven fold restitution. And therefore though men be truly engaged in duty to supply such exigencies you before speak of, yet this doth not destroy their property, as if that ceased, as you imply, whensoever such occasion or necessity is present, but obligeth their duty: And therefore in those cases where you have not or cannot gain their consent, you must leave them to perform their own duties, or else you will transgress yours, whether you be King or Parliament, or a single Subject. But perhaps you will say, that the Parliament hath in them a devolution of all the Subjects propriety, so as to dispose of their estates to public purposes: if you mean by the Parliament the King and the Houses, I grant so that they do it by Act of Parliament. And you must take in the body of the Convocation (if the Clergy be Subjects, or have any liberty or property) for the disposing of the estates of the Clergy.  
But if you mean by the Parliament the two Houses without the King, I deny that they have the consent of the Subjects for the disposing of their estates, since they were chosen by the Subjects not to manage the public affairs of themselves, but in a Parliamentary manner, order, and motion, to join with His Majesty, and to do things by His consent by Act of Parliament; and therefore since they have not His consent for the disposing of the estates of the Subjects, as they now do: Nor do it by Act of Parliament, which cannot be without the King. They can plead no consent of the Subject, who gave them their power only in that sense, and to that purpose as aforesaid: If you are rational you understand this, if impartial & honest you will acknowledge it, & give over abusing the people with your Observations. And here the people may see who mean best unto their properties and liberties, since you put us to plead for them, whilst you oppose them for the advantage of your party. And yet will they never open their eyes? but still run on madding upon their own ruin. I pray you speak to them to have a little more wit and honesty: let them have your example, it may be it may work much with them. But what if I should grant you your Theses in your own sense?  
Yet it will trouble you exceedingly to prove your Hypothesis: you are so fare from doing it, that for aught appears you were ashamed to mention it. You leave us to collect it, but prove it, I pray you, for your credit is not so great that we are bound to take your bare word, though you gave it us never so plainly. Prove it then, that the money and goods that is forced by your party from the poor Subjects, is for the supply of any of those necessities you speak of.  
Is it for the supply of the necessity of the Lord, to maintain a War against his Substitute, (acknowledged so by the Scots in their late Petition to His Majesty) and directly contrary to God's command? Rom. 13.  
Is it for the supply of the necessity of the Lord, to maintain practices of Sacrilege, demolishing of Churches, violating of Sepulchers; to set forward a disturbance of God's Service in his house, to abandon the daily use of public Prayers where they have been used, and whereby God hath received so much glory, and the people so much comfort, and to bring in profaneness, or at the best to undertake a reformation by a way God allows not, when it hath been offered in a peaceable and fit manner? or where do you find that the sword is to be moderator, or that reformation in Religion is to be founded in blood?  
Or is it for the supply of the necessity of the Law to nourish a War clearly against Law, both in itself, and in the purpose and drift of it? in itself, as being without and against the King's command, and against His Person and Authority, who is declared by Law the supreme Governor, and so the supreme Moderator of the Sword in the drift or purpose, which we understand not at all, if it be not to abridge the King of that preeminence and authority which His Ancestors have, and He ought to enjoy by the Law of the Kingdom: As the power of the Militia, of consenting or withholding His assent to the allowance or dis-allowance of Acts of Parliament; of choosing Privy Counsellors, etc.  
Some say necessity hath no Law, but I am sure the Law hath no necessity of the plunder of men's estates to any such purpose.  
Is it for the supply of the necessity of liberty of the Subject, that their liberty should be taken away to cure men of their diseases by killing them, or to cast them into the Sea for fear they should suffer shipwreck?  
Is it for the necessity of the cause, or the defenders? what cause is it I beseech you that doth necessitate any such thing? is it Religion? have we not been Protestants all this while? why do you not confute the Articles of the Church of England? it may be indeed your new Synod will do it for you. Hath not the truth flourished amongst us all this while till of late? you yourself seem to confess it, if there be any sense in your words in your next Paragraph as we shall see anon. Who is it than that goes about an alteration? might you not have thanks if you would let it flourish still as heretofore it hath done, or if any thing be to be mended, hath it not been offered? what's that cause then, the necessity whereof doth lay such fangs upon the Estates of the Subjects? or who are those defenders you speak of. I am sure I know who is the Defender of the Faith under God; and then remember who it is that you oppose: surely you had need explain yourself, for for aught we can yet learn by you, the Subjects have good right to keep their goods unto themselves, for any necessity that you can plead; it doth neither alter their Property, nor engage them in duty to impart for the maintenance of this dismal War against His Majesty. They are much more engaged to impart them to Him, that stands for the defence of the true Protestant Religion, together with the Law and Liberty of the Subjects. This is the cause, and this is the defender, that may much better plead necessity of supply.  
