Berith Anti-Baal, OR, Zach. Croftons' Appearance Before The Prelate-Justice of Peace, Vainly pretending to bind the Covenant and Covenanters to their good Behaviour.  
By way of rejoinder to, and Animadversion on Doctor John Gauden's Reply or Vindication of his Analys●s, from the (by him reputed) pitiful Cavils and Objections; but really proved Powerful and Convincing Exceptions of Mr. Zach. crofton's ANALEPSIS.  
By the Author of the Analepsis, and (not by the Dr observed) Analepsis Anelephthe, to the continuing of St. Peter's Bonds, and fastening his Fetters against Papal and Prelatical Power.  Claudicat ingenium, delirat linguaque mensque. Prov. 16.7. The legs of the lame are not equal, so is a parable in the mouth of fools. V 4. Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. V 5. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit. 
LONDON, Printed by M. S. for Ralph Smith at the three Bibles in Cornhill; and for Thomas Parkhurst at the three Crowns over against the great Conduit in Cheapside, 1661.   

TO THE READER.  
Courteous and Christian Reader,  
DOctor John Gauden finding no regular, rational, or religious way to release St Peter, and restore him to his Episcopal chair, thinks it best to leave him in his bonds, or holy Fetters, and as a Justice of Peace proceeds against his keeper, and to bind him and his adherents to their good behaviour; (we say of the Devil, that change demonstrates the non-prevalency of his temptations.) In order whereunto, after nigh forty weeks from the appearance of my Analepsis in the world, against the Analysis, his pregnant Genius was delivered of a Reply thereunto; without the least regard to any other thing by me written, to enforce and establish the Sacred and Indissolvable Bond of the most Solemn League and Covenant that ever past on Christian Church or People, (which God hath severely, and before our eyes avenged on the Violators, in that part, which was (for its matter mainly Civil; and will undoubtedly appear no less jealous for that part which is Religious) and yet it is swollen into such a bulk, and dressed in such a garb, as that it is not for every man to buy; nor any civil, sober, wise man to read, much less to rejoin unto; being able to do no more, but fill their mouths, who are minded to make a clamour, and think speaking (though to no purpose) to be a sufficient answer to Mr Crafton.  
I having animadverted this Anti-Baal-Berith, find a necessity to Apologise for the very act of my animadversion, and fear nothing more than to be bound to my good behaviour, for mis-behaving myself so much, as to answer a fool according to his folly; wherein I may seem like unto him; did not the very next words give me some encouragement, directing me to answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.  
The truth is, what I ever expected and expressed to many, is now effected by the Doctor, viz. That he would never be so hardy as to encounter me single, or assault the reason, and strength of argument objected in my Analepsis to his Analysis; but his honour engaged in an evil cause, provoked him to say something, to keep up a repute among the simple; he would take up the Anonymous Anatomist, (whose Dialect I cannot approve) which unhappily had started into the world, some two hours before my Analepsis; and scolding at that and its Author, would shuffle in my Book and N●me, (which yet as one that could not read, or fought blindfold, not seeing his adversary, he hath mistaken through his Book, writing Mr Grafton, as if I should answer Dr Gaudy) and seem to say something in it, though nothing to the purpose: How exactly this is done, I leave the Reader to observe.  
It is indeed to be acknowledged, that although he enter the Stage with a Title that bespeaks him some strange Hercules fureus, or Ajax Mastigophorus, and his raging, rambling, raving discourse towards his late Anatomist, doth too much verify the same; yet he expresseth himself with as much civility, respect, and modesty towards Mr Cr. as can be looked for from such a sarcastical Pen; that I wonder he could make it consist with so much rage; I could not but expect his prudence to have directed him, no way to conjoin two such different tracts in the same furious expostulation, lest his wrath had run beyond its propounded end; or his Reader should apply the whole discourse beyond the Author's intention, as indeed they commonly do; for he knoweth, ●ulgus non distinguit.  
I am not insensible, the barking Cur in the Emblem (most scurrilously) prefixed to his Book without colour of reason, is by many applied, and understood to be intended to represent Mr Cr. which if so, I leave the Reader to judge its aptness; the Dr taking no notice of any Book written by Mr Cr. save the first, which hath found much acceptance for the sobriety of its Style; so far from barking, as that its modesty is acknowledged by the Dr himself; and all rational men must acknowledge the Moon, for its mutation, spots, dark, cloudy, uncertain light, and cold chilling influence, to be much a more apt Emblem of inconstant, uncertain, ambiguous, obscure, and lukewarm Bishop Gauden; whose Episcopal Influence is like the Moon, more likely to kill, then animate Religion; and his glorious light of his rude Rhetorical swadoes, to lead men into a fools Paradise; for children to play by, rather than direct men's duties, or resolve their doubts, or guide them into paths of safety: But I have more charity, then to think that this (though by the vulgar applied) was by the Dr intended, as such an Emblem of Mr Cr. 's book; because though he is restlessly unquiet in barking out the barking property of his Anatomist, yet he doth not so much as allude thereunto in all his debates, with Mr Cr. otherwise, I could have answered a fool according to his folly; and to this piece of scurrility (unbeseeming a man of common modesty, much more a Christian, a Minister, nay one who as a Bishop pretends to more piety, patience and gravity) have opposed, and prefixed to this Tract, the figure of a Wheel, with a Tongue on it, whirling about without order or stay, to the only raising of a cloudy dust, with this Motto; Who is this that darkneth knowledge by words without wisdom? Or this, A fool is full of words, a man cannot tell what shall be, and what shall be, who can tell? My nature is as bad, and fancy as wild as the Drs can be; but I bless God for the restraints of Reason and Religion, which bridles I hope I shall never break or cast off.  
The Dr doth in the close of his elaborate Tract, complain that he had tired himself, and his Reader; nor is it without cause, he might have said it in the middle, nay beginning of his journey; and remembered that wise observation, 
Eccl. 10.15.  The labour of the foolish wearieth every he one of them (guide, or guided,) because he knoweth not how to go into the City; which one thus illustrates, Nesciunt viam in Vrbem, 
Lava.  qui a recto tramite aberrant, & in loca a via adducuntur: The Dr having in his Analysis loosed from the Haven of Reason, true Religion, and the fear of God, runs adrift wherever the wind of his own words can hurry him, and leads his Reader into a wilderness, where he hears no sound but the shrieks of Satyrs, barking and howling of beasts, at best, raging and railing of men, or wild and improper discourses, that direct to no certain end; The Dr having unhappily returned railing unto what seemed rational in his Anatomist, according to what is noted as usual with heretics, Haeretici cum perver sitatis suae non possunt reddere rationem, in maledicta convertuntur; and endeavoured by words and shuffling glosses, to darken the plainness, and clearness of the truth urged by the Analeptist; of whom we must say, as Bishop Jewel of the Jesuit Harding, in his confutation of him; Who so takes upon him to maintain untruth, must needs be forced to discourse about with long vagaries, to lead his Reader from the purpose, and to feed him with words for want of matter.  

Defence of the Apology of the Church of England, Preface to the Reader.  The truth is, the Reverend Dr hath expressed great affection to Episcopacy, in his zeal for it, fully matching Harding's apprehension of the Papacy, and Assertion, That the Pope's chair, (or English Prelacy) is the very knot of Christian Unity; and so branding with Schism all that say the contrary: Nor falls he much short of Pope Boniface, having according to the measure of his Prelatical power, Anathematised all Presbyters, as he did Aurelius, and all the Bishops of the Council of Africa, not exempting Augustine himself; Aurelius, cum collegis suis instigante diabolo, superbire caepit contra Romanam Ecclesiam: Nor is he much defective in their subtlety, whilst visum est utile, ut scribatur ad Episcopum Romanum, ut consideret res nostras, & det consilium; will more easily signify the Pope's power, and be rendered, It hath seemed good that we writ unto the Bishop of Rome, that he visit us, and determine our matter by his sentence; then I swear with reality, sincerity, and constancy, to endeavour the extirpation of Prelacy; that is to say, the Government by Archbishops, Bishops, etc. can be rendered, I do swear to my power to establish and advance Prelacy, the Government by Archbishops, Bishops; only I will consent to reform the excessive and defective abuses thereof: but the cause cannot be good, that must be salved by such strained, yea contrary interpretations; especially in matters of an Oath: with how great ability the Dr hath managed his great affection against his little Antagonist, let wise men judge; the weight of the cause, and some men's doting on the bare say so of a Bishop, more than the cogency of the Reply hath produced this following Tract, to thy cost and trouble, as well as my pains, and expense of more precious time; into which before I pass thee, I must mind thee of these two things, pretermitted in the following Animadversion.  
1. That Dr Gauden seems to gather much strength from the silence, or seeming compliances of some to his absurd, contradictory interpretations of the Covenant: Because I will do him, or them on whom he reflects no wrong, read his own words, viz.  
I find no men of learning and ingenuity, but are ashamed to appear in such a cause; Sober Presbyterians do very loyally, piously, prudently own, yea and profess to the King's Majesty, a quiescence under Episcopal Government, as no way inconsistent with the Covenant: Epist. to the Reader. This mitigated, and just sense of the Covenant, some that were and are great masters in our Israel, and assertors of the Covenant, are now content to own, abating the rigour which sometime possessed some Covenanters against Episcopacy, in that sense, wherein this, and most other Churches ever owned, and used Episcopal Government, and Authority among and above Presbyters: yea many of them begin to cast a favourable eye on Episcopal dignity, no less then on Church lands, fearing nothing so much as not to have a share of them; much congratulating, as the King's happy restauration, so the hopes of recovering the pristine Honour and Government, with the Revenue and Rights of the Church, in point of Episcopacy; not in the fallacy of a Presbyterian parity, but of a presidential, constant eminency of Bishops in authority over Presbyters, pag. 72, 73.  
That any have by their silence, or seeming compliance given the least occasion to this insultation, is matter of grief and scandal to good men: who yet have observed the subtle attempts, & strenuous endeavours of Prelates and their abettors, to tempt & debauch the consciences of some Zealous Covenanters; and cannot but bless God that any have obtained power to withstand such temptations, & decline such glorious baits; which should they, and many have admitted, I was, & am resolved through divine grace, to sing no song under the sufferings that are threatened against me, save only this, All this is come upon me, yet have I not dealt falsely in thy Covenant: but charity bids me conclude, that the Dr reckons without his host, and that the boasting clamour is a base calumny: He professeth the reason of the so late appearance of this elaborate wilderness, was, an expectation of what others would say in the cause; and yet he runs so fast as not to heed the Covenanters Plea, which would have told him, some men no way short, in learning and ingenuity, of Dr Gauden, did appear in such a cause: moreover, many may and do appear in it, that appear not to write for it; Pen and Pulpit are different capacities; multitudes of books need not; let the Dr judiciously (not judicially) confute one of his Antagonists; I dare assure him more will take up the quarrel, and defend it: I could (if he call on me) show the letters of many faithful Covenanters out of many Counties in England, jointly and singly owning the same cause of the Covenant with Mr Cr. and are neither afraid nor ashamed to own it: I know not what any particular Presbyter might profess to his Majesty; I hope such on whom the Dr reflecteth, will in due season vindicate themselves; I have cause to think, the Dr reports this as faithfully as he did Mr Baxter's discourse about the Liturgy: I well know, that those who had immediate conference with his Majesty, professed in private debates with their Brethren, another judgement of the Covenant and Episcopacy, than what is now reported of them: I am sure at a general meeting of the Covenant Presbyters in and about the City of London, the cause of the Covenant was debated, generally owned in its opposition to Episcopacy, and other things returned amongst us; and by joint consent it was agreed, to petition his Majesty, and the Houses of Parliament; the heads of which petition, being agreed on, was committed to certain brethren to prepare and draw up; and was this.  

To the Kings most Excellent Majesty.  
Humbly showeth,  
YOur Petitioners humbly blessing God for your Majesty's happy Restauration to the Throne of your Royal Father, being also sensible of your Majesty's gracious acceptance of our humble Address made to your Majesty; as likewise of the great piety and zeal in your Majesty's late Proclamations for suppressing of profaneness, and countenancing & protection of godly Ministers, are thereby encouraged to lay this humble presentation and Petition, with ourselves, at your Majesty's feet.  
That whereas your Petitioners by the Authority of the two Houses of Parliament, were brought under the sacred obligation of a Solemn Oath, wherein, with our hands lifted up to the most high God, we did Covenant to endeavour a Reformation in Doctrine, Worship, Discipline and Government, and Uniformity of the Churches of God in the three Kingdoms; and in pursuance thereof, the said Honourable Houses, with the advice of the Assembly of Divines, did ordain a Form of Church government, a confession of Faith, a Directory for Worship, and the greater and lesser Catechisms, which we and our Congregations have through God's goodness for many years together, and still do comfortably enjoy and practise.  
We are therefore humbly bold, in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ (for the prevention of divisions, offences, & snares to the consciences of many thousands within the three Kingdoms, both Ministers and people, who are pious and peaceable) with all humility to beseech your Majesty,  
That the things of God and Religion, which have been so solemnly Covenanted for, may be owned and confirmed by your Royal Authority; which notwithstanding, we do sincerely profess our readiness to accommodate with our Godly and Orthodox brethren dissenting from us, so far as may consist with our consciences and Covenant.   
This Petition however by some State stratagems and Court compliment, and over prudent cowardice of some, who contrary to the due order of all Assemblies, would never let it be reported, it was prevented from being presented to his Majesty; yet I know it was agreed and assented unto by many learned and ingenious men, who are yet ready in all ●●ble, lawful, and submissive ways, to own the same cause of the Covenant, in which Mr Cr. hath appeared; and is here inserted as a check to Dr Gauden's fancied compliance of Covenanted Presbyters.  
2. Dr Gauden doth often suggest the extinpation of Episcopacy to be inconsistent with loyalty to the King, and therefore affectionately wisheth, that Mr Cr. may maintain and express his loyalty, to which he findeth him a pretender.  
To this, give me leave, as Dr Gauden hath done before me, to play the fool, and boast; and I can say without vanity, in expressions of loyalty on conscience of the Covenant, I think I have not come behind the highest Prelate which pretendeth most to it; though it be not so visible at Court as they make theirs to be, yet all England knows Mr crofton's contest against the cruel and barbarous murder of his late Majesty, & how plainly he did in the pulpit at Nantwitch in Cheshire, to the face of the chief Republican agents reprove it, as an actual & positive breach of Covenant, in a solemn Assembly, and  held on Jan. 25. 1649. what rage and reproach he that day underwent, and what hazard he thereby ran into, the yet Minister of that Town, and other Gentlemen loyal to his Majesty, can declare.  
In conscience of this Covenant, and loyalty to his Majesty, he withstood and declined the Engagement, and that against the open and violent threats of promoters of it; persuasions of complying brethren, one of whom pressed me to it with this great argument, The fight at Dunbar is l●st; the King's Interest quite overthrown; these times afford few Martyrs; yet Mr Cr. resolved to make one, and conflicted with a violent and vexatious people, to a Sequestration of his Estate, on no other reason, but not subscribing to the Engagement. It is too long to report my constant praying for, and preaching up the King's Interest, to the conviction of the enemy; my constant refusal to observe any of their Fasts, or solemn Thanks-givings, my preaching at Westchester at the beginning of Sr George Booths attempt, and my troublesome attendance on the Council of State, and Militia, with the threats and rage I then underwent: The Articles of Treason against Oliver, charged against me, for which I underwent much trouble; the friendly and angry conflicts I have often had with John Bradshaw, whom I feared not to mind of his wages of unrighteousness: my constant asserting of his Majesty's Interest, and subjects duty of returning to the Lord, and to David their King, which I preached in St Peter Cornhill, when the hearers trembled, and all the City expected Mr Crofton's bonds at the least: All which were expressions of loyalty to the King, and conscience of the Covenant. But I will only present thee with a Letter which I sent unto a Member of the Rump Parliament, on the very day of their triumphant return from Portsmouth; it was then published (though without my name) I shall now affix it to this Epistle, and leave thee to judge, how far conscience of the Covenant hath acted Mr crofton's loyalty to the King, and tell thee he retaineth the same duty for his Majesty, and in sense of it doth (and cannot but do it) now contest for, and assert the solemn League and Covenant, in that religious part which must be promoted with utmost zeal, by all who wish well to King and Kingdom; though the devil and his instruments do endeavour to damp, deaden, and divert the discharge of duty, by the clamorous charge of Treason, Rebellion, Sedition, and Disloyalty of that Act, which is in its Nature, Principle, and Disposition of the Agents, most truly loyal and faithful to the King, and Kingdoms Interest, Honour, and Happiness; which none hath, or can more sincerely seek and promote, than the zealous, conscientious, Covenanters, amongst whom to be reckoned, (cost what it will) is the Ambition and Resolution of  
March 14. 1660. Zach. Crofton.   

A Letter written by a Minister in London, in Answer to one sent from a Member of the Long PARLIAMENT.  