But you have two strings to your bow, and so you had need, for you see one of them will not hold. And what's your second? let us see what that will do. Your money shall not help to kill. That's the resolution of the squinteyed multitude: well say you when you mean ill; but what's your answer? why you tell them, that if they hinder the kill, quelling, of those who would both kill and quell you, yours, your Religion, Kingdom. They become friends of God's enemies and ours, and resolve to make peace with them with whom God hath resolved to have war. How do you prove that? why Exod. 17. ult. what saith that place? why, these are the words which you leave us to find out there, for he said, because the Lord hath sworn to have war with Amalek from generation to generation. Go to now, where does your great strength lie? or how may a man do to bind this Samson of yours? This invincible persuasive or reply, or what you will call it, wherewith you do so unmercifully seize upon the judgements of the poor blear-eyed people.  
we'll examine it a little, Your drift is or should be to show, that the resolution of the people is not good, that their money shall not help to kill in your design, for that must be your meaning? now how do you drive them from this resolution? why thus, you show them very learnedly that their money must help to kill, etc. how prove you that? why, because they may not hinder the kill, quelling of them, etc. well, it seems then you are all for killing and quelling, we might have hoped of more favour, you might have given the people leave to have thought you more merciful; but is this good Logic? they may not hinder, therefore their money must help; is there no mean between helping and hindering? consider it well and you'll find there is, but that's your weakness, or perhaps your haste; we'll pardon it and allow it that force it wants: But how do you prove they may not hinder the kill, quelling of the King's Party, for that's your meaning without all question? why, because they are those that would both kill and quell you, yours, your Religion, your Kingdom: we need your help a little here, we understand you in part, your (Us) there stands for your Party I conceive, and your (Ours) for your Wives, Children, Friends, Family, and the like: but we cannot tell yet what you mean by (our Religion) nor very well what you mean by (our Kingdom,) your Commentary here a little I beseech you; do you mean by Your Religion the Brownists, or the Anabaptists, or the Familists, or the Separatists, or the Libertines, or the Papists; for it is thought you have of all these sorts in your Party, so that your party is very particoloured; or do you mean that which we doubt you have too little to do with, the true known Protestant Religion, or what do you mean by Your Kingdom? is this Kingdom any more yours then His Majesties or ours? or what Kingdom is it that you mean? I presume you will say, that by (Your Religion) you mean the true Protestant Religion, and by (Your Kingdom) this Kingdom of England, that is so denominated a Kingdom from that good King that God hath set over it: and if so, then give me leave to ask you first, how it appears to you that the King's party would kill you or yours, or that they would quell you? do you but quell your rebellious spirits, and I dare warrant you for either kill or quelling by His Majesty or His Party, if He can help it, any further than the Law arms Him against you; nay, you may assure yourselves His Majesty hath that grace and clemency in Him that will moderate the severity of the Law too, and it is not best for you to deny Him that power; you have had good experience of His Majesty's mercy if you would think on't: some have thought He hath been cruel to Himself in being merciful to you; I but I hope all His mercy will return at length into His own bosom; you had best take heed you slight it not too much, lest if it be kept too long before you make use of it, that good and pleasant Wine turn Vinegar. You may do well to remember that mercy loves not to stand too long at the door, clemency is not easily wearied, but if it once grow throughly angry, it may prove the greatest fury. If you will needs put His Majesty to His choice, which of the two He will have spilt, He knows there is difference of price and value between rebellious and loyal blood. And if there be no help for't, but that you will work your ruin, (the price of the safety and preservation of His faithful people) you may thank yourselves for setting up such a Market, I know not how to help you, but in truth I shall be sorry for you. But you may prevent it if you will, it is but returning to your obedience and loyalty, and I doubt not but shall find His Majesty's sword that is now most unwillingly drawn against you for your correction, ready most cheerfully to exercise itself in your protection: and so you and yours may be safe if you please, and the Subjects may keep their money for better purposes then to employ it to set forward the kill of men; it was sure ordained for a means of preservation, not for the instruments of ruin and destruction. But your Religion your Religion. That will be killed and quelled; if this cry were not in your mouths I could scarce think you to be Rebels; for, is not this the usual accoutrement of rebellion to march under the colours of Religion? at least in pale, or in quarter with some others; as liberty perhaps, or some such like, because Religion will not of itself take with all palates; but I pray you do not believe that this vizour will always be undiscovered: this velvet mask hath been so much used, that the nap is all worn of almost, and the bare face may be seen through it. This pretence of Religion is grown so stolen, and hath been so often made the lure of sedition, that the very boys can almost spy out the imposture; and therefore your wiser way will be to get some new fashion for your strumpet, unless you mean to have them throw stones and rotten apples at her; alas, this is an old trick to begin mischief in the name of God: In nomine Domini incipit omne malum, is too old and too true a saying; but let them take heed that set it forward in such a stile: for this is something worse than to take God's name in vain, and then they are not like to be held guiltless. And amongst others you had best be wary, for whilst you make God and Religion the stile of this horrid business, your whole progress is a kind of a running blasphemy; nay, perhaps I could easily show you that in many of you is a running perjury in those that have taken the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy; further answer I cannot give you so fully, as perhaps I might if I did but know what stamp you are of, only this let me tell you, first for the Protestant Religion, as it hath been for these many years in this Kingdom, under the successive and sucesfull reigns of three gracious Monarches without interruption until now: so (if you hinder not) His sacred Majesty hath given us good assurance, and we have good witness of it, even God himself, besides many thousands upon earth, that it shall not be killed nor quelled, but maintained, and if ever any thing fall out otherwise, I am persuaded we shall have to thank such as you for it, which God forbidden. And for those other things that walk under the name of Religious, I hope His Majesty will by God's assistance take some good course for quelling of them, as well Popery as Brownism, and the rest of that rabble, that we can scarce tell what to call: Both God and his good people do expect from His Majesty, that He will be vigilant for the extirpation of these by all due and lawful means, and that He will not admit of the least show of a toleration of them; but yet we do believe His Majesty will find out more proper ways than the sword for the rooting out of those errors from amongst us; and if they can be but quiet, and keep themselves from sedition and corruption of others: its like His Majesty will shed no man's blood merely for His opinion, but will rather take care for the application of the due means for their conversion, and so leave them to the mercy of the Lord; for we believe His Majesty hath other principles, and those fare more gracious and godlike, than those that you seem to walk by. Though he be never so zealous for God's house, yet we conceive He doth not think that He should have any thank from God if He should build up Zion with blood. His Majesty we hope will rather remember that David was not suffered to build the Lord a Temple, because his hands had been imbrued in blood, that the Temple was to be built by a Solomon, a King of Peace, and in a reign of Peace, and in a peaceable manner without all noise and tumult not so much as the noise of an axe or an hammer to be heard in that holy business, much less of a Sword or Spear, or of those thunder-emulating instruments which have been the brood of cruelty of these last times of the world: we believe His Majesty will not willingly make use of any such instruments as these in that work, unless the malice of the adversaries compel Him to it. Indeed it may fall out, that Sanballat and Tobiah, with their complices of Arabians, Ammonites and Ashdodites may put Nehemiah's workmen to their weapons as well as their tools, in the building of the Walls of Jerusalem, and to set them upon the business with a Trowel in one hand and a Sword in the other, that the bvilders should have their weapons girded by their sides and so build, and that Nehemiah may be enforced to set a Trumpeter by him; but this was only for the defence of the work, not to offer any violence to any, but to repel it, in case it were offered by any unto them; neither do we know of any violence intended of that sort you seem to suspect, either against you or your religion as you call it, be it what it will, if you will be but quiet, and not raise tumults in Church or Commonwealth, nor quarrel with other men, because forsooth they will not put out their eyes that they may be as blind as you; if you can 〈…〉 alone and be