Honoured Sir,  
YOurs of the 18th instant I received; whereby I discern your sense of the sad hand of God upon these Nations, in the many sad Revolutions to which they have been subject. And now you seem studious of the way of its recovery, in which I rejoice. Though, Sir, your Enquiry doth a little amaze me; not so much for the matter, as that you should press me to it in this juncture of time. You well know, Sir, I have not declined to let you know my thoughts of all the late transactions of those who called themselves, The Long Parliament. Did I not much presume on your Faithfulness never to use it to my damage (however God deal with you) I might burn my pen and paper for fear of a Charge of Treason and High Court of Justice. But I will not fear to write at his request to whom I have often spoken freely, and yet met with the fidelity of a Friend.  
Sir, your Enquiry is serious and seasonable, and calls for a better resolution than I can render.  
It is this.  
Quest. What is to be desired by them that wish well to England?  
I understand your Enquiry as grounded on the present sad state of the Nations affairs; and so my resolution is, as of a Minister of God, that of Israel's Repentance promised in Hosea 3.5. Afterwards shall Israel return, and seek unto the Lord their God, and unto David their King, is the unum necessarium, one only thing to be desired for England as her sovereign Remedy against all her maladies by the hand of God inflicted on her.  
On serious observation of England, I cannot but judge her the parallel of the ten Tribes in sin and sorrow, and wish she may precede them in a serious and seasonable Repentance. Methinks, Sir, the Prophet Hosea his Prophetical Marriage of an Harlot, and leaving her a long time with this charge, 
Hos. 3.3.  To abide for him, and not to play the Harlot, or be for any other, is a lively Emblem of England's state and duty.  
England, Sir, as Israel, have gone in the way of Jeroboam, and have sinfully, against all Natural, Civil and Religious bonds, cast off and shut out their Lawful Governors and Established Government left them by their Progenitors, 
England's Disease.  and under which she long flourished, unto the Enriching of herself, Envy of her Neighbours, Nations, and Encouragement of the Reformed Churches: And that after many Declarations, Protestations, Vows, Oaths, and the SOLEMN LEAGVE AND COVENANT for the defence and preservation of the King's Majesty's Person and Posterity, the Privileges of Parliament, and the Liberties of the Subject, and that Sworn in a day of Extremity, when they seemed to be in danger, and men were Jealous (the subversion since effected) was intended. Nay, and after a vast expense of Blood and Treasure in the defence of them; and when under an Obligation inviolable and never to be dispensed withal, wherein we have sworn to God, Not to suffer ourselves by any comminations, persuasions or terrors whatsoever, directly or indirectly to turn aside to the right hand or to the left, or to make defection from this Cause. Yet have our Nation, to the Scandal of Religion, Reproach of the Nation, and Blasphemy of God, and Provocation of his Justice, with Israel, made defection from their Lawful & Natural Prince, yea and altered their unalterable Government at the Lusts of Men subverting very Foundations. Only, Sir, I must be free to let you know, that in two things England's defection hath been more vile than that of Israel's, in that it was made by a violent, base, unjust, extrajudicial, barbarous Regicide, with an hypocritical pretence of Justice. Secondly, In that Members of the Parliament have been to themselves an Herod Ascalonite to violently break up their own Sanhedrin; and Guido Faux, to blow up King, Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled, to the everlasting blemish of the Protestant Religion, and in the room thereof have been subjected to usurpation and selfcreated Governors, with whom most of the Nation have concurred, and to them consented. And for the support of this Usurped Magistracy, Calves have been set up at Dan and bethel, all falsehood in Religion Tolerated, the Ministry laid common, who will becomes a Priest unto the Lord. So that, Sir, Schism and Sedition, Rebellion unto Regicide, Perfidy and Perjury is become England's Gild, and impiety written in such legible and indelible Characters, that all men must say, She is become an Harlot, and see repentance absolutely necessary to prevent her ruin. 
England. Distempers.  Sir, give me leave to tell you, England's sin (like Israel's) hath been pointed out by her Sorrows; for she having shamefully shaken off her Rightful Governor and Government, hath been prostituted to the Lusts and Ambition of particular men, and proudly trampled on by Military insolency, in so much that our very Bellmen can reproach us as we lie in our Beds. Shall I, Sir, make bold to insert a Bell-mans' sound which I heard with my own ears. It was this, 
Whilst you securely Sleep, I Ring my Bell,  
Which lately hath rung out your Freedoms Knell.  
Your Soldiers, now, your Sovereigns are become,  
Your Laws and Liberties command by sound of Drum.  
Nor is it strange, for they read no Commission,  
Regard no Bonds, but prosper by Transgression.  
By Pride and Perjury, these Saints most rude.  
Have Cut off the King, and Parliament subdued.  
Your eyes have seen't, vile Slaves, yet in this season,  
You are Rid like Asses, and not Ruled by Reason.   
Oh, Sir, how many sad and shameful revolutions have passed upon us, and yet we are full far from Settlement? Authority, like a Tennis-Ball, hath been cast up and down for him to catch that catch can, and hath been tossed between a republican pack, and single Person, whilst both are plain and palpable Usurpers; for indeed in nature, and by God's just judgement, Revolution is the constant Attendant on Usurpation; the Globe of Magistracy must roll up and down, whilst off its Pin, and from its Centre, it only resteth in right Subjects; and now we are covered with confusion, and left without King, any lawful, nay, without Prince, any unlawful Governors, without any establishment in Church or State, Civil and Religious order, and this was the punishment of Israel's, now is of England's adultery: The estate of her widowhood, the time of divine desertion; for Civil Order is God's presence in the World, and Religious Order his presence in the Church. The very Heathen conclude from the confusions in the world, the Gods have forsaken the Earth; so that, Sir, he must have no Religion who seethe not in England's case to conclude and cry out, Righteous art thou, O Lord, and just are all thy Judgements.  
Now, Sir, I have showed England's disease and distemper; it remains that I direct the cure and remedy, and that I say is, Repentance, true and hearty, 
England's Cure and Remedy.  General and Universal Repentance. Let the Ministers of God lift up their voice, and cry, Repent, England, repent, repent; let all that wish well to England, pray that God would pour out a Spirit of Repentance, that from Dan to Beersheba all Israel may return and seek unto the Lord, and to David their King.  
Sir, Repentance is the end and errand of all Afflictions, Isai. 27.11. Men cry out of doing the Work of God, nor do I deny it in all our strange revolutions; only I desire it may be noted, it is Gods strange work, speaking his displeasure, and summoning his People's Repentance: A relenting heart, a returning spirit shall no sooner be effected, but these sharp rods will be rejected. God will walk contrary to a stubborn People, until their uncircumcised heart be humbled, 
Levit. 26.  but no longer, for, than his end is effected.  
Repentance doth engage divine return; for he hath promised, that when ever he speaks against a Nation, to pluck it up, or root it out, if that Nation repent, he will repent, Jer. 18.8. He ever meets relenting Ephraim with Repentance for inflicted judgements; his method is to give Repentance and Remission of sins: 
Jer. 31.18.  The greatest good intended for Israel is contracted into the promise of repentance; the Sun doth not more certainly follow the morning Star, than the return of God's presence doth attend repentance:  
Nay, Sir, in this case repentance is an actual re-enjoyment of blessing, not only a quality disposing to it, but an act putting into the possession of it; as your Armies late repentance for their back-sliding, put your Members actually into the House, to rule and govern, and their counter repentance put you out again, so the repentance of your pretended Parliament, and the People of England puts lawful Governors into their proper places, and fixeth Authority in its right Centre, which sin un hingeth and expelleth. You may observe, Israel's Repentance was an actual and ardent Contest to bring home the King. Repentance breaks open the Bar of Sedition and Rebellion which shutteth out lawful authority; will but God give Repentance, the Restitution of England's Government will be very feasable and speedy. For this Repentance consists in two parts.  
1. To abide for rightful Governors, however expelled, and at present excluded; and not to be for any other Magistrate, by any act of Allegiance, or acknowledgement of Loyalty; strike not hands with, consent not to any selfcreated Governors, by Pride, Perfidy, and Rebellion, slipping into a Chair of State; play not the wanton with any self-advancing Absalon, be not seduced by every seditious Sheba: If proud men have power and profaneness to catch a Sceptre, and stamp Authority upon themselves, let men maintain their Chastity, deny their Allegiance, court them not as rightful Governors: men's giddy unconstancy is the blood that nourisheth Rebellion: resolved chastity is the rebuke of adulterous attempts; if with Mephibosheth, men cannot follow their exiled David, let them abide in their widowhood, and retain their Loyalty until he return. According to Nature and Scripture a people may better be without any Prince, then strike hands with a Usurper, for in that is sorrow, but in this is sin: I should, Sir, wish that fond and blind affection may not engage any to commit lewdness with any the Members of England's late Husbands body; let not any the Members of our Collective Body (now beheaded, and bemangled,) cheat us with the claim of Allegiance by pretence of Relation, and cry of a Long Parliament; but rather let these Members be dispersed throughout the Tribes of Israel as evidences of that unheard of violence, and unparallelled cruelty which hath been acted on our Espoused Lord. England's Subscription of sinful Engagements and shameful Addresses to unlawful Powers, hath been the breach of her chastity; let us abide for lawful Government, when we can do no more, evidence our integrity, and assert our duty and relation, when we cannot enjoy our right.  
The second Act of Repentance to be done, 
Second part of Repentance.  is to return unto the Lord, and to David their King. Return to God, is the formal act of true Repentance; Sin and Repentance have the same object, though some sin is more immediately against God, yet all sin is a transgression of his Law: The same God that said, Thou shalt have none other Gods before my face, said also, Thou shalt honour thy Father and thy Mother; and, Thou shalt not commit adultery: Israel's Rejection of Samuel, was a Rejection of the Lord; as light as men make of Civil Right and Order, it is God's direction in the second Table of his Law: The complaint of the Penitent for any sin, is unto God, Against thee, thee only have I sinned; seeking to the Lord, will spur a seeking unto David their King; sense of God offended, engageth a return from all sin, not only from last, but first acts of violence done unto Authority; not only the interruptions made on you in 1653. but those chief made by you in 1648. and that with fullness of Resolution to back-slide no more; a return to God will awe the conscience, and obviate all the difficulties and discouragements of Repentance; danger sinfully created by rebellion shall not deter repentance, because it is a return to God, ready to forgive; let me say to England as God to Israel, 
Jer. 4.1.  If thou wilt return, return unto the Lord, who enjoined your duty; whose Law hath been violated by your impiety; unto the Lord, to whom you swore in the day of your distress; who is a God of jealousy, and will avenge the quarrel of the Covenant; sad is the Repentance which is but an exchange of sin, or of sins object; a bewailing of one rebellious act, but maintaining and proceeding in a series of Rebellion, violence, and sedition. Sir, whatever Soldiers do, Saints must not thus return.  
Israel's return to God must be with a return to David their King; by David is generally understood the Messiah the Lord Jesus Christ, nor do I deny it, only Sir, I wish it may be noted, the Messiah is called David for Relation and Succession sake, because the same seed and rightful Successor of David, as the Pharaohs of Egypt, and Caesars of Rome; he is their King, not only as the Messiah, but by a lineal descent from, and lawful succession to the Crown of Israel; so that a return to David their King is mentioned with an allusion unto their Apostasy from, and Rebellion against the House of David, which must be repent in their return; for they must embrace the Lord Jesus, not only as the Messiah, but also as their natural Prince and lawful Sovereign; and therefore Calvin cryeth out, Aliter vere & ex animo Deum quaerere non potuit, quin se etiam subjiceret Legitimo imperio cui astrictus erat; they could no way seek the Lord in truth, but by becoming Subject to their lawful Sovereign.  
England's repentance must be according to this, they must seek the Lord, through Christ, by subjection to their lawful Government and Governors, from which they have revolted; the formality of Repentance from Rebellion is a return to Loyalty. Sir, Restitution is an essential act of Repentance; the only restitution made for repent of Rebellion, is a re-establishment of Authority, and a return to Loyalty, becoming subject for conscience sake: Israel repenting the Rebellion into which they run after self-advancing Absalon; 
2 Sam. 19  they fell to strife among themselves about fetching home their King: Nay, Shimei's Character of repentance is this, Thy servant doth know that I have sinned, therefore behold I am come down the first of all the House of Joseph to meet my Lord the King; if God will do England good, he will give them hearts to give God the things that are Gods, and Caesar the things that are Caesar's, which have been too long held back with violence.  
I wish, Sir, that none may pretend an inconsistency between this act of Repentance, and the Good Old Cause of God and his People, for whoever shall so do, must sell themselves unto positive blasphemy, and perpetual profaneness; pretending that to be the Cause of God which is expressly repugnant to his revealed Will, and resolving Rebellion is the honour of Religion, and only work of Saints; and wilfully shut their eyes, that they may cousin their Consciences: For, Sir, is not the King's Preservation, Honour and Happiness, the Privileges of Parliament, the Liberty of the Subject, and defence of the Government by King, Lords and Commons, written in such Legible Characters in the Parliaments, Cities, and Armies Declarations, Remonstrances, and Protestation; in all our Vows, Oaths, and Covenants, as the Good Old Cause for which so much blood and treasure was expended, that none but the wilful impenitent can choose but run and read it; I shall for more full conviction refer you to Mr. prynn's Good Old Cause truly stated, which I know you have seen,  
Neither, Sir, would I have the hazard of any man's life or estate, threatened by this repentance, be any bar unto it; for, Sir, this hazard is selfcreated, and sinfully procured; which, should it be inflicted, were but the proper effect of Justice, better to be undergone here then hereafter unto eternity; happy may be the stroke of Justice which may save a Soul from Hell; the sinful escapes of humane Justice will one day be found exceeding sad: Running away from the rod of correction, is an heightening rebellion, and note of a Reprobate; and whither will such fly from God's allseeing eye? Or will it boot any to contend with God for impunity? Oh no, it will not.  
But Sir, such men may be worse feared then hurt; Repentance is the sponge of Gild in the sight of men, as well as in the sight of God: God who hath the hearts of Kings in his hand, and turns them as the rivers of water, relents towards a repenting Ephraim, and maketh David relent towards a rebellious Absalon; Royal Clemency never shines brighter than in returns from violent exile; Shall any be put to death this day in Israel? for do I not know that I am this day King in Israel? Is David's answer to the son of Zerviah provoking against Shimei, who had full well deserved it? Any indifferent Politician can give assurance of indemnity for general delinquency, especially, when true repentance is the spring that doth enforce it.  
Lastly, Sir, let none stand up against this act of Repentance, and cry, It is dangerous to Religion, a Free Parliament will call home the King, and he is rude and profane, and converseth among Papists, and will bring Popery into the Land with him. To such I say in short, How came they into God's Chair to become solicitous of Event? is uncertain fear of an issue any ground of bar to duty? Where is our Faith should carry us on in duty against all dread? Needs God our Sin to preserve the Sanctity of his holy Name? Will not this prove a sad support unto Religion? But is not this fear groundless? Is not the King a Protestant born and brought up? bound in the same Solemn League and Covenant with ourselves? Hath not our sin subjected him to the saddest temptation to turn Papist that ever poor Prince underwent? Doth not Mr. Prynn tell us plainly and upon good demonstration, That his exile is the great propagation of the Catholic Cause, and high courtesy to Rome? Sir, these obstructions are all frivolous, and so will appear, if ever God pour on the Nation a Spirit of Repentance.  
Worthy Sir, I have with the plainness of a Minister, and freedom of a Friend, given my thoughts on your Enquirie, and that not Rashly, but as having consulted the Oracles of God. And I cannot but beg that you persist no longer in your way of sin: Oh that God would give you and your fellow-Members hearts to give him Glory, and after your success, to take to yourselves shame for your sinful subversion of an Established Government, and that with pretence of Law, calling yourselves a Parliament, when your own Consciences tell you, you are no such thing. Sir, England is inclining to repent, if your House prove not a Sheba to sound again the Trumpet of Rebellion. However, my advice is, Let the Ministers of God cry out, Repent, England, Repent, Repent; and let all the people of God pray, That England may return and seek unto the Lord, and to David their King: Then shall we be established enjoying our Princes as at the first, and our Rulers as at the beginning. I have no more, save with the Prophet Ezekiel, They, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear, for they are a Rebellious House, yet shall know there hath been a Prophet among them, Ezek. 2.5.  
FINIS.   

BERITH ANTIBAAL. OR, Zachary Croftons' appearance, BEFORE The Prelate Justice of Peace. PRETENDING To bind the Covenant and all Covenanters to their good behaviours.  