quiet, you may if you will needs be let alone and be quiet in your folly, for any matter of blood or the like. And yet we believe His Majesty will not let England become an Amsterdam, Truth shall have more encouragement than Error: it is fit that those dotards that will persist should be made sensible, it is mercy not to let them perish upon too easy terms: this is not to cut them off from the clemency of God, but to hasten them unto it, and this may be done without killing I hope; and therefore we believe you fright the people in vain, and make bugbears of your own fancies, when you seem to persuade them they shall find a bloody persecution for religion, but I hope they will be wiser than to think it is any good warrant for them to be rebellious; because you are pleased to be fearful and suspicious. It is no wisdom for them to cast their goods out of their vessels, because you are pleased to dream of a storm; they might likely provide much more for their safety by casting out such a rebellious Prophet as you are, that have outrun the errand the Lord sent you on, & are become a fugitive from his work; like Ionas, who when the Lord sent him to Niniveh runs to Joppa, and from thence is bound for Tarshish. It were happy for you if some storm or other might but send you into your right course again. But I would feign have done with you, you cannot make it appear that the King or His Party hath any mind to kill you or yours, nor to quell the true Protestant Religion, no nor yet to divorce you from any of your fantasies by the sword, admit any of His Army would, yet I am confident you may look for more mercy from His Majesty, and if you hinder not He may have power answerable to His goodness; but your Kingdom is in danger, they would quell the Kingdom, who are those I beseech you? if you will not tell me, I can tell you who they are, even they that go about to demolish or diminish the majesty and authority of the kingly Throne; for so much as they take from the power and eminency of the King, so much they quell and destroy the Kingdom; for it is the King and the regal power that gives it the name of a Kingdom: they than that go about to turn the King into an empty stile, or a mere shadow of regaity, and to change the regal Government into a popular State, or Aristocratical, those are they that go about indeed to destroy the very essence of a Kingdom: look than who they are that are against the King and against Monarchy, those are they that go about to quell the Kingdom; but perhaps you mean not by the Kingdom this or that form of Government, but the people and inhabitants; and in this sense, who are they that would quell the Kingdom, but even they that have been the Authors of this most bloody and unnatural War against His Majesty, that have divided the Kingdom against itself; that have most mercilessely sacrificed the lives of the poor seduced people of the Land, to their passionate and ambitious or malicious designs; they that have abused both Parliament and people, by endeavouring to make them flaves to their humorous resolutions against their duty both to King and people; they that have stricken at the very foundation of the State and Government, and brought the Commonwealth into a mere Chaos and a confusion; these, these are they that would quell the Kingdom, and therefore if you will needs have the people buy blood, you must send them to market there; there they may perhaps find some within their purchase, but royal and loyal blood is of too great a rate I can tell you, for all the money they have to pay a sufficient value for the least drop of it.  
But yet I am not come to the main force of your argument. They must give their money to help to kill those that would kill and quell you, etc. why? otherwise they become friends of God's enemies and yours, and resolve to make peace with them with whom God is resolved to have war; and you prove it, because Moses tells us, that the Lord hath sworn to have war with Amalek from generation to generation.  
Well, than it seems we must needs admit, that all that are your enemies eo nomine, are God's enemies: now that we are no way convinced of, because we do find your cause to be Gods, or that you have any commission from him, but rather you have many prohibitions from God, if you would take his word in the holy Scripture, unless you mean with the Libertines to take the warrant of a private spirit. And then secondly, you seem to hold, that we must all assist you with force and violence for the destruction of your enemies and Gods; how than shall the rule of our Saviour be made good, that will have you forgive your enemies, and I say unto you resist not evil, which must bind all private men from revenge; but you'll say the Members of the Parliament are all Magistrates, I grant it in subordination to His Majesty; but wheresoever they are found in direct opposition to Him, they become so fare private in their motions; like the Moon in the Dragon's tail, in direct opposition to the Sun she looseth her light.  
But God you say, is resolved to have war with them that have war with you, and therefore the people must. Prove that. Why? The Lord is resolved to have war with Amaleck from generation to generation; therefore with the King and his party: for it seems, we must necessarily believe that you are Israelites, and they are Amalekites: but that the people are not satisfied of, they must therefore look for better evidence from you to convince them: in the mean time, let me desire you to take heed how you misinterpret the Lords oaths, lest you should seem to tax God of perjury, as well as some body hath done the King. And there's an end of your critical Observations.  
And now in the fifth place, you come like an operator to cure the people of their melancholy: you draw them forth in their sullen fits, as you conceive, venting their sad and discontented thoughts, in those sorrowful notes you are pleased to set down. That trading is dead: There money goes: Never so many payments. I cannot blame them, I confess, to think they pay something too dear for their ruin: but what's the salve you give them for their sore? why, surely they are like to find but little comfort from you. First, you tell such a man, that he is not worth the answering. And I tell you, that he that gives such an answer, is scarce worthy to receive a reply unto it. And therefore let that go. But yet upon second thoughts you are a little more pitiful. And in some doubt of his capacity you send him to learn of Job, That we must receive good at the hand of God, as well as evil. True, there is very good reason for it, that they should be patiented in misery, and thankful in prosperity, unto God. But yet under favour, this doth not infer that men are bound to contribute to their own miseries, or be any way accessary to draw them upon themselves, no nor yet to return any thanks unto those that are the instruments of their calamity: we must submit to God's justice even in the oppression of men, and yet that doth no way justify their oppression, nor hinder us from the use of any lawful means to deliver ourselves from them and those pressures they would lay upon us: it no way ties us to give ourselves up into their hands, or to consent to our own ruin.  
Thirdly, you tell them, that the Gospel hath been a beaceable plentiful Gospel, and then they loved it, ran after it. But now it is otherwise they are otherwise affected, and you commend unto them that of our Saviour, joh. 6.26. you follow me for the loaves.  
And hath the Gospel been so peaceable and plentiful a Gospel, when was that, I beseech you? under what Kings reign? or, how comes it to pass that it is not so still? Surely, if that Gospel could have contented you and others, that have been so amorous of changes; that which was amongst us in the time of Queen Elizabeth, King james, or in any part of the reign of our Gracious King, I am well assured you might have had it, in as peaceable and plentiful a condition as ever, if men had not been weary of God's blessings. His Majesty hath made you very fair offers, if they might have been embraced, but it seems you are grown weary of that Manna, and your wanton palates are fallen a lusting after some new diet. And because other men will not be persuaded to part with all they have to serve your humours: you seem to challenge them of temporising, and that they measure out their zeal by their worldly advantage. This is indeed a heinous crime I confess, like the rich man in the Gospel, to go away sorrowful from Christ, because he requires him to part with his estate, or with the Gadarens to drive him out of their coasts, upon the apprehension of the loss of a few swine. They that will part with our Saviour or his Gospel upon such terms as these, are very worthy of their own choice even to lose that Jewel that they hold at so low a rate. But that this is the case of every one that refuseth to undo his wife and children, to supply you with his estate, to buy fuel for that fire which is now raging in the bowels of the Church and Commonwealth: or, that it is to be disaffected to the Gospel of Christ, not to promote a war against the substitute of Christ, is a paradox that I can never admit into my belief, nor do I think the speech of our Saviour in the 6. of John 26. is any thing at all to your purpose. And therefore you are no good Quack salver for melancholy. The people may even die of their purse-dumps, for any remedy you here afford them.  
But it may be you are better at the cure of their folly. That's the sixth and last consideration, which you say is a mere foolish one, if it may be so termed: or rather (for fools also will be talking) a mere prating, a mere nothing, and non-sensicall thoughts about the present things in the Kingdom. within the verge of this you shall include (you say) the indiscreet running before authority, in things where the command and countermand are not alike, and this (you say) you shall desire to be proposed in these two Propositions.  