WHen Dr. John Gauden first appeared in the World with his Analysis to the sinful losing of St. Peter's bonds, under a plausible pretence of counselling a Christian friend, in a matter of great concernment, and resolving the conscience, in the point of the solemn League and Covenant, and its opposition to Episcopacy; Mr. Crofton considering the good observation of Gregory the great, 
Lib. Mor. 22. cap. 2●.  made of the course of Heretics, sub specie eonsulendi agunt negotium seducendi, that they pretending to play the Casuistes, to resolve conscience, and to advise in matters of Religion, drive on the design of seducing souls, and subverting the truth, and Salvation. Thought it no less than his duty to consider the same very seriously, and to try it by the rule of Scripture and right reason; and finding in that book (what ever was the Author's intention) too great a tendency to enervate all sacred bonds, Invalidate, yea annihilate the solemn League and Covenant, and thereby supplant the peace, and happiness of our restored King and Kingdom, he apprehended it his duty, as a Minister of Jesus Christ, and his Church, (though the meanest and least to be regarded) to intimate to the worshipful person concerned, and (by him) those to whom that book should come, 
Sir ●. B.  the dissatisfaction, and delusive danger, he found in that book; and therefore he did on July 8. 1660. send after it an Analepsis, or St. Peter's bonds abide, detecting the impiety thereof, in subverting the Covenant, by a pretended interpretation thereof, nay enervating the sacred obligation and power of all Oaths, by the principles therein suggested; and its excee●ing imbecility, as to the satisfaction of conscience, unto which it professed. This done, Mr. Crofton composed himself in silence, and submission, waiting for the reply of the reverend Author of the Analysis, but received none, only more than one, though one (a stranger to Mr. Crofton,) more especially told him, Dr. Gauden thanked Mr. Crofton for his civility, and yielded to his reason; yet at length (how engaged I know not) he appeared to repeat the same things, and almost words, in an Epistle to an Anonymous book, called, Doubts and scruples, but repaired to the Oxford reasons, as his fort against the Covenant, in which, (with other books of the same nature,) Mr. Crofton though (good, (once for all) to consider what was said, or could be said against the Covenant, and to answer them by several Antitheses, which he did in his Analepsis Anelepthe, or the fastening of St. Peter's fetters, and so thought his work on that subject to have been done, being established, and enforced by the learned, pious, and judicious Covenanters plea against absolvers, both which must receive a Logical, and clear theological confutation, ad grecas calendas, and therefore did apply himself to his ordinary Ministry; and his little spare time to such other things, as might be profitable to God's Church, and prevent the backsliding of our covenanted reformation, but  
Hark, What is this, is cried? Dr. Gaudens Reply to Mr. Croftons' answer, I must sure see that: Hem, quid video, what is this, I see? a book with a fair bulck, nigh forty sheets of Paper, to vindicate Dr. Gaudens Analysis, (why not Losing of St. Peter's bonds, is he beaten out of that Title, and ashamed to use or own it any longer) contained in three▪ answered in five sheets of Paper, ten at the most, (if you take in the Anatomy of his nonsense and blasphemy) long looked for comes at last; it sure, will answer expectation? No, it intends no such thing; after its ten month's travel, it will profess no more, then to vindicate his Analysis.  Parturiunt montes, nascetur tandem ridiculus mus. 
As Mountains great, travels a man of worth,  
At length a Mouse (swollen like a Toad,) creeps forth.  
Howsoever, Mr. Crofton, nay the Covenant is concerned in it, it must be taken up and considered, what Title is that it beareth? Anti Baal-Berith; Sure the Printer hath abused him by a transmutation, the Reverend Doctor cannot be so mad, as to account the Solemn League and Covenant, a Baal-Berith; a Covenant for Baal, which he himself swar, and only labours to interpret, and in the positive part of it doth bind unto a reformation of Religion according to the word of God, which kills, and example of the reformed Churches, who have cast out Baal, and his Communion Table, set Altarwise, Altar (I should say) not according to humane inventions, Papal impositions, or prelatical prescriptions, which advance, and maintain Baal, (if not against) competitour with the Lord, and in the negative part of it, binds to the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy, superstition, heresy, schism, and profaneness, under some of which, certainly Baal must be couched at the least; if not visible in Popery, visibly supported by Prelacy, must not the man be out of his wits, who shall call this Covenant a Baal-Berith? If the Doctor did direct this title, and in this book do pursue it, it is pity but D. B. or some Anatomist should discover his nonsense and blasphemy now made as plain, as the Nose on his Face; but I will have more charity.  
The utmost this book pretends to, is to bind the Covenant and Covenanters to their good behaviours, (not abandon, or abolish it, as a Baal-Berith) and to this, they are ready to submit, when summoned by a just authority, for they are, and ever have been (qua tales) as Covenanters of a good behaviour, neither bound nor presuming to endeavour beyond their places and callings, though their reality, constancy, and sincerity therein, by Preaching, or Writing (the works of Ministerial calling) doth not a little vex and displease some Idle Lordly Bishops, and make them complain of the Covenanters misbehaviour in disturbing them on their Velvet couches, or not coming before their Lordships with such cap and knee, and may it like your Grace, as they look for: but  
Who is this that will bind the Covenant and Covenanters to their good behaviour? It is done by the Author of the Analysis: who, Dr. Gauden? I confess he is made a Bishop, but is he yet made a Justice of peace? or do these coincidere by his consecration? I have heard indeed he was entertained into his Diocese, and City of Exeter, like one of his Majesty's Lieutenants at War, and passed through ranks and files of men of War, not Citizens in their Civil Garb; well, be it so; but methinks, our Bishops should not yet cry out, Ecce duo gladia, but if it be his Majesty's pleasure, I shall submit, and Mr. Crofton is ready to appear, and to give such Security as his Worship shall demand; For he must tell him this is not the first time, Mr. Crofton hat● been (on the score of the Covenant) called upon to be bound to his good behaviour; I remember on the trial of a Minister (at the quarter Sessions held at Namptwich, in the County of Chester,) Indicted for opposing the Engagement, to be true and faithful to the Commonwealth, without King or House of Lords, Mr. Crofton (at the desire of his brethren who thought it their duty to stand by their suffering brother) did urge in his behalf, that the Engagement did interfere with the Solemn League and Covenant; unto whom the Attorney for the Commonwealth made no other reply, save, Suckling will you speak, Suckling what will you speak? to which Mr. Crofton (then young as well as little) made this short return, have you not read that out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, God will ordain strength to confound his foes; on which, the enraged Attorney prayed the good behaviour, which fiery Justice Gerrard enforced against Mr. Crofton, who desired the judgement of the Bench before he would find surety; and they declared, Mr. Crofton had only as a Minister urged the Covenant, and a place of Scripture against the Attorney, which was proper to him as a Minister, and could be no misbehaviour; and so he was discharged. I hope I shall have no less Justice, from a Convocation of Prelate Justices, than those who were civil, and under an Usurper.  
But let us pass from the Title, and look into the body of the book, and here I must remember, Robora parentum, refe●unt liberi, the growth of the Children showeth the strength of the Parent. And the bulk of this book, must bespeak no little strength in the Author, but wherein lies his strength? In the passions of his soul, in the Pride of his spirit, Profaneness of heart, and natural fluency of words, but in neither Rhetoric, nor reason, humane or divine, natural or Theological.  
Whosoevever in his right mind readeth but this book, will find it such a rudis indigestaque moles, a me●r chaos of confusion, and intricate labyrinth of words (not in themselves but) rudely scattered, and fling out, without any due dependence or coherence, as in the Turkish Koran, and worse than in the Rabbins Talmud; the whole method of it (though a pretended reply to a methodical exception, which might have directed him to order) is so indigested and full of confusion and disorder; nothing defined or distinguished; Episcopacy, (the subject of the debate) no way described, or explained; so that every common capacity reading it, runs into a wilderness of words, by want of relation and connexion, leaving his understanding at a loss, as to scope or drift, gazing as on unknown pictures, had not a marginal note (related most an end to words more than matter) like the bungling workman in the Painter's art, written this is a Lion, this a Bear, and that a Wolf.  
Lest the reverend Author should think I do him wrong, I must make bold to give a taste thereof, leaving his abusive Anatomist to bundle up his Nonsense and blaspemy, which what ever it did in his Analysis, I am sure lieth scattered in every page of this book; If the Justice's assigning a bastard born, 
pag. 150.  to be kept, because, quod fieri non debuit factum valet, which men of any brains refer to moral, not natural entities; or Mr. Crofton saith Episcopacy must not be restored though it be good, if not proved to be necessary, but he that vows to take away my horse, must not say, he will not change his vow; until it appear my horse is not only good but necessary for me, 
pag. ●9●.  may be taken for Nonsense, which certainly for its profoundness of reason would make an understanding horse to break his bridle. Or, if it may be any way accounted blasphemy, to denominate that a Baal-berith, which is, a Solemn League and Covenant, for the glory of God, advancement of the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus, the honour and happiness of the King and his posterity, made on sense of the plots, conspiracies, attempts and practices of the Enemies of God, and true Religion, and expressly binding to a reformation of Religion, according to God's word, and example of the best reformed Churches; open, vowed Enemies to Baal; and to an extirpation, of whatsoever is contrary to found Doctrine, and the power of godliness, all which, admitting it extended to one particular thing which ought not to have been removed, (yet tended at the most but to the bene esse of Religion) in which respect, it at most could be rendered but imprudent, or unjust in that point, and not a Baal-Berith.  
Or if the reviling, with most opprobrious terms, as factious, seditious, rebellious, perfidious pack (which I leave the Anatomist to gather up and present unto the world) the most lawful, rightly called and constituted Assembly of the Lords and Commons, Princes and principal Rulers of the people, by his late and present Majesty often, and openly owned as a Parliament, and invested, during their being, with the fullest Authority of the Nation; and thereby despising Dominions, and speaking evil of Dignities, may be accounted blasphemy:  
Or if false and impudent accusations of the Covenant and Covenanters to have plotted, contrived, occasioned, and effected the King's barbarous murder, from which all sober men (in their right wits) must acquit it, and them, as violated and oppressed, trodden down and ruined, to make way for that accursed act by men (on whom God hath avenged the quarrel of the Covenant) may be accounted blasphemy:  
Or if railing and despightful speaking, in the height of rage and fury, in the most base, Billingsgate, obscene, scurrilous, opprobrious and disgraceful terms that anger could dictate, or envy could devise, which breaketh through his own professed integrity, 
pag. 7.  and those holy charms by which he pretends to restrain his revenge, & flieth out beyond the gravity of a Minister, authority of a Bishop, sobriety of a Christian, or modesty (much more honesty) of a man, unto the height of effeminate scolding and uncivil ribaldry, with which he hath stuffed more than twenty sheets of his Book, may be accounted blasphemy.  
I must indeed confess in the heat of his anger he hath treated me with as much civility as could be expected from a Bishop to a Presbyter, judged rigid, and consist with so much railing at another with the same breath; often professing to know and keep a difference between me and his other Antagonist, acknowledging Mr. Croftons' civility, reason, honesty, ingenuity, and the like; yet not without some drops of his sarcastical pen; as little Mr. Crofton, so great a Dictator, Presbyterian pertness and petulancy, hold, odious, and fallacious, and the like, which are very little spots in his feasts of love, and plain errata, and slips of passion in comparison of that series and serious mood of scolding with the other, whom he hath coupled with Mr. Crofton in his vindication, yet is enough to guide Mr. Crofton, what to look for, and observe that it is with Bishop Gauden, as Rivet noteth of Bishop Montague, Non potest vir ille, sine convitiis, quenquam a quo dissentit vel in levissimis nominare; This man can scarce name without reproach any man from whom he differs in the least thing and sleightest matter; But it may be this is the expression of Prelatical state and pomp; but the Lord deliver me from rendering railing for railing: I do not delight to rake in this puddle; And therefore with one note more I pass him over, and that is,  
His levity and pride in proclaiming his own worth and dignity, as if far from his neighbours, or that they would not, or indeed could not commend him, soaring aloft in his ambitious self-apprehensions into an equality with the chief Fathers of the Church, beginning his Epistle to the Reader with An having had the honour and happiness, after the example of the great Athanasius, the industrious St. Austin, our own Archbishop Whitgift, Mr. Rich. Hooker, to encounter the enemies of this Church, King and Kingdoms with success: When alas he never yet came nigh the last and least of them in a conflict; If little Mr. Crofton could have answered God and his conscience for so vain an expense of time, he had hampered your Hieraspistes, & strained your sighs and tears, no less than he hath done your Analysis, and yet could not for shame have crowed of any valiant act, in vanquishing the shadow of a Disputant; and in pag 8. He must make the world to take notice of his high honour, in attendance on better persons and better employments, getting the Bishopric of Exeter unto himself, which hindered his Reply for so long a time, Sir, We will excuse you if your friends do not with blame to you say You are come too soon: Yet they, as we, must believe, if your say so be enough, that your affirmations are beyond any rational or conscientious Reply, pag. 151. because indeed they never reach reaso●, or pinch conscience: But your Lordship is pleased to tell us, that you have condescended to consider our exceptions, Sir I thought it had been a Casuists duty to consider all objections, and a Ministers to endeavour all satisfaction, but I must remember you were on your Episcopal Sea, when little Mr. crofton's Analepsis was laid at your feet, to be taken up, or kicked away; but enough of this, it is more fit for your Anonymous Anatomist, then for a man of modesty, who shall keep himself distinct, as you have differenced him, and shall therefore desire to weigh, what your Worship hath against his Analepsis.  
Mr. Crofton is in this elaborate tract dealt with a part, but the little man is so light, that he is tossed up and down the Wilderness, that seeking, he cannot without tiring, find himself, in these indeed tedious, and entangled (as yourself calls them) animad versions; he did according to his little reason, unravel your last snarled skein, and resolved it into a regular method, which methinks Sir might have kept your fluency within some bounds, and have kerbed your wild excursions; he shown you the Rocks against which your resolution dashed, and digested your discourse into argumentation as well as he could, and dare say, you appeared better to the Reader in Mr. crofton's Analepsis, then in your own Analysis, why kept you not to this? I promise you if this be Rhetoric, I shall not love it, till it keep to rule, be plain, pure, perspicuous and methodical (without which it is but natural fluency of words, and volubility of tongue) and not fordid, tedious, obscure, flat, wild, rabid, raging, empty and barely wordy, without sentence, confused and immethodical, as is yours, unto the very height of exorbitancy: take notice of it, if I be (as God forbidden I should be) Archbishop of Canterbury, and an appeal be made to the Archp. against your writings, I will adjudge you, instead of your Marginal digitations to your Reader, to place over every Paragraph, the figure by which you frame your sentence, and mood by which you form your argument; for now you have vindicated your Analysis, I must send to you to pray an Analysis of your vindication; my reason it is too little to make it; I must be fain to guests your meaning by your mumping.  
The Doctor's great design in his Analysis, professed to reconcile the Covenant and Episcopacy, but how unhappily he lost it, and miscarried in it, was modestly declared by little Mr. Crofton, (whom I apprehend this great Doctor scorns to admit as a Dictator, so as to take notice of, or amend his errors;) on which his conscience cannot but tell him, all his Casuistical endeavours have been, and must needs be shipwrackt, without all possibility of satisfaction to conscience, how ever it may catch the fancy of his prelatical proselytes, who are pleased with a sound against the Covenant, and consider not the certainty of it, and are ready jurare in verba Episcopi, be they never so groundless; the say so of a grave Prelate, is a sufficient reason of their faith.  
The inadvertency of his expressions both for their fury, and falsehood, against Presbytery, the Parliament, and all those whose consciences cannot correspond with his propounded Prelacy, as well as against his particular Antagonists, is so far from being abated, that it is more vigorously acted, and made so accumulative, that his book runs over with foams of rage, filling (as I said before) more the twenty sheets of paper with such furious and foolish objurgatio●s, ridiculous reflections, and scurrilous chiding, that he that enters this book, and passeth but the Threshold, must needs say, this man is in no temper to resolve a doubt, or satisfy a conscience, he is in the heat of a scolding passion, and so lay it aside, as unfit to be read: really had angry Mr. Crofton been his Chaplain, he must have become an index expurgatorius to his book, and presumed to dictate more sobriety and meekness, before it had seen the world; for that the wrath of man, cannot work the righteousness of God, men cannot but judge this book an hot contest, and violent plea for his prelatical honour and revenues, in which beginning to be warm, he groweth as hot as a Toast, and fearing to lose them, falls into a fretting chafe against the Covenant, and Covenanters, which promise them little security, and therefore runs his rage against sacrilege, and buying Bishops Lands, (from which it is well known Mr. Crofton is free, nor indeed doth he charge him) rather than for his Episcopal office in Christ's Church, the conscience of which would have made him sensible, a Bishop must be no brawler, but patiented.  
In this angry mood, we cannot expect him to be very clear o● certain in the ratio formalis objecti, the object of the obligation scrupled, and disputed; the want of which hath been noted to him by the different acceptation of the term Bishop, and Episcopacy; the which Mr. Crofton did not only explain, but propose unto him a doublesence thereof, affirming the one to be Scriptural, primitive, and Catholic, the other to be Papal, Novel and tyrannical, and on the variety of his words, prayed a positive determination which of them he owned, and would reconcile to the Covenant; but his greatness would not condescend to make a choice of either, according to Mr. Croftons' proposal, but that we may know he scornfully takes notice that Mr. Crofton had observed his uncertain proposal of the object, in ambiguous words, he affords us a parenthesis, in the threshold of his book, which runs thus.  