First, manners to stay the State's leisure: but,  
Secondly, Is it any offence to do their work for them? And you conclude with much gravity thus; Good meaning may be grounded on errors: But the bad must be shadowed with colours: and so you commend unto your Country men, whose salvation you say, if you know your own heart you earnestly desire, your notes and yourself with an apology; first, for yourself, that you have spoken unto Christians like a Christian. Secondly, for your notes, whereof you say, that none can be so ignorant, as they are plain to a mind desirous to learn, and for the percase you say it is such as you can speak, and you desire to be thankful it is no worse, considering your deserts. And lastly you say, there is not all that might be said, but what you could say, which if it may serve the Church, the public, the Lord Jesus, and your Reader, you say you have your end, desiring his prayers for yourself, under the stile of the poorest of All the servants of Jesus Christ, W. Bridges.  
Give me leave to run over this you have here said. And first, for that which concerns your Answer to the people's mistakes in this last which you call a mere foolish consideration, a mere prating, a mere nothing and nonsensical thought, about the present things of the Kingdom: What this foolish prating nonsense of things is, I can scarce discover, that you are so angry at, and therefore I could wish you had been more clear and less passionate in your accusation: only something you tell us first, of an indiscreet running before authority in things wherein the command and countermand are not alike. Truly I can scarce tell how to make sense of what you say, for what things are those wherein the command and countermand can be alike? or what do you intent by this designation? but yet I can find out something here to thank you for, that you would not have the people indiscreetly to run before authority; if they had taken this counsel, or had it given them in convenient time, I conceive things had never been so bad as they are, for what were those Tumults that have had so great a share in the bringing of things to this sad condition they are now in, but an indiscreet running before authority? and therefore thus fare we join, and I wish your counsel may be well embraced. For farther explication you offer your mind in these two propositions.  
First, Manners to stay the State's leisure, This is some thing short of a proposition; but if I mistake not, your meaning is, that you would have the people have so much manners to stay the leisure of the State, and not to take upon them to do things of themselves to the disturbance of the work. I hearty consent unto you, in this likewise. Only I desire that His Majesty may be understood as a man of authority, and a principal part of the State, and than take heed you condemn not yourself, and cast a blemish upon the whole carriage of your design.  
Your second proposition as you call it, seems to be a reply to an expostulation of the people, whom you seem to bring in justifying their rashness, with this question, whether it be any offence for them to do the work of the State for them? (this if I understand you is your meaning.) And to this you return your answer thus, you tell them that good meaning may be grounded on errors, but the bad must be shadowed with colours. And truly I see nothing much amiss in this, but your mis-application; for herein methinks you set before us the very complexion of that unhappy business you would seem to plead for, at the best you can make of it; if there be any thing good in it, it hath only this, not for the justification of the business, but it may be for the excuse or extenuation of the fault of some that have been seduced and engaged therein; that it is a matter of error in them, not of any evil or malicious intention; but this excuse I doubt me will not serve you all there are some amongst you too knowing to plead such ignorance. And where error is wanting, they have nothing to hid their bad meaning withal, but the shadow of some specious colours, which are at once both a cloud to hid them, and to blind others withal. If we could but prevail so fare as to separate errors from the good meaning of some, or remove the false colours from the bad meaning of others, things would than appear again in their own shapes, and disobedience and bloodshed would be no longer pursued with rejection of obedience and peace; and so there would ensue a perfect accommodation. For that which follows, I have but little to say, only I commend unto my Countrymen too these Notes of mine to be considered with yours, and I am sure I earnestly desire their salvation, I will not yield to you a little in that; and being glad that you acknowledge us Christians yet, and that indeed was spoken like a Christian, if all the rest of your Preface had savoured as much of a Christian as this, I should never have spent time upon this work; for the Apology you make for your notes, how plain they are, or what the phrase of them is, I leave them to judge that shall read them. I am sure for the substance of them it is so bad as you apply it, that it doth bespeak you of none of the best deserts; and whether this be all you could, or that others might have said to your purpose, I list not much to examine, I know it is much more than you should, or than any other aught to have spoken. And you have much failed of your end, if you thought by this to serve either the Church, the Public, the Lord Jesus, or your Reader, and therefore you have my prayers, that the Lord would give either more knowledge or more sincerity; if this latter be your want, let me give you my advice in the words of your quotation in the margin out of Saint Augustine, (a little altered) Qui non valuit non poenitenda dixisse, poeniteat quae cognovit non dicenda fecisse. And so I have done with your Preface. I see no great matter in your Sermon, that doth deserve an Answer, and I have other business to do.  
FINIS.