The way of Episcopal order and authority (that is lest Mr. Crofton should again mistake my meaning, the presidency of one chief Prebyter or Bishop among many, and above all lesser Bishops or Presbyters in his Diocese, according to the ancient custom, and laws Ecclesiastical and civil) I thank you Sir, for this grave cast of your eye, did Mr. Crofton mistake you without cause; or clamour it to your damage? or did he not take the pains to pick up your words, and put them together, and tell you that some of them spelled one thing, and some another distinct from that, and modestly desire which you would own, and stand by.  
Sir, the spirit and men of your Diocese, are said to be near a kin to the Welshmen, and they must have leave to tell their tale twice, and for aught I see you must tell yours thrice, for I am as likely to mistake you as I was before, such an Heraclitus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you are in your Enigmatical extrication of your own made intricacies, and rhetorical labyrinths: Before I presume to determine your meaning, I must inquire what you mean by Presidency? whether you intent not to extend it, beyond the gradus of a Moderator, unto the power and efficacy of a Precedent of a College at the least? what you mean by above all less and subordinate Bishops? whether Officio & honore Cathedrae, or Ordinis authoritate, which your Episcopal order & authority doth suggest; though the title Bishop given by you to Presbyters doth seem to mitigate it. What do you mean by ancient custom? only that which hath long use, and can plead prescription, and which may have run long, and yet leave us a space, in which we may see and say, this was not from the beginning? You do indeed profess to the first six hundred years, but I dare say the last three hundred of them are those you would chief cleave to. And what do you mean by Ecclesiastical Laws? where are these recorded? and by what authority were they composed? When you have given me a plain, clear and distinct resolution to these, if I mistake your meaning let me be blamed, till then blame me not. I love not the Rhetoric, which contrary to its end, proposeth objects with that obscurity, that they cannot be with certainty determined, and that under a profession to clear and convince the conscience. Yet Sir, to do you right,  
When I observe you page 114. eat your own words, and offer (as if your Brethren Prelates had brought you now into Cassander's School, and charged you to make an Apology for your over-friendly proposal to Presbyterians) which you pursue by telling us, All Presbyterians do hug Bishop Ushers Reduction of Episcopacy (which in your Analysis you assured us did reduce Episcopacy to an efficacious conjunction with Presbytery; and on which Mr. Cr. concluded that sense, which you say he seemed in a sober mood to own, An Episcopacy consistent with the Covenant, pag. 191.) but now say, will reduce Bishops to primitive poverty (the estate which attended and enforced their piety) and therefore tell us, That humble learned and pious Lord Primate, propounded that reduction not in order to bind the hands of, or limit Bishops in England and Scotand; but as a condescension and expedient at present to disarm and bind the hands of Presbyters and people. Sir, who told you that this was the politic stratagem of that pious Bishop? did not Bishop Wren? Sure I am, he came not down from heaven to authorise you in your Book to call him hypocrite, and to tell all the world, he had in Machiavillian policy, by his grave and judicious authority affirmed, That it was apparent out of the Word of God, and practice of the primitive times, that Presbyters had an intrinsical power unto all Jurisdiction and order in the Church, and by after Usurpation were thrust out; and therefore he proposed an expedient, prudendentially to restore them to their just authority; but never intended it to be believed as a truth, or ever be put in practice as a duty, but to only be jingled in the ears of crying children. Are you not ashamed, to cast such a blot, on the precious name of him, who I know was by some Cassandrian Prelates judged Puritan, whilst alive! Do you measure every man by your own temporising principles? and think they are only in a good mood, till they have opportunity to be bad and base? do not you blush to offer this reduction in one book, and call it in, in another? But whilst I see you thus play fast and lose, I know how to trust to you, and am helped the better to understand what you mean by Episcopal Government; and when I observe the sovereign power by which Mr. Crofton (you say, and that truly) is not willing to be ruled, pag. 216. Coordination with Kings as chief Governors by Divine appointment, pag. 205. Honourable fatherhood and government, p. 203. The legal constitution by the Laws of England, to which our Episcopacy doth pretend; the continued practice and exercise of it in this Nation; the superiority above, and authority apart and distinct from Presbyters, whose advice may be good and useful, but not necessary, as that which would make every Presbyter suffragan Bishop, and the Bishop without his Presbyters a mere ●●pher. All which I find predicated (up and down your tedious discourse) of that Episcopacy, you would advance, and which you say is not so obscure as Mr. Crofton would pretend, but in express terms you tell us, is, That Church polity, honour, order and government, which our Bishops had, and now have, and that we must not by an equivocal and levelling fence, confound Bishops and Presbyters, by a silly ●●gomac●ie, or cavil of names, distinguished by a real, rational difference of place, honour, office, authority and use, in the Church of Christ, which you say, no learned man can doubt of or deny (but sure you mean affirm;) when I consider these things, I must confess, I should mistake you, and do myself wrong (by suspending, yea stifling my judgement) if I should not see clearly, the Episcopacy, which you pretend to reconcile to the Covenant, is no other than that very frame and fabric of government, which Smectymnuus tells us, was of humane invention and diabolical occasion, by which the man of sin was made manifest, and did advance himself in the Temple of God, innovated by Austin the Monk, so exercised that it appeared papatum alterius mundi; which my Analepsis told you I was jealous you meant in your Analysis.  
I have Sir (with tiring difficulty) discovered the ratio formalis objecti, which you profess to reconcile to the Covenant, and make consistent with it, and in my eyes it doth seem to be the very same with that which in terminis was covenanted to be extirpated, viz. Prelacy, that is to say, the government by Archbishops, Bishops, their Commissaries, Chancellors, Deans, Deans and Chapters; Archdeacon's, &c. depending on that Hierarchy. But let us see how you answer the third part of Mr. crofton's Analepsis, and acquit yourself from the imbecility of argumentation charged on you: And sir, you seem to me to take a very preposterous and strange course, to commend the strength of your reason, by a tedious and long confused discourse of rage, enmity and opposition at the Covenant, or by a general hypothesis, that it must bind to what is good, pious, just, lawful, and not against reason, religion, justice, piety, morality, duty to God and man; whereas you ought to remember, that generalia non pungunt; these may be all admitted, and Episcopacy never the nearer reconciled to the Covenant, whereas you ought to have given us a grammatical construction, logical resolution, genuine interpretation of that Article, which seemeth cross to your Episcopacy, and by a clear acceptation, and vulgar apprehension or general scope of its words, make it appear that the words will without straining, admit such a sense and signification; but it may be the simplicity (which becomes an oath) of the terms; extirpation or reformation, being incompetible (except in a fools fancy) might strike you off this: But them you should Sir, have given a point blank charge against that Article, which clasheth with your Hierarchy, as binding to injury, injustice, immorality, irreligion, against the duty we own to God and man, and pursued that closely by clear and convincing demonstrations, than had the Bishop shown himself a workman who needed not to be ashamed; but let little Mr. Crofton be never so great a Dictator he must find è quovis ligno non fit Mercurius; every tongue well hung, cannot be well tuned, nor will natural fluency be easily kept to rules of art, or under the command of reason: I must be content to take you as I find you; and follow you as well as I can in your own confusion. And Sir,  
I find the fabric of your discourse, founded on some seeming principles, which you account undoubted and eternal, then raised by some Hypotheses, or conjectural fancies framed in your own brain, and so your strength is at length directed against that opposition to your prelatical structure you undertook to clear by your Analysis: this is the only order into which Mr Crofton can reduce you, and according to which he shall now consider you.  
First, Sir, your foundation is first offered to view, in pa. 8, and must be considered, and you point to it, (by moral and immutable grounds) in the Margin, and in the Text tell us, your Analysis was fixed on these undoubted and eternal principles of Justice, and true Religion.  
1. No man can lawfully covenant, swear, vow or engage himself contrary to that duty he owes to God, the King, the Church, the Laws and good of his Country, or contrary to that particular Justice and charity which he oweth to himself, or other men.  
2. If any man be surprised, or hampered in such Covenanting words, or vowing forms, he must find out such a sense of his words, as may consist with true Religion, Justice, and known Laws, etc.  
3. If this cannot fairly be done, he must presently retract his Covenant, etc.  
Sir, before I can digest your Notions, and fundamental axioms as undoubted and eternal, moral and immutable, I must demand proof for part of the first, and then the next fall in and follow; think you Sir, a man may in no case swear, to endeavour in his place or calling to remove what is established by Law? if so, you must prove it, I do not believe you; for the laws which were good, may become hurtful: will not you Bishops swear, and pursue it to have the statute 17. Caroli repealed? if you say no, I shall not believe you; nor will you be easily made to believe it is unlawful, and yet I dare boldly affirm it is contrary to your duty: Again, is every Oath unlawful which is against the particular charity and Justice, a man oweth to himself? I cannot believe it; a Merchant may find it to be much for his gain, that he Trade to a place, which is to be excluded by League between two Nations, he is required to swear; may he stand off and say, Charity gins at home, my particular charity doth carry me to Trade thither, to my own enriching, I may not lawfully swear against it? Preach this Doctrine, and the people will love you better than your Prince; my own particular justice, doth bind to exact the utmost mite of the Covenants forfeiture or damages, which I recover against a man; may I not lawfully mitigate it; and on sense of the man's poverty, and my own credit, as not revengeful and cruel; may I not swear, I will not take one mite, or but one half? you are Sir, no Chapman for me, that will not give me leave to cut a thong out of my own hide. As to your second, if a man have so sworn, and be surprised, or hampered by Covenanting words, he must seek to find a just sense, if you mean of the words, according to their natural signification, and others vulgar acceptation, as well as the matter he would perform, I shall not much quarrel with you; only tell you, the fencing of an Oath, when sworn, is a Tickle slippery stone to place in a foundation, it is a snare to devour holy things, and after vows to make enquiry.  
But Sir, for your third, not finding such a sense, he must fly off and retract his Oath, I can in no cause consent, until you have cleared it, that the Oath of the Gibeonites was not against the duty they owed to God, their Laws and Country, their own charity and justice; or that Jeptha's vow was not against his own particular charity and justice (you have some whimsies concerning these, we shall weigh them in their proper places) I am sure these were both surprised, and whatever you fancy the one did, I am sure the other did not go about to sense it, as they might much more clearly and rationally than you do the Covenant. If Sir, these be your political axioms, I am sure the Heathen would soon tell you, You are like to bring an old house on the head of humane Society, and lay them open to all kind of perfidy: what now, must we expect the fabric and superstructure to be raised and fixed on so false and slippery a foundation, is like to prove? a falsis nil nifi falsa sequuntur, such as is the Thesis, such must be Hypothesis; the following materials be of the same nature, and bear a Symerie to the groundwork.  
And Sir, when I gather up your rafters (promiscuously scattered) to the raising of your Hierarchical, Anticovenant structure, I find them to be a hydra of ecclesiastical heresy, and political error, by which your Prelacy seems to work (like the man of sin from whom it was derived, the papacy, of which it cannot be denied to be a species, though alterius mundi) with all deceiveableness unto all unrighteousness; the which you must give me leave to pile up and lay together, that yourself, and such on whom you pretend influence may discern them. Yet Sir, I have more charity then to count you an Heretic; I judge them to be the exuberancy of your inconsiderate loquacity, the excrescency of an unregarded tongue, darkening knowledge by words without wisdom; for in a multitude of words there cannot want much sin: However by a bold and base petitio principii you build upon them, I hope when you see them naked, you will retract them, and run away from your own structure, lest it tumble on your own head, to your ruin as well as shame.  
Concerning Episcopacy, the Object and Ratio formalis of the debate; I have observed your unwillingness to be mistaken, and therefore have done my diligence to understand you, and do think I have taken you right (and as your present state doth declare to all the world) and whilst I say the Solemn League and Covenant doth bind in the plain, literal and obvious sense to the extirpation thereof, you do determine it cannot so do, rationally, justly, honestly, piously, morally, religiously, with an heap of such words; but if it so bind us it is void; but instead of those clear, constant and pregnant beams of right reason and true Religion which you promised in your Analysis, and I demanded in my Analepsis, you us present with the foggy fancies of your own brain, and run away with them ●y your fluid and gliding tongue or discourse, as if granted; as your moral and immutable principles indispensably and undeniably true, whilst every knowing man will tell you nothing but a flood of vanity can drive you to imagine them so to be: Particularly you conclude, as without contradiction these Ten things, which in their aspect and appearance will be found (by any man conversant in Scripture, and acquainted with the estate and affairs of the Church) notorious falsehoods.  
1. Presbytery hath no divine appointment, was not commanded by God, never used in the ancient Church, hath nothing in it piously, morally or politically good or necessary. Epist. to the Reader. How Sir? can you read of the Elders of Ephesus, and the Presbytery that ordained Timothy, and say Presbytery was not commanded by God? Can you read in the Fathers, of the Presbytery advancing by their own power a primus Presbyter, in the ancient canons of the essentiality of the Presbyteries concurrence, in all acts of Discipline of the Father's Epistles to, and concerning Presbyteries, and yet say Presbytery was never used in the Church? Can you consider Presbytery is a College of Gospel Ministers, governing communi consilio by joint advice, and yet conclude there is in Presbytery nothing piously, morally, or politically good? Will not every child in his double Psalter tell you, In the multitude of Councillors there is safety? and every Schoolboy teach you plus vident oculi, quam oculus? and yet are you so blind as to see no moral, political good in Presbytery? but this is but one Doctor's opinion; the meanest Clerk in your Cathedral would tell you, your Grace was at a loss when you thus concluded. Nor do you hit the next.  
2. Presbytery was not conjoined to Episcopacy (if you mean in its first constitution, and the order of it, which was without and before Bishops, afterwards made by its power, you begin well) nor hath any power or authority unto the governing of the Church, is no way necessary to a Bishop, otherwise then by advice, when called and required, and that to be taken or refused at the Bishop's pleasure, pag. 289. I pray Sir, help the Papists and untie that knot, whether Peter received the keys of the Kingdom of heaven, as a Presbyter or Bishop, ordinary Minister, or Apostle, or prince of the Apostles. It is pity John Chrysostom had not you for his Advocate, when he was charged as with a crime for ordaining without his Presbyters: I hope the correction of the ancient Canons being committed to you, you will purge out those that confine the Bishop to his chair, to declare and execute the decrees of the Presbytery, and make void the ordinations and censures made without the Presbytery, forget them of the Council of Carthage. And Sir, there is one passage or two in Scripture worth your notice; Let him tell the Church, sufficient to such an one is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, the punishment inflicted by many: You know Sir they are words that imply plurality, dignity and authority. I pray Sir, when your pen is in your hand, draw a line through these words, in the form of ordering Priests, minister the Discipline of the Church; to what end should they promise faithful diligence to that which they have nothing to do withal, and concerneth them not. But to the third.  
3. To endeavour to advance Presbytery to exercise in the rule and government of the Church, is Schism and Superstition, pag. 214, 215. How, is Church Government an Article of Christian faith, and an essential act of Divine Worship? 
Oxford Reasons Sect. 3.  your friends at Oxford were of another mind, when they charged the Scots supposed say so, to look like Schism and Superstition: What fools were Clemens Alexandrinus, Augustin, and Gregory the great, and other Fathers to Father John Gauden; they left us this ground of Schism and Superstition, Vnitas Ecclesiae catholicae non consistit in uniformitate disciplinae, sed in unitate fidei: but our Bishop standeth on their shoulders, and can see further then little Mr. Crofton, who yet hopes to see as far, as little Zacheus in his Sicamore Tree, advancing Presbytery as God's institution, and to keep the untie of the spirit in the b●nd of peace.  
4. Bishops are the sole and chief cisterns, conservators, conduit, and derivators of all holy orders, discipline and Government, the principal Pillars and Fathers of the Church. pag. 221, 248.  
I hope Sir, you will then make your succession as clear as the sun: I would make a journey to Exeter, to have the intricacies thereof well unravelled, what became of the Churches, when in Alexandria & per totum Aegyptum, the Presbyters did ordain; and think you, that Denmark demolished the Church, when Christian their third King did by public edict, beat down your Pillars? your charity is more to the reformed Churches, then to condemn or censure them as no Churches, pag. 196. but yet you will cut off their pipes, cisterns, conduits, and make them come fetch Waters at your Wells; your charity is very rational.  
5. Episcopal presidency, and authority, is a Sovereign power, and spiritual jurisdiction in ordination, confirmation, censures, rebuking, silencing, excommunication, absolution, and other exercise of Ecclesiastical power; without, above, and against Presbyters and people. pag. 215, 229. Well said D. Gauden, I like a man that can speak out, Mr. Crofton shall know your meaning anon; but your jurisdiction is so spiritual, that to him your Sovereign power is invisible; it is probable you may make him feel it, though he cannot see it, but I am confident it must be in his body, not in his soul; make good this description by Scriptures, Fathers, Divine principles, or good Authors Popish, or Protestant, and if you make not a full formal Pope, I will burn the Covenant, renounce my reason, and believe as your Church believes; for all that I have met with, give Presbyters an interest (if not the greatest share) with, and without the Bishops, in every of these acts of Ecclesiastical jurisdiction.  
6. The Episcopacy which England had, or the English Hierarchy for its difference from Presbytery, in place, honour, office, authority, use, and honourable support, is of universal tradition, and observation, in all ages and places, eminent in the judgement and practice of antiquity, and the Church, from Christ and his Apostles until now of late, in use and authority in the Church, as the Lords day, and infant baptism; which to deny is impudence, and falsity, against the very letter, and practice of the new Testament, and judgement of all antiquity. Pag. 198, 220▪ 228, 248. How Sir, the practice and letter of the new Testament, and yet but a tradition, you sure will say more of it, you do well to parallel it to the Lords day, and infant Baptism, for they will be evidently grounded on the practice, and letter of the new Testament; and so be found more than a tradition: but Sir, will you stand by it, that Episcopacy was an universal observation in all ages, and eminent in all places till of late? I pray Sir, inquire when it came into Scotland; and how basely it was driven out of Denmark, they are places in the Christian World: again was England's Hierarchy distinct from Presbyters, in place, office, authority, honour, use, and honourable support, of universal tradition, and practice? how am I mistaken in the poverty of the Primitive Bishops, and the parity at least, of Presbytery to Episcopacy: I must borrow your Spectacles when I look into any thing of antiquity, but sure Sir, Smecty●●nuus will not think you modest, to charge impudence and falsity on such as deny it, they were bold to contradict your opinion in this very point, asserted by the remonstrant, your predecessor, and assign several things, in which the English Bshops differ from the primitive, when you have reconciled them, we will find you more; but they will be enough for one book of forty sheets.  
7. This universal custom is not to be despised by any sober Christian; yet this Episcopacy is not only tradition, and universal observation, for it hath further the stamp and impression of divine order and wisdom, Scripture precept, and Apostolic pattern, all right reason, prudence and policy, pag. 247. we need not go far to find the precepts, canon's, commission, power and authority of this Episcopal jurisdiction, given by Jesus Christ, and his Apostles, pag. 228. such Bishops rooted in Christ, branched in the twelve Apostles, and spread in all the Christian world, and endowed with honorary supports, pag. 220. I like you Dr, that you speak out, most Episcopal men stand stammering at a divine right, as if afraid to say it were to be found in Episcopacy; and yet Dr. Gauden can plainly see the stamp and impression, not only of right reason, prudence and policy, but of divine order and wisdom, yea Scripture precept, and Apostolic pattern, the very canons, and commission of Jesus Christ. I must confess I am so dark sighted, I cannot see it; I dare not incline to say, or think as Dr. Gauden doth, that the Apostles were proper Bishops, or, such as are our English Bishops, because our learned and judicious Whitaker, (whom I judge no way short of Dr. Gauden) declareth it to be the fancy of a crack brain. Patres cum Jacobum Episcopum vocant, aut etiam Petrum, non proprie sumunt Episcopi nomen, sed vocant eos episcopos illarum ecclesiarum in quibus aliquando commorati sunt; & si proprie de episcopo loquuntur, absurdum est Apostolos fuisse episcopos; nam qui proprie episcopus est, is Apostolus non potest esse; quia episcopus est unius tantum ecclesiae, at Apostoli plurium ecclesiarum fundatores, & inspect●res erant; non multum distant ab insania dicere, Petrum fuisse proprie episcopum, aut reliquos Apostolos. I hope Dr. Gauden will not charge Dr. Whittaker with impudence and falsehood; and I think he strikes at the very root of his supposed Divine impresion, and Apostolical practice and precedent, to which you refer us for proof; but that this may be believed, you must needs proceed.  
8. The testimonies of the Fathers, Councils and Historians, are so necessary to the Scriptures, that without them no man can receive satisfaction, concerning the distinct offices of the Church; the difference between the community of Christian duties, as professors and believers of the common verity and specialty of the office of Preachers, pag. 247, 248. But Sir, is a charge of imperfection in the Scripture the only support of your Prelacy? or doth it abide as a mark of its papacy? I apprehended the Scriptures profitable for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works; which it can never be, if we cannot by it receive satisfaction concerning the distinct offices in the Church (which are the only means of intercourse between God and the soul) or the common Christian duties of professors, and believing of the common verity, or specialty of the off ce of preaching; certainly if the word be in this too short, the writings of the Fathers, Councils and Historians, must needs aedisicare in Gehennam; guide us like a dark lantern into inevitable danger; for whence did they know these, if not from Scripture? this you stumbled on to divert the dispute of the Office, name, degree, order and authority of your Bishop, which Mr. Crofton put you upon. Sir, I am sorry I should be an occasion of your divulging such an error, which your Anatomist will readily pick up as piece of blasphemy; incidit in Scyllam, qui vult vitare Charybdim, you would avoid the dispute of the Divine right of your Episcopacy, as that which was dangegerous to your See, and have laid a foundation for another dispute concerning the perfection of the Scriptures, as to the common duty of Christians, and special office of Preachers; and that on a fancy too; For Sir, Mr. Crofton would have you know, he hath an audience and credence for the Fathers, Councils and Historians, as venerable witnesses in matter of fact, but cannot receive them as judges in matter of right, and sole Dictator's of duty. Mr. Crofton hath read that when Augustine was pinched with a passage out of Cyprian, he made answer, Sunt certilibri dominici, quorum authoritati utrique centimus utrique servimus, ibi quaeramus Ecclesiant, ibi discutiamus causam nostram. Sir, whatever you say in an angry mood, I will hope you will join with me in an appeal to the Scriptures, and then I say, ibi quaeramus Episcopum, find your Episcopacy there, for otherwise if I find its extirpation in the Covenant, I'll stand by it, it must be extirpated, if King, and Kingdom, or peace, and glory must be preserved from God's angry extirpation; for bona mutabilia are within the verge of man's vow, and reach of his hand, but you being loosed from the truth, tumble you know not whither, and therefore you suggest.  
9 Episcopacy is a matter of Faith, essential to the being of the Church, an eminent part of God's Worship, which may not be wanting, withdrawn from, or withstood, changed or covenanted against, without Schism, and superstition, Pag. 195, 214, 215. Yet you dare not trust it to the trial of the Scriptures; I promise you Sir, I dare not admit any thing as an Article of my Creed, nor offer to God any thing as an act of his Worship, which is not plain and obvious in the Scriptures, without the witness and Authority of Fathers, Council, or Historian. I must adventure the schism and superstition, I hope Dr. Gauden doth not use Schism and superstition, as the old Prelates did the term Puritan, and England's late Tyrants did the term Malignant, as words of no signification, but only served to nickname, and reproach the opposers of their profane principles, and proceeding, and to deter men from the discharge of required duty, but to secure your Prelacy, you go one step further; and suggest, yea, speak out, that  
10. Bishops are coordinate, and equal with Kings, in that commission (the word) whereby God hath left liberty to his Church, or the chief Governors thereof, Kings or Bishops, to order all things, as they shall judge meet, Page 205. Episcopacy is unalterable by any lawful humane power, Dr. Gauden peremtorily determineth, that Parliaments, Kings, Lords and Commons have no prudent, moral, religious and lawful authority, to change the ancient, universal, and excellent government by Bishops, for Christian Kings and their Parliaments are obliged to the Laws of God, and rules of Christian piety, and policy too, of which the whole Church in its primitive example, and constant custom is the best interpreter: No legislative power is empowered by God's law to bring in heresy, error, or schism into the Church; or take away the essentials of sound Doctrine, and Christian Communion, ever owned and maintained in the Church of Christ: pag. 196. well said Doctor, aut Caesar, aut Nullus: No Bishop, no King, must now be a Scripture maxim, and article of faith, if Smectymnuus his stir up, to the papacy, be not now held, Salmasius his Apparatus ad papatum asserted, and Beza his Episcopi papam pepererunt verified, by the Bishop of Exeter, I am much mistaken, but Sir have you not stretched too far, and stepped into a praemunire? little Mr. Crofton, should fear to be made less by the head, as guilty of Treason, sedition at the least, should he thus confront King and Parliaments, in what all their Statutes declare to be their own creature and constitution, changeable at their pleasure, even from the statutes of Carlisle, and 25. of Edward the 3. Declaring against the Pope, that holy Church was founded in prelacy, by their own donation, power and authority: Where is Sir, the King's Prerogative over all persons, in all causes Ecclesiastical? What is become of your Oath of Supremacy? can you make this peremptory determination (as yourself calls it) consist with it, any more than with your Covenant? hath a gracious King lately advanced you, to debase, nay dethrone him, and his Parliament too? I know no better confutation of this error, than the hundred eighteen thousand, eight hundred and forty pounds, paid by the Bishops to Henry 8. to redeem the praemunire into which this persuasion had betrayed them, with the Petition and Statute of the submission of the Clergy, which in my apprehension runs direct counter to Dr. Gaudens peremptory conclusion. It hath been observed to be the fatal chance of the Deputies of Ireland, to lose their heads, and the Bishops of England to run themselves into a Praemunire: which when his Majesty (affected with their bold encroachment) doth exact, will make them feel, and it may be deal with them, as did the King of Denmark, provoked by the same peremptory determinations. These Sir are your errors in matters Ecclesiastical, which you must give little Mr. Crofton leave to tell you, are more obvious, notorious, and abominable heresies, than was that charged upon Aerius (though an undeniable universal truth) by Epiphanius; nor doth he fear to be contradicted by any sober or judicious Prelate, resolved to keep Episcopacy, one peep short of Papacy, unto which I shall make bold to oppose these few conclusions of undoubted verity, and universally confessed by all Antiquity, which (that little Mr. Crofton may not appear too great a dictator) let Dr. Gauden (owning sacred, or Ecclesiastic story) deny it if he can.  
1. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls: the great, good, chief, and only one, to whom all must be gathered; by whom all must be ruled that will be saved, and from whom all must be authorized, that will feed his flock.  
2. The Lord Jesus executeth this pastoral charge, and Episcopal function, by the Ministry of men, successively sent, and commissioned by his immediate authority, and in his name, without which they may not Minister to, or be received by his flock.  
3. That the mission and commission of Jesus Christ, is directed and given to two only officers in his Church, Bishops or Elders, and Deacons, the one to look after the bodies, outward necessities, and condition of his sheep, to serve Tables; the other to manage all the pastoral charge, and Episcopal office, as it immediately concerneth the soul of his people.  
4. That all Ministers are equally invested with, and do intrinsically possess authority from Christ, for administration of all acts of feeding, or ruling the flock of Christ, without any difference of order, place, charge, name, office, or dignity; and therefore are joined in the same general commission; called by the same name, Bishop or Presbyter; chosen by the same characters; conseerated after the same order; charged with the same duty, feeding or overseeing; and challenge the same dignity, esteem, obedience and double honour from, and among the sheep.  
4. That for some time in the pure and primitive time and estate of the Church, the Presbyters did by and among themselves govern the Church communi consilio, without any over them, as Episcopus episcoporum, or Pastor pastorum, as having from Christ a different order and function, yea without any gradual priority, or pre-eminence of any particular Presbyter above the rest.  
6. That in process of time the Presbyters neglecting the course and care of Christian mortification, by which they ought to have subdued their ambition and passions, and so silenced their schism, did (by the working of the man of sin, and permission of God) devise a politic way or remedy thereof, and advancing among themselves a Primus Presbyter ad schismatis remedium, who was after dignified with the title Bishop, and was by Canons (honoris causa) placed in Cities, who was before in any poor village: This giveth just ground for Smectymnuus note, that Episcopacy above Presbytery was an humane invention on Diabolical occasion.  
7. That all jurisdiction and ruling power was yet acknowledged to abide originally, intrinsically and properly in the Presbytery, whose creature the Bishop was, to act, pronounce and execute their decrees; and therefore when Bishops began to encroach, and invade the Presbyters liberty and authority, to usurp and engross their power and function, and make them subject and servile to them; Canons were made to limit, confine and subject the Bishop, maintain and preserve the Presbyters power in Ordination, Excommunication and Absolution, not to be done without the Presbyters: So that Presbytery was ever known in the Church as Christ's and his Apostles institution; and Bishops apart and in pre-eminence to them, the Churches Canonical constitution, and Presbyters creation; to the formality of whose advancement consensus clericorum was essential.  
8. That by this political preferment of a primus Presbyter, the man of sin did work and exist in the Church; engrossing the power of the Presbytery; and advancing himself above them, he assumed by degrees a Principality, to which he made the Presbyters sworn vassals, by which became the subject of Prince's indulgence and benevolence; until capable of universal influence and extension through the Christian world, he assumed an universal Papacy, which he executed by subordinate Bishops, heads of Dioceses and Provinces (contracted universalities throughout the Church) thus Beza well notes Episcopi papam pepererunt, and Salmasius discovers the apparatus ad papatum; ●nd many judicious men see nothing but a gradual difference between England's Prelacy and Rome's Papacy, this being in specie the same with that, and so a formal papatus alterius mundi.  
9 Under this usurpation, Presbytery sensible of its  power, did resist, and often complain, and when it was by force (acted by fraud) restrained, yet made and continued its contests, and its parity in order and authority; and hath ever been dogmatically asserted, and polemically debated by, not only the enemies, but friends of the Papacy, by Canonists, Schoolmen, Commentators and open discourses in Councils, where the Pope durst never admit a free dispute, not so much as in the Council of Trent: and as the Reformation of the Church proceeded, Presbytery not only pleaded, but reassumed its own proper power and authority; and managed the affairs of the Church, as against the Pope, so without Bishops; and England itself, though (through the policy which too much attended and acted its reformation) it retained an Episcopacy, yet did dethrone its spiritual jurisdiction, and resolve it into a mere humane and civil constitution, acting circa ecclesiam, and most plainly avowed the  power of Presbyters, in the act of the submission of the Clergy, and other Statutes disavowing any ecclesiastical or scriptural constitution of Prelacy, and bearing them from all juridical acts, otherwise then by the King's commission, and in his name: And all our English Divines, have openly asserted, and polemically defended the power and authority of the Presbyters, in their contests against Papists, concurrence with, and defence of the reformed Churches, and their Presbyterial acts; and at length our late learned Primate of Armagh; in his grave Reduction, affirmed it to be the Presbyters right, to rule and govern the Church, and propounded an expedient in order to the restitution thereof, too long held from them; the which being in its natural tendency desperata causa papatus (as Voetius hath well termed his defence of the Presbyterated reformed Churches) the man of sin doth under a Cassandrian accommodation withstand, and endeavour to stifle it; in which however he succeed to oppose, he shall not prevail, Presbytery being Christ's own ordinance, and the primitive constitution of the Church, and mediate discharge of his pastoral and Episcopal office; whilst this is a plain humane constitution, conform to the course of the world, and contrary to the charge of our great Shepherd, Matth. 20.25. The Princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority over them; but it shall not be so among you.  
Sir, consider well this Climax, I will assure you it is to me so obvious and apparent in Ecclesiastical story, that he that will not see must turn Sceptic, and must say, Non persuaseris etiamsi persuaseris; and how much soever Presbytery be slighted, and represented to the world with the insignificant, odious charge of Schism and superstition, Christ's kingly Office in and over his Church is bottomed in it, and the recovery of its full liberty, to the exercise of its just authority, is not only justice, but duty, that may, that which must be pursued, pleaded for unto bonds, yea death itself; and therefore to match your number; I upon these undeniable premises make these conclusions, which if you will turn your Rhetoric into Reason, and with a calm and composed spirit debate it, I will be bound logically and theologically to defend against you.  
Hierarchia Anglicana non est ecclesia, nec ad ecclesiae entitatem, aut gubernationem necessaria, adeo ut ejus extirpatio estimetus schisma.  
Hierarchia Anglicana est nullo modo divina, aut ecclesiastica, sed mere humana, & civilis, cujus abolitio, & extirpatio sit licita sub juramento faederanda.  
England's Hierarchy is not the Church, nor necessary to the being or government thereof, so as that the extirpation thereof should be accounted schism.  
England's Hierarchy is neither divine or ecclesiastical, but merely civil and humane, whose abolition and extirpation may be lawfully sworn and covenanted. Until Sir these be confuted, you who blame others, do yourself build upon a plain petitio pincipii.  
Dr. Gauden being well considered, will be found no less erroneous in his Politics then in his Ecclesiastiques, running away with certain general notions, as if universally granted, and undoubtedly true, and agreed upon by all; whilst indeed they are openly and generally denied: I shall gather them together as the former, and leave the Reader to take notice of them, as he reads his book, they running as a line through his book, some of them being obvious in every page, where his passion would give him leave to speak like a reasonable creature. As that  
1. The Hierarchy or Episcopacy is established by the Laws of England, which I have in my Analepsis Analepthe denied, and the Covenanters plea hath more fully and judiciously expostulated, and contradicted in Cap. 6. pag. 22, 23, 24. I do aver, that the English Laws, finding Episcopacy conversant about the Church, doth restrain its exorbitancies, and direct its administrations, but neither Canon, nor common law doth establish it, and in terminis declare, and authorise it to be the Government of the Church of England.  
2. No Oath may be fully sworn, which shall bind to an endeavour to extirpate what is established by law; and therefore, although sworn by the legislative authority and command, or by the sharers in the legislation, it is ipso facto void, and yet endeavour of alteration is to every man sui juris, no way inconsistent with that passive obedience, which we own to laws in force; and all Laws lie vailed, and at the legislators feet, to take up, or refuse and void; and an Oath is the most positive authentic repeal of a law vailed, and at the least binding the sharers in the legislation, and such as shall succeed into their capacity, to repeal those laws which establish the thing, which they have sworn to extirpate.  
3. There is no legislative power, de facto operating, and exerted, binding the subject to any action, or obedience, unless all things concur, which may constitute a full and formal statute law; and so all Votes, Orders, and Ordinances, Resolves and Judgement of any the Estates of Parliament, are of no force, power or authority, during their session; Which all Lawyers acquainted with England's constitution will deny, unless their Oracles of divinity have at the Temple taught them new notions of law, which the constant practice of Lords and Commons, and subjection and obedience of those, whom they represent, doth ordinarily contradict.  
4. That Lords nor Commons, severally, nor both conjunct can impose on themselves, or others whom they represent, any Oath, without the knowledge, consent and command of the King, and if they do, it is ipso facto; void therefore you suggest that the protestation which is apparently sworn by Parliament, and Kingdom without the King, to be precarious; whilst there is nothing of petition in it, but much of legislation, and that manifest by the subjects obedience, even to your Champions, the Authors of the Oxford reasons; and therefore must be proved.  
5. That the Parliament putting an Oath upon themselves as the collective body of the Nation, doth not transmit an obligation to the Nation, us and our posterities, who shall any way succeed into that national capacity; as if Parliaments were not the Princes, yea more, the body of the people, doing in their names, and by their consent, what ever they do; and if they do it by an act of permanent nature, binding posterity in all ages, that can dispose their succession into that capacity: of this see more in my fastening of St. Peter's Fetters, Sect, 6.  
6. That tumults, stirs, and the timorous withdrawings of some, doth nul and void a Parliament established by a positive law, and without any positive, visible and real force, securing their doors, to the barring of the entrance of any the Members, to the discharge of their duties: and easy way to dissolve Parliaments, and blow them up without Gunpowder.  
7. That the Parliament can Act, Vote, Determine, and execute nothing under the Kings withdrawing from them, into any part of his own Country: Who may yet do all things in his infancy, or whilst in a Foreign Country, as if the place of his retirement, or reason of his absence's, did add or abstract to the Authority of Parliament.  
8. That the two houses alone, nor King alone, no nor King with them, have any legislative power to decree or execute what is unrighteousness against God or man. So that the legislation is founded in the piety and justice of the decree; And rebellion against authority, is acquitted by the iniquity of the command. An authoritative aholishing of any subordinate order or society of men, is injustice to the persons, and possessions of the present Occupants: And so England is bound to penance, for the abolishing Monks Nuns and Abbeys; and that no King or Parliament have a power, or can justly extirpate and abolish out of the Nation any trade, calling or order of men any way useful to the Commonwealth, Tinkers and Pedlars, and men of the like order, will certainly cleave close to this conservator of their liberty.  
9 That no King can lawfully swear to the diminution of his own prerogative and power, or honourable estate, which all people in the world, must and will contradict.  
10. The solemn League and Covenant, binding to an endeavour to extirpate prelacy, is irreconcilable to the duty we own to God and man. First, to the King's Supremacy. Second, to the Church and Countries peace and honour. Third, to the glory of God, in the Government of the Church. Fourth, to the reformation of reformed Religion. Fifth, to the conscience and care of avoiding Sacrilege, Schism, and Faction. Sixth, to the justice we owe to all godly, honest, and deserving men, especially Ministers; cujus contrarium verum est.  
Sir, whilst you take these for granted, which are contrary to right reason, natural policy, Ecclesiastical story, yea and truth itself, you may easily raise your Fabric, swell your book, and run on in a magisterial redargution, prelatical determination, and raging, reviling, opprobrious rebuke; but Sir you must remember, a man that is first in his own cause seemeth righteous, but his Neighbour cometh after and findeth him out. Prov. 18.17.  
We shall leave the Doctor to a view of these Rafters, proportioned to his foundation, and promiscuously scattered up and down his book; And more particularly observe the strength of his argumentation in his reply to what was excepted against in his Analysis, and specially as it relateth to Mr. Crofton, leaving Anonymous to himself, who herein will find full work for his anatomising genius.  
The first onset of Dr. Gauden (in this his vindication of his Analysis) made upon Mr. Crofton his Analepsis, is in page 147: and thus enters, viz. [Which was the thing Dr. Gauden had to prove (as Christ did the resurrection) not out of the letter only, but the Analogy and equity of that Scripture, from the force of which M. Crofton cannot extricate himself by his more soberendeavours.]  
Under this charge I must inquire what it was he had to prove? and I find nothing in this sentence dictating what it should be, save only the relative [which] from which his rhetoric, or rather his indigested heap of words, hath removed the antecedent at such a distance, that I cannot easily find it; I looked into the Paragraph foregoing to find out the thing spoken of, as that which according to the grammatical construction should make the Antecedent to the Relative; and there I find this general conclusion, viz. [Such Vows and Covenants, so much to the scandal of Religion, reproach of Reformation, gratifying dangerous factions, disgrace of this and all reformed Churches, dishonour to Jesus Christ, his Apostles and chief Successors the Bishops, so injurious to many worthy men, to the whole Church and Nation of England, either ought not to be taken by Christian King and People: or if by force, fraud or fear and facility they a●e so taken, or rather imposed and mistaken, yet they mu●t never be kept in any such sense: bue either repent of, and dissolved, or else the words must be resolved and reduced to such a sense as is good, and lawful: Id quod erat demonstrandum.] To leave his Libeler to take up his petitio principii, as to our Covenant, not such in point of matter or form, nor so imposed or mistaken, as he suggesteth, and taketh for granted, and to demand his Id quod erat demonstrandum: This sentence must be the antecedent to his relative [which] for so it is connexed, which was the thing Dr. Gauden had to prove out of that Scripture.  
But what is the Scripture out of which he must prove this conclusion? I find no Scripture nigh hand, that can be the proof produced; running some seven pages back, through a wild wilderness of words, I find in pag. 140. a quarrel begun about Numb. 30. and other Scripture is not urged; this was the Scripture which was produced in his Analysis (though with a misquoted verse) and must be vindicated in this book; so that this only must be the Scripture predicated to prove his [which] before noted, and then indeed Mr. crofton's more serious endeavours cannot extricate him from the entanglements of the Doctor's wild fancy, for the Text neither the letter, nor analogy, doth afford any such conclusion: All Mr. Croftons' brains cannot beat such a sense into the words, they are so far out. The Text in the letter of it is a special direction concerning the vow of a daughter or wife vowing without the knowledge of the Father or Husband: In the Analogy of it, of the Inferior swearing without the knowledge of the Superior, and directeth an establishment or irritation of the vow, not any sencing or interpretation, id quod erat demonstrandum. And how Dr. Gauden can make it grammatically speak, or logically conclude, Such a Vow so scandalous to religion, gratifying to faction, dishonourable to Christ, disgraceful to England, must not be sworn, if sworn, not kept; if kept, sensed and interpreted, I am certain all the Doctors in Oxford cannot discern it: If Christ had thus proved the Resurrection, the Saducees would never have been silenced, and we must have been at a sad loss for the great Article of the resurrection of the body, that ground of our Christian hope. Will Dr. Gauden please to frame his argument a pari, for little Mr. Croftons' rescue he conceives it must run thus,  
Numb. 30. Directeth that the Oath or vow of a Daughter, Wife, or other inferior, made without the knowledge of Father, Husband, or Superior, should be at the pleasure of the Superior, confirmed or made void; Ergo, no scandalous, disgraceful, dishonourable Oath, may be taken, if taken, must not be kept, if kept it must be well interpreted: by what rules must we measure this argument? the Anticedent is particular, the consequent is general; it must needs be a syllogism currens quatuor pedibus, running as fast as B followeth A, C followeth B and so one followeth another, and all follow A immediately, the frame such, upon which the conclusion followeth the connexed terms as naturally, as the Jesuits at the conference at Ratisbone.  
Qui negat articulum fidei est haereticus; sed hoereticus est, qui negat Tobiam habuisse canem; Ergo, sequitur, articulum esse fidei, quod Tobias canem habuerit. The barking Cur at the Moonlight of Dr. Gaudens logic, is seen as plain as the sun, continually disturbing his reason.  
I find the Dr. in a Wilderness of words, and wood of invention, tossing the words of this Scripture, telling us one while, they are meant of lawful vows, another while the Oath is made through weakness; another while to the damage of the superior; and so stretching them, as the only square and rule for all Oaths; but yet can stumble on no ready way, due proportion, or fit parallel, whereby to resolve them, but at length preposterously breaks through them, with an invective against the nameless Libeler, which concludes with a dolosus versatur in generalibus (which none is more guilty of then Dr. G.) and concludeth, that may be just by some general maxims, or customs of common law, which yet is very unjust, when brought to the rules of Chancery, as D. B. well knows in Hipslies' case, pag. 145. The Dr. hath sure made a good proficiency in his Temple Studies, but I must inquire what Chancery can comment on the maxims of the common Law; I know the just, and proper strict rigour of them may be mitigated, must not be denied, otherwise then as to execution, what Chancellor must do it on God's Law? or hath a Commission to interpret an Oath, beyond what its genuine sense alloweth? or to restrain the performance of it unto God? Dr. Gauden doth assume (not to say presume) to do it, and we well know Bishops have been Lord Chancellors of England? Though we deny his Authority, let us a little consider his equity, for the strictness of an Oath is an heavy burden, and many times bindeth a man to loss and grief; and he proceeds by some special cases, which he suppose thought not to be made, or kept; let us take a glance of them, that our minds may be cleared in the sense of Numb. 30.  
His first case is [If Parents vow, not to give a Child in Marriage, or not till such a time, or not to give him such a portion, but to devote him to single life, poverty, banishment, or base employmennt; it is sinful and injurious, may n●t be made or kept: in this case he must give me leave to descent from him, until he have stated the case more particularly, as to the reason, and ends of such a vow; and until, he have proved the Child as to all these things, is not, to the parent, sui juris, to be disposed of, debased, or advanced; although I should neither advise, nor commend so harsh and heady an exercise of parental power, and prerogative, yet if pinched with the question, I durst not determine the negative: The Parent finds the Child Proud, Stubborn, Disobedient, Perverse, voweth to cut him short in his portion, may he not do this in Justice, and in his just displeasure perform it? may not the Parent send the stuborn Child to Barbadoes by slavery to subdue his spirit●? may not the Parent vow he will not give in Marriage, to such a person as he judged unfit for his child? or is not the Parents consent in his own power? the danger of a single life are not proper effects of the Parents not giving in Marriage; and Dr. Saunderson distinguisheth between the thing sworn, 
De juram p●e●ect. 3. Sect. 1●.  which is, causa propria, and occasio or causa per accidens of sin, and concludeth that an Oath made concerning the last, is not unlawful. I should wish Parents to be very wary of making such vows; and Dr. Gauden as wary of discharging them; though rashly made; that may be sinfully sworn by a Parent, which must be sorrowfully performed: if the parent have unadvisedly devoted the child to want, the law may rather take Alimony for him, than the parent perjuriously give it: I hope Abraham shall not be charged with injury to them, in sending away Hagar, and his son Ishmael, God's encouragement could not acquit the sin; and what a parent may do, he may swear to do without injury: And methinks the case of the Israelites should resolve this case fully, they had, (I admit,) rashly sworn, they would not give their daughters to Benjamen; the effect reflects their Oath very sadly, and reduceth them into a straight, yet they fear to break it, and upon Counsel from God, find out a way to save it, and make some supply unto the defect; which falling short, they devise (some think indeed sinfully) a second stratagem rather than break their Oath: what ever others may say upon this case, I cannot but observe, Children are fully sui juris to the Parent; an hurtful oath is to the child no injury, strictly to be so accounted; an Oath concerning them, when rashly made, must be strictly observed and kept, the light of nature, and law of Scripture, doth in my apprehension in this dissolve our Chancellors injunction.  
The next case, is of the like nature, in reference to Servants and Subjects, for supposing their Masters, and Princes to have (as Prelates suppose of every King) merum imperium, though they may swear rashly, sinfully in reference to God, yet not injuriously as to the slave or Subject: Although Gomarrus and others note, that man hath not from God, a● absolute dominion over himself; yet they deny not but men may vow and must keep their vows to the latitude of that Dominion, God ha●, given them over themselves or others, and this is the rule our● Bishop's Chancery should interpret, and relieve against, for this will conclude against him, that a King may swear, or having sworn, must perform a diminution of his own just Sovereignty, and that authority and power which is given him by Law, and is necessary for his high calling: Is a man bound to take what the Law alloweth him, and that, whether he will or no? if so, if our prelate can beg the recognizances forfeited by licenced victuallers, allowed by the law to the King, it will make his Bishopric a fat one.  
But how do these cases clear the conclusion to be proved out of Numb: 30? there is nothing relating to the Oath of the superiors, but the asserting of their prerogative and absolute dominion over their inferiors, to irritate, or establish their vows; what ever the Libeler did, Mr. Grofton in his Analepsis allowed the Dr. this Text in its latitude, and referred him to be judged by it; and now granteth, that the inferior in things, not sui juris, may have the action vowed superseded by the declared pleasure of the superior and that whether it be son, or servant, but in our case he then affirmed.  
1. The Parliament sitting had over us a Legislative power, to which we owed subjection, they were in their capacity the Nation collective, and sui juris, and to be obeyed during their Session, by those whom they represented; their power in this Covenant was no less legislative than in the Protestation of May 1641.  
2. The King who then was hearing of it, did prohibit the Act, but never did declare it null and void; and Dr. Saunderson concludes the superiors descent must be expressed in a full, formal discharge; ut t●llendo tallat, renuendo renuat, is required to rescind the oath: But our late King advised to keep the Oath, his present Majesty swore it, swore his consent to it, and to the Ordinances enjoining it, and conjured his Subjects to the keeping of it.  
Both these Mr. Crofton suggested in his Analepsis, and cleared more fully in his Analepsis Anelepthe, which the Doctor should have considered before he had declaimed from the force of this Screpture. Mr. Cr. doth not, cannot extricate himself, by his more serious endeavours, whilst Mr. Cr. hath traversed his ground, and turned the mouth of his cannon against himself, and will offer again to join issues with a man acted by reason, to establish the Covenant by the force, equity, analogy of this Scripture, or otherwise to let it fall: But he must not be worded out of God's warrant. But the judicious Doctor opposing; 
p. ●45, 14●.  counteth Mr. Croftons' observations pitiful shifts, and not potent solutions, and small twigs at which poor Mr. Crofton as a drowning man did catch, yea weeds which sink him, being of no deep reach, nor any skill in swimming. You are very right Doctor, for Mr Crofton (God be thanked) could never yet swim with the stream, or reach preferment with a profligated conscience: But let us see these twigs and weeds he taketh notice of, and observe whether the Doctor's wits be not run a woolgathering, in charging them with weakness.  

Analepsis pag. 12.  The first was, The two Houses of Parliament are coordinato● and sharers in the Legislation of England, and so a constant lawful authority. To this the Doctor replieth, He gently observeth a legislative power, at least coordinate in the Parliament; More modest man he, this being out of his sphere, otherwise then as a Subject and Casuist; yet you might have pleased to observe he hath more strongly asserted and enforced it, to the fastening of St. Peter's fetters, Sect. 4. But the Doctor inquires, Can they legally exercise it without and against the King's consent, being not in his nonago, nor out of his wits; that they may do it without the King's consent; none do or can deny it; common practice, with the people's constant obedience doth plainly manifest it; as also the Protestation of May, 1641. (never doubted as to the validity of authority) which you say was precarious, but Resolves of the House declares to have been authoritative: Votes, Resolves, Orders and Ordinances of one or both Houses do proclaim it; and the privileges of Parliament, That the King take no notice of what is debated, or voted, ordered or acted by them, until it be by themselves formally presented to his Majesty: And the very nature of coordinate power (if the Dr. understand it) with their actings in case of his absence by minority, or otherwise, doth determine it: As to the exercise against the King's consent, I shall conclude nothing, but commend Mr. Prians Sovereign power of Parliaments to your serious study; yet this much matters not in our case: for a Parliament duly summoned, and rightly constituted, hath his Majesty's consent to exercise that legislation placed in them, so long as they shall continue in that capacity; I think no English man will deny this: And the legislative power of their Votes, Debates, Resolves, Orders or Ordinances were never gainsaid by his Majesty; though the people's act of swearing the Covenant (upon an unhappy difference and misapprehension) was by an unusual way inhibited.  
But the Doctor further profoundly demands, Are they legislative in fact, where there is no law made (as none was for the Covenant?) was there legislation in actu secundo, in exercise or act? as to commend a writer for a book never writ, or an architect for an house never built. Where are now your wits good Master of words? Is there is no writing or architecture in actu secundo, in act and exercise, until the whole book be writ, or house built? I fancied the writing of every page, and framing of every board, or squaring of every beam, and laying every brick, to be something more than scribendi, or aedificandi potentia; and if any more, how far is it short of actus secundus? Is there no Legislation without a full and formal Statute law? What do you make of Votes, Resolves, Orders, Ordinances of either or both Houses suspending, superseding the Laws and Courts of Judicature, directing and disposing the Subjects? inquire at the Temple whether these be legislation in actu secundo? Let your old friends a little laugh to see the Prelate-Justice his profound notions of legislation.  
But the Doctor's enforcement of these premises of legislation in potentia and actu, is very considerable, At best the two Houses, nor King, nor both together have any legislative power to decree, or execute what is unrighteous against God or man. Suppose they have not, have they therefore no legislation in actu secundo, act and exercise? else what is this to the purpose. But stay Sir, What is that you say? King and Parliament have no legislative power to decree or execute what is unrighteous against God or man: I must deny this; have you never read of wickedness established by a law? Had Queen Mary and her Parliament, who cast out the true and returned the false Religion, no legislative power by which they did it? Doth the injustice of the matter nullify the authority of the Law, and Legislators; is impiety enjoined by a just authority, to be actually disobeyed, and relisted? will not this prostitute legislation to every private fancy? and furnish all Rebellion with Apology? I am not bound, for the thing decreed is unrighteous, and neither King nor Parliament, nor both, had legislative power to decree, and cannot therefore execute it; for execution is subsequent to legislation; I must not be punished where I am not bound to obey. Doctor, whose wits are now a woolgathering, to run away from the Covenant by stating a doctrine of Sedition, yea Rebellion. Mr. Crofton should more soberly have said [The King and Parliament have legislation to all acts of humane Society, but must be careful they do not decree unrighteousness, establish iniquity by a Law.] You have indeed very powerfully opposed Mr. Cr. his first observation, beating down all legislation in actu secundo, yea and in some cases which will fall too often, and must be judged by every private man, all potentia legem ferendi. What say you to the second?  
M. Croftons' second notion, saith the Doctor, his second nothing observed as his safety, is, that a thing may bind in conscience, which doth not bind in law, or in the Judicature of man.  
This M. Crofton did say, and will stick to, against the raging billows of your proudest words. But what saith the Doctor to this notion? True, is it true, and yet M. crofton's nothing? True, and yet a pitiful evasion, a small twig, a sinking weed? Sure Sir, the true of so big a bladder, will keep little M. Crofton swimming above water.  
How doth D. Gauden avoid the strength of what he confesseth to be true, hath he well weighed it is an Oath that bindeth in conscience, though not in law, or humane judicatu? how is it that he having cried true, turneth off with a but nothing can bind in conscience, against the Laws of man, in cases of equity, justice and right. Suppose Mr. Crofton cry True to Dr. G. what hath he gained? Mr. Cr. did not affirm that any thing of that nature did bind conscience; but that the Covenant not charged on any by a Statute Law, yet bindeth the conscience of all personally, or politically subjected to it. And Dr. G. runs away with his petitio principii, that England's Episcopacy is established by Law, and cannot according to Justice, Equity and Common right be extirpated; which M. Cr. hath denied, and doth deny; and when it is proved, will further examine how far an oath binds in conscience against it: But as yet Dr. G. offers nothing to prove it, but his Worships say so, which will not be believed: Only M. Cr. must say, that my oath may bind me against what, according to equity and right, the Law must adjudge me; as in cases of contracts, bargains, or alienation of Land or goods, where I have sworn or vowed a release, of which the Law according to common justice, equity and right, can take no cognizance, but must restore, I am bound from requiring, or by law receiving the restitution or performance. It is hard that Dr. G. should lose the power of conscience, by preaching equity and right among the Lawyers.  
Mr. Croftons' third Observation, of the King's oath making a supply to the supposed defect of authority binding the Covenant; is entered upon with a drop of his sarcastical pen; for Mr. Cr. bold and odious, no less than fallacious (if you will make a right Shemaiah, add seditious and treasonable too) urging by a Presbyterian pertness, the present taking of the Covenant in Scotland. I pray you sir, though this be bold, wherein is it fallacious? that his Majesty swore the Covenant is not nor can be denied; the form of his Royal Coronation, his Royal Declaration from Dumferling, and the History of King Charles the Second, have made it known through the world, that it cannot be hidden. Though had not Dr. G. blurred paper to bring perjury upon King and Kingdom, it had not been here pleaded by Mr. Crofton. But Sir,  
Wherein is an argumentative urging the Kings taking the Covenant so odious a piece of Presbyterian pertness? Shall not every Disputant have liberty with freedom to express, what will enforce his argument? Is not the meanest Subject interested in the King's oath, and capacitated humbly to demand performance? Do not Royal acts fall under the consideration of Casuists, resolving conscience? Are not King's objects of ministerial admonition? how bold soever it may seem, none but a proud Pashur, and shameless Semaiah, could count it odious in Jeremiah, to say to the King, Keep the oath, and thou shalt be delivered from that distress which may too late engage his Majesty to send to his faithful Monitor to pray for him: Is not Mr. Cr. capacitated in all these respects to consider his Majesty's oath, even when he is abstracted from his Presbyterian pertness? Sir, I must tell you it is more odious in you, to make his Majesty's Legislative authority, depend on the piety of his decrees, then for Mr. Crofton to urge his Royal Oath, as a bar to the Nations perjury.  
Wherein lieth the odium of an argumentative urging the King taking of the Covenant? it was but modestly mentioned in the Analepsis, though more fully and forcibly to the fastening of St. Peter's Fetters: It is every way visible Mr. Cr. doth neither justify, nor commend the insolent imposing of it, but doth expressly condemn that; although the maturity of his years here mentioned by this Doctor, maketh it the more obliging as having the full exercise of his judicium rationale; which if it were any way restrained by the distress of his affairs, will not release him; because it was chosen as his best course; and juramentum metu extortum, is agreed to bind the conscience, and as a moral rule, reacheth Kings as well, yea as much, as other men, though therein he is more obnoxious to temptations, and needs to have the case more clearly resolved, if his Majesty delight not to hear of it, (as Dr. G. scandalously reporteth,) more is the pity, Mr. Cr. hath in Loyalty to his Majesty pressed it, and persuaded others to press it on the same principles in his Analepsis Analepthe, Sect 1. convincing, and affirming, his Ministers and Chaplains ought as his Monitors to mind him of it, and affect him with it; though I fear, flattering prelate's will rather expose him, to hear of it in God's wrath, and by his Enemy's reproach; for the breach thereof, then hazard their dignity, by discharge of the duty they own to God and his Royal soul.  
That the Kings taking the Covenant, can make any thing in it lawful, which by the rules of religion and civil justice is unlawful, Mr. Cr. did not affirm, or urge it to that purpose; but that it maketh up the supposed defect of authority in the first taking the Covenant, is that which Mr. Cr. said, nor doth D. G. deny it, his consent unto the ordinance for taking the Covenant, expressed by Oath, gives it (at least to conscience,) the formality of a Law. That what his Majesty did in Scotland, must not extend to England, is a most false maxim, according to which we were no way secured by what he declared from Bredah; but what he swear in any place, qua Rex Britanniae doth bind his soul in every place: Mr. Cr. out of Grotious hath affirmed in his Analepsis Analepthe, Sect. 6. Which by all these cavils, I discern Dr. Gauden hath not read, I shall commend that book with these notions to his second thoughts, he will find his supposed legistative Justice, and the like of Episcopacy contradicted; and the authority prescribing and imposing the Solemn League and Covenant vindicated from all his trivial exceptions; but our Doctor proceeds to enforce his battery, and tells you.  

Pag, ●51.  Mr. Croftons' next defence against Dr. Gaudens battery is not a Wool sack, but a brown Paper, a Cobweb, pleading, quod fieri non debuit factum valet; yet this Cobweb is a sufficient net for his fly with which he endeavours to pull it down, and most profoundly tells us; this may not be pleaded in moral cases, I pray you Sir, in what then? you cry true to it, but it is in some state policies, and civil necessities, or legal formalities, and accutely amplisieth it: As Bastards though they should not have been begotten, yet must not when begotten and been be murdered, but must be kept: Would not our Doctor deem it a barking at the bright Moonlight of this reason, I should inquire whether the begetting of Bastards be a state policy, a civil necessity, or legal formality, to keep the Bishop's Courts in employment, that he hath no other instance of them, or chooseth this as the chief? again doth the natural entity of the Child consist in, and depend upon the plea of quod fieri non debuit, factum valet? certainly many of his well bred well brooding Christians would gladly obliterate and not plead this rule, if the being of their brats of sin and shame could cease by it; this Sir is good sport for your Anatomist. Mr. Crofton must tell you that he ever conceived it to relate to, and must be praedicate of moral entities, constituted by, and existing out of some essential acts irregularly applied; as in creation of relation, office, or dignity a Novice should not he made a Bishop, but when consecration hath passed on him, his defect in reason or religion will not divest him of his dignity, for fieri non debuet factum valet: I ever judged natural beings, as Bastards, cannot but exist in the world, without the help of a moral rule, by the necessity of nature; in reference to our case, what is material, unlawful, cannot be by this rule relieved, because it corrects not, supplies not the natural defect or irregularity of any matter; but where the matter is good, and the general form invocation of God, is retained, but erroneously or ignorantly managed, as when an Oath is made by an Idol God, by the Heaven or Earth or other Elements, as the Heathen, who ought not, do commonly swear; now such is the moral nature, or reason of an Oath, an intended invocation of the divine nature that it obligeth, and the error or mistaken special mode of swearing, will not make void the Oath; and hence it comes to be different questions, an juramentum hoc vel illud sit licitum? and an hoc vel illud obligat? I would Dr. Gauden would own Dr. Saunderson as his dictator in the nature of an Oath; he should not then so much need the dictates of little Mr. Crofton, who having urged this rule in his Analepsis, hath improved and enforced it, beyond the power of this battering Dr. to pierce and break through, in his Analepsis Analepthe, Sect. 2. where he will in the case of the Covenant find fieri non debuit, factum valet, explained and established, to teach him and others, that God's name profaned by rash irregular swearing, must not be blasphemed by false swearing; an unadvised Oath, must not be amended by open perjury, or repaired by rejection, Mr. Crofton doth not believe a baptism by, or ordination of a woman to be valid, because there is a defect in the forma constituens, which is of the esse of the ordinance, the woman not being subjectum capax of conferring the one, or receiving the other, hut how ever had he as a Bishop pleaded, Presbyters ordained by Presbyters (though a Bishop might have been more orderly, their ordination is valid; he had hit on a right instance though by an error, and many ptophane prelatical priests, which ought not to have been admitted, and aught to have been deposed from the Ministry, Mr. Crofton can own as Ministers; though rude, yet in Moses chair, quod fieri non debuit factum valet. Mr. Cr. Woolsacks being thus pulled down, you shall hear the Dr. shout out his victorious entry on Mr. Cr. arguments in Pag. 151.  
[Mr. Crofton discovers his weakness, and exhausted spirits (well he may in contesting with so acute a disputant) by bringing in a tumultuary rabble, that should pretend to be a Parliament, and impose a vow or Covenant on the people, against the immunities of Church and State, King and People, which we like Gugeons stulta facilitate swallow simply like baits, and feeling the hook of fraud, faction, injustice, the poor man by a terrible 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, super superstition is afraid of a three years' Famine, in case he and other honest men should dare to resume their reason and liberty, and keep themselves to rules and actions of justice, which the laws of God, and men prescribe; from which these pitiful trepanners, and impostors sought to seduce them, and oblige them to the contrary unawars.  
If this be a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, super superstition, to tremble at God's word, and fearful judgements there recorded, let it be Mr. Croftons' portion; yet I must tell you, the divinity of Bishop Hall (your predecessor) hath provoked it: your rising Episcopacy would strike you into a pannique fear, if God's judgements should break out, and not be pacified, but by the sacrifice of some that strive to advance it; pardon the comparison, the closer it comes, the clearer the conviction; whilst you enjoy your braveries, poor Mr. Crofton walketh in the Scriptures, and there he finds Israel by a pack of trepanners and impostors the Gibeonites, by the baits of old , mouldy bread, and clouted shoes seduced into a Covenant against the Laws, and immunities of their Church and State, their King and people, Joshua and the people had stulta facillitate, like Gudgeons simply swallowed it; within three days they feel the hook of their fraud and falsehood; the people resume their reason, and quarrel with their Princes for not keeping to rules and actions of justice, but they in a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, super superstition, fear to break their Oath, and carefully keep it, some hundreds of years, until Saul affected with reason, and the liberty of Israel, in a well meant zeal breaks the Oath with the Gibeonites, which breach God avengeth with a three years' famine, whose wrath was only expiated by hanging up seven of the chief Violators of the Vow; will your Worship please once a day to take a turn in poor Mr. Croftons' walk, and deliver your soul from this pitiful passion if you can: however you fancy that fraud and force make void an Oath, your Brother Bishop Sanderson, all Protestant Divines and Civilians, yea Popish Cafuists, will dictate to you other things; and little Mr. Crofton desireth to fear an Oath, and to tremble at every tendency to a breach of faith, with a jealous God; but judicious Dr. Gauden can find a difference in the case of the Gibeonites, from the case supposed by Mr. Crofton, and makes it a specialty to that people, and that in these particulars. First, The League with the Gibeonites was only civil and secular, not Religious. Secondly, Made by the chief council and authority of the Nation. Thirdly, It was of things within their power, as civil and secular, Fourthly, No injury to honest men. Fifthly; Though unadvised in prudence and policy of War, yet it was confirmed by God to punish unadvisedness, to preserve leagues obtained by honest fraud; God had mercy for the Gibeonites, as less sinners and more disposed to fear, and repent. A most profound comment, but Sir, was the Covenant with the Gibeonites wholly civil and secular within their power, were they not the Hittites by God's express command to be destroyed? observe well the Catalogue, Deut 7.1, 2. Ex●d. 23.32. your predecessor Dr. Hall saith the sentence of Death was passed against all the Canaanites, and that Joshuas heart was clear from any intention to make a league with the Canaanites, and enters a caution against it; So Sir, this was a League against the Laws of Israel given by God, something more than civil; confederacy with the Canaanites was inhibited for the safety of their Religion, lest they should be seduced by them: but Sir where the matter is religious; will the case alter, or the Oath be any more void, then where it is civil? the validity or religion of the matter, whilst either it may be just and lawful, according as the occasion of the Covenant doth direct.  
2. In that the Covenant was made by the chief Council and authority of the Nation; it doth not relieve the fraud: whoever they were, they were cozened by a people who appeared to them what they were not; Mr. Cr. will not fear to affirm the Solemn League and Covenant was sworn by the chief Council and authority of England, though not complete. But the question is of the fraud by which any are deceived into an oath.  
3. Was the oath of the Gibeonites no way to the injury of honest men? you will not stand to it; was it no injury to Israel to lose four Cities out of their inheritance given them by the Lord? Was it no injury to be engaged in war, and to hazard their lives for a company of Trepanners and cheaters? (who should have fallen by their sword, and D. Gaudens interpretative spirit would have left to fall by the sword of another) was it no injury to have such a temptation to Idolatry, which God had charged to be removed? and such tormenting affliction, Canaanites, as pricks in their eyes, and thorn-in their side? If it were no injury to Israel, what was the well-meant zeal of Saul, on which his resumed reason did perjuriously destroy the Gibeonites?  
4. But say you it was confirmed by God; how Sir, not by any post-fact, or immediate signification of his pleasure, nor by the special dispensation of the High Priest; but merely by the power and virtue of the oath fraudulently obtained; bu● admitttng God did confirm it; an oath obtained by bone, fraud and surprisal (as you phrase it) if any can be honest, is established, as permanently binding, and the breach of it is punishable by God: hath not then Mr. Crofton cause to fear, or must his fear be super superstition, or not ●ather Dr. Gaudens observation be super-ignorant, and super-arogant, in reputing the hypothesis, illustrating the very pinch of the Question, against the very utmost supposed strength of opposition, the least issue of weakness and exhausted spirits; yet this is as ingenuous, as the next note is honest.  

Pag. 352.  Mr. Croftons' Oratory, reason, and civility, fails his zeal, whilst he makes such a reflection on his honourable Covenanting Masters, comparing them to Colliers, whilst they acted like Kings: Where Sir did Mr. Cr. make this reflection? had he not asserted, and established their authority? though to detect the weakness of your argument, he imagineth what you fancy to make against the binding power of an Oath, and yourself is constrained to see the weakness thereof, but verbosity must be venting though with falsehood, yet this is as honest as the next is sound [that not the honour and authority, but reason and religion, in a Parliament must be weighed] as if there were nothing in such an assembly but what is common to men; if your prelacy may be thus measured, it will soon be found a vanity. But Sir, I must tell you, the man can be afraid, God will be angry for not keeping Oaths unlawfully made, and also for keeping and making unlawful Oaths, or lawful Oaths by unlawful means; but he cannot admit the say so of a Runagado, as an evidence against the Covenant; but affirms it will be broken before your strain of Rhetoric can make extirpation to signify reformation of your Episcopacy; the first being so plain in the words, and unavoidable sense of the Covenant, that it needs no Presbyterian stretch, (as you scurrilously taunt) or strappado more than it will endure, the Antiphrastical strain of an apostate Presbyter, and English Prelate.  
But stay Sir, you crow before the Victory; Mr. Crofton was so far from showing his wit and art in this defence, (as you falsely say) by presently withdrawing, that he who out of his sally port, appeared to you like a little Mark, and picolhomo, did so little fear your first Granado, that he followed you to your trenches, and encountered your main body encamped in the Oxford reasons, and yet keeps the field within reach of your Gunshot, not fearing to have his brains beaten out by Dr. Gauden his reason, if God restrains the Prelate's high commission batteries against the truth, which they can neither bear nor contradict: let me tell our Champion, notwithstanding his renewed assault, he must go down to the Romish Phylystines to sharpen his prelatical Pikes, before his battering rams can make impression on the Covenant, and enter the garrison of Presbyterial reformation, impregnably guarded by Mr. Crofton his Woolsacks, which the Doctor's skill cannot remove.  
Having as he thought reinforced his battering Rame, he proceeds to what he calleth his gulf between the Covenant, and its legality and sanctity, the tumultuating terrors of those times in which it was contrived, conceived and brought forth or imposed; as if sanctity and legality, could not exist in tumultuous days.  

pag. 177.  And he tells you in this mud Mr. Crofton was afraid to stick, and therefore he nimbly skips over it. Oh Doctor, it's an advantage to be light and little, know you not its an eminent piece of dexterity in a Soldier to pursue an enemy beaten from his battering Ram, into, and over those gulfs to which for want of strength or courage he retireth, hoping to escape; and it is an Irish man's excellency to tread Bogs without sinking: yet Sir, Mr. Crofton skipped not so soon over your Gulf, but he took a turn with you in it, and told you; the tumults were not so great and loud, but that Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament, 
A●a●ep. p. 14.  commissioners of the Kirk and Kingdom of Scotland, assembly of Divines, did solemnly seek divine direction, seriously debate and determine the Covenant; and to this you make no reply, but tell your Libeler a tale of a tub, and story of mad Hugh Peter, in 1641. two years before the Covenant. Here Sir, Mr Crofton by his little reason, leapt so nimbly, and light so strongly on you, that in this point you cry quarter, and confess the authority, due meaning and matter of the Covenant, is more to be considered then the tumults and arms, and how suspicious soever it may render it, what is just and good is not null because tainted with tumults; 
pa●. 179.  this is that which Mr. Crofton urged, and enforced by the instance of Zedekiah, whose perjury was odious having sworn the best terms the straits of his condition would allow him, as yourself yields, and was all in which Mr. Crofton made the parallel; So that Sir, in this gulf you are become my Prisoner: but perceiving you are not willing to be held, but think you have a Weapon yet to wield, viz. the injustice of the matter; I will give you fair quarter, and still liberty to fight, and therefore will let you go on your promise that you will not provoke by vain brags, and like the Athenians fight against Alexander, verbis tantum; but presently join issue, and try your strength and skill at your Quarter Staff, the unjust matter of the Covenant; at which if you prevail not, you must yield your conscience to it, or be God's Prisoner of wrath for ever.  
Let not Dr. Gauden fight with an Irish man in a bog, for he will turn his tune, and make you hear him cry the next time, honest Mr. Crofton is more valorous, and answereth against the novelty and partiality of the Covenant, that it is neither new nor partial; 
pag. 180  but Mr. Crofton must say Dr. Gauden is wilfully blind to inquire the sense, in which Mr. Crofton saith it is not new and partial, whilst he might read plainly in the Analepsis, the matter is not new or partial, and Mr. Crofton saith that forms and circumstances are as changeable new and partial as time, at whose command they are; but supposing the matter to have been new to England, if good, Mr, Crofton did say and stands to it, it binds, and the novelty bars not the obligation, nor can or dare Dr. Gauden deny it, though he can easily say, Mr. Croftons' observations are a palpable Sophistry, and playing at bopeep, which were these two.  
The supposed contrariety of the Law is of no force to such as conclude a power in the Parliament, to put a period to those laws, and an oath against them upon the people. Secondly, 
Analep p. 12  An oath sworn by the Legislators, and body of the people, is the most full discharge of all contrary laws: Both these Mr. Cr. (and all rational men) do believe: but that Mr. Cr. must confess the Laws did establish the Hierarchy, is the sophistical groundless inference of him, who knoweth Mr. Crofton doth deny it, and therefore urged his reasons against a supposed contrariety; but give a irrelate an inch he will take an ell; suppositions are sufficient supports to a man of fancy, who all along his discourse playeth at bopeep, begging what must never be granted whilst his nose is between his eyes: Thus he supposes the two Houses into a non entity, as to their supreme legislative power, by the temper they were then in, and the absence of the King, though they were animated by an express Statute Law, which some (upon grounds, and by reasons (beyond the reach of Dr. Gauden, or little Mr. Crofton to resolve) have openly averred to continue them yet in being. And thus he profoundly supposeth, a Parliament swearing qua Parliament, in the fullest formality and professions of their national capacity was a personal covenanting; and this he supposeth, for fear their act should, 
pag. 181.  as Mr. Crofton affirmeth it doth, engage all the Nation and their posterity, so long as it shall be a Nation, as Adam did all mankind: And all this he supposeth to make us suppose, extirpation signifieth erection of the Prelatical Hierarchy.  
But stay, the Doctor hath a request; What is the matter? I must desire Mr. Crofton to bate me an ace, the repeated stroke at the Royal assent (by which he again lasheth the King, as did the Monks of Canterbury King Henry the Third) is not a grain of allowance to the English Covenanters. I perceive his Majesty's Oath troubleth him, as it well may, for it i● a rivet will never be loosened; yet he might have seen some difference between the mention of it, and the lashing of the Monks of Canterbury; for that theirs was a formal penance, by and in defence of Episcopal Jurisdiction; this is at most a Ministerial admonition, and Casuistical consideration; the smiting desired by David, as that which would not break his head; nay would be a kindness and excellent oil, better than the Archiepiscopal unction: But I cannot bate him one ace of it, it doth add many grains to the Covenant, though current before: However his Royal assent was given in Scotland, post factum & pactum; Mr. Crofton doth affirm it hath made the Covenant National, as far as the King is capable of a national capacity; and the Ordinance requiring it hath in foro conscientiae, the formality of a Law. This Mr. Crofton hath affirmed in his Analepsis Anelapthe, Sect. 6. and shall affirm whenever a Parliament shall put the question to him; and if his Brethren shall not do it, it will be for want of due consideration or courage: Sure our Doctor will not make all foreinsecal acts, and postfacts void, and of no efficacy; if he do, we must determine a nullity on the late Parliament, and take heed of a treaty out of our own land. But all men know Dr. G. is singularly well skilled in politics. He proceeds in page 182, and 183, and tells us,  
Mr. Crofton goes as boldly to look on the next Gorgon or Medusa's head, by which the Doctor sets forth the horror of the Covenant, which in his Analysis was the unblessed consequences which attended it; and so exclaims against the Covenant, or rather acclaims the happy days they had before it, and expect when it is sunk. To which Mr. Crofton shall say no more, but sure those happy days were not real, but seeming; for the Covenant doth naturally make for what is truly good. And as for Mr. Croftons' boldness, he shall say no more, but the righteous are as bold as a lion; it is not snakes or worms of a dead head, which can frighten him. But Mr. Crofton his defence and rescue of the Covenant from the odium of these horrible effects (as to a proper and natural causality) is a plain Gorgon to Dr. Gauden striking him dead, by the very aspect thereof: For as one planet struck, he mumbles out an heap of words hardly to be understood [How far the covenanting planet or spirit had its influence on these, I will not dispute.] Which amounts to thus much, I will not answer Mr. Croftons' enquiry, are these effects the proper brood and natural issue of the Covenant? For if I do, I must confess I fathered them very wrongfully. Sir you do well to show your skill in an acclamatory and calumniatory flourish, and presently withdraw with an I will not dispute.  
His next defence is against Mr. Croftons' wish he had been at his elbow, when he mentioned the baffling of the Covenant, 
pag. 184, 186, 180.  wherein he acknowledgeth the truth of all Mr. Crofton in his Analepsis had urged to demonstrate the odious falsehood of the King's shipwreck on the Covenant; though he most unworthily reproacheth the poor Scots, with the want (not of fidelity and good will, but) of success, God's only gift: And instead of vindicating his Analysis, against Mr. crofton's Analepsis, noteth, The vote of non-addresses was passed by the covenanters; but he doth not, nor dare not say by virtue of the Covenant; nay himself calls the promoters thereof the Cromwellian Faction, and quotes Sir Henry Vane, as if all the world knew not these to be perjured Anticovenanters▪ And himself is constrained to profess Dr. Gauden is not so illogical and atheological as to infer a nulling of all things (and all must be nulled if any on that ground) by the apostasy and perverseness of some: And so subscribes to Mr. Croftons' conclusion and argument. What he suggesteth of the rational bafling of the Covenant by the Oxford reasons; Mr. Crofton hath fully considered, and cut him out work enough, to contradict his Analepsis Anelepthe. His suasoes to loyalty are as needless to a sincere covenanter, as those of subjection to Episcopacy, and content with its restitution, are groundless.  
The Doctors opposing contrary Oaths to the Covenant concerneth not Mr. Crofton, who yet hath considered them in his Analepsis Analepthe, sect. 3. pag. 97, 98, 99 and therefore Mr. Crofton shall only inquire what principle of morality or justice maketh the Hierarchy a royal and successive duty to our Kings? Is this duty immediately imposed by God, or prescribed by the laws of the land, any more than that an Ecclesiastical person shall put on the Crown, Lands late unction in forma crucis, or the offering the Regalia upon the Altar? or was not this the voluntary assumpsit of the English Kings: will not a previous oath bar such a voluntary assumpsit, countermand custom, and at least suspend an execution of laws which bear any aspect to such an action?  
When the Doctor hath cleared these, there will be a better support to Episcopacy, than they can yet receive.  
What the Doctor discourseth about the divine, civil, and moral authority of Episcopacy, in page 191, 192, 193, 194, is a petitio principii, and noted before in his collected errors, to be proved before the Covenant or its obligation can be strained by them.  
His eighth difficulty he tells us seems to press heavy on the Analeptist; which was but a bare seem so, and that in his own account, who dreams of an Almighty power in his words without reason: It being an empty swada, and insinuating plea without any force, by the uncertainty of its object, as Mr. Crofton in his Analepsis page 19 hath observed; persuading to a sense which the words of the Covenant will no way afford; in respect of which he tells us, Mr. Cr. after some shuffling and confusion (which let the Reader judge) definitively resolves, that the Covenant expressly binds against the very form and fabric of the late Hierarchy in England (established by law (is by him added and fancied, for it was never believed nor asserted by Mr. Crofton) and not against its abuses, excesses and defects only. This Mr. Crofton did conclude as definitively, as became a Disputant or Casuist; yet not as if he had been in the bosom of the first composers of the Covenant; but as the grammatical construction, logical resolution, vulgar acceptation, and genuine interpretation of the words (which D. Gauden doth not dare to be tried by, yet this must convince and guide the very Composers themselves, if never so willing to shift off the Covenant) do assure him, and from this conclusion he shall not easily recede; nor doth the Doctor urge any thing that may drive him from it: for to his [good Mr. Crofton if the excesses, abuses and defects of our former Episcopal constitution be reform, what can remain but the good] Mr. Crofton d●th affirm that the same being a civil, humane frame, alterable at men's will, if covenanted against, cannot be retained; but corruptio unius, must be generatio alterius; the frame must be extirpated, unless it be found necessary, not ratione subjecti; as you profoundly say, you must have your horse before the detainers know it is necessary for you, but necessitate praecepti, because of God's positive will and institution; therefore you must specify what is in your Hierarchy, that is [not only a good notional, entitive, national, and political, but moral and Ecclesiastical, having in it something more Christian, Apostolical, perfect and divine, than any other government, and prove it; for your words are too many to be believed, though Mr. Crofton can easily believe many of you will witness your couches, manors, states, honours, revenues, to be as necessary to you (though primitive Bishops went without them) as is your horse; sooner than you will specify that goodness which must, and only can expunge extirpation out of the Covenant, and Mr. Crofton must tell the Doctor, reformation of the Hierarchy was not Covenanted, but extirpation, and his Dictionary will teach him to know, what it means, yea and let his profound reason know that every plebeian fancy can differ between the fabric of man's body built by God and nature, and not within humane power, (except in case of justice) to demolish, and a political frame, reared by humane art, invention and industry, at his pleasure to be thrown down ag●in; and therefore he is not more scurrilous than foolish, in demanding whether [if Mr. Cr. diseases be cured it be not enough to justify his Physician, unless his body be taken in pieces coddled and pur-boyld] for that there is not more of difference between an humane body, and an Episcopal frame, then is between the faederated extirpation of the one, and Physical expurgation of the other, commending the Physician; but the Reader cannot without high content (unto open laughter) observe the apt similes which boiled out of our Doctors coddled brain, who must not be angry if Mr. Crofton adhaere to his conclusion, who is ready to meet the Doctor unto a fair dispute about his Episcopacy; and hopes until he have thereby convinced him, he will restrain his rods of Iron, 
Pag. 201.  and severity of power which he imprecates; and give us leave to live in Old England, without the logic of their high commission; for he shall find little Mr. Crofton who cannot be vanquished by a flood of words, will easily fall under the power of reason; though he with plainness out of conscience, have declared his judgement, not as the Doctor fancyeth on a presumption of his Majesty's indulgence, whose judgement expressed and declared for Episcopacy, may be a reason for submission negative, by non resistance, not of conviction, or sinful suspension, or silencing of his judgement in his place, as with the modesty and moderation, so the confidence of a Minister, for I fear God: but to proceed  
The Doctor tells us, having strapped the sweetness of Mr. Crofton (after which for its reason and sobriety, truth and seriousness, give me leave to say Dr. Gauden needs not be ashamed to lick his lips) he proceeds to his ninth reflection; the Covenant of Israel, the ten Commandments; to which Mr. Crofton took exceptions in his Analepsis pag. 20. and tells us, that Mr. Crofton runs a calmer, but not clearer stream than the Libeler (and so the Doctor sets up his own shadow to fight withal) and desires a demonstration to prove, 
Pag. 257.  that one complete and grand Covenant given of God to the Jews, was the only rule and dictate of what matter they should Covenant; to which he insultingly answers, as indeed to a frivolous question, he may as well look for a demonstration to prove there is but one God, one true Religion, and one Sun in the firnament, judiciously fought Doctor, must you not be humed; is Mr. Crofton so little, you cannot see or distinguish him from your Umbra? I pray you where doth Mr. Crofton desire this in his Analepsis, which only you encounter? he did determine and agree to this, your grave eyes are dim, and Episcopal spectacles made at Rome dusty, otherwise you would have read true English. Mr. Crofton his desire to the Doctor was, to demonstrate that the law of Moses, 
Analep. p. 20.  or Covenant in Horeb, was NOT ONLY the RULE and DICTATE of what MATTER (can you see it Sir) they should Covenant, but the EXPRESS COVENANT, or did consist in the EXACT RECITAL and REPETITION of the law or ten Commandments, so as that they never VARIED or ALTERED (Sir I would help your eye sight) the same. Do not these words much agree with that you have falsely fathered on Mr. Crofton, his desire? is this the praxis of your profound notion, by which you would save the credit of your liturgy from beginning its Rubric with a lie, defending the sameness of the words, by a supposed soundness of the sense? But what say you yet to Mr. Crofton his demand? were the Jews tied to those words on no occasion to vary them? that these did rule and limit their matter is agreed; but you dare not affirm they were tied to the order and number of words; yet on this score you quarrel with the Covenant, and by a childish fancy, cast the words into 666, as if that number was as fatal to every thing, as it is to Papal, Prelatical Hierarchy; and will needs suppose, to live according to the word of God, and laws of the land, to be a sufficient form for all Oaths or Covenants on any occasion? but who made Dr. Gauden the Dictator of the words, which should be the same in all Covenants? these are not the words of Moses, or Covenant in Horeb. I may sir, come into your Diocese, and need your licence; and I will covenant with you to live according to the word of God and laws of the land: I hope you will require no other canonical oath, or subscription. Sir, declare this, and stand to it, and you shall be the best Bishop, and have your Dioceses stored with the best Ministers in England.  
The Doctor having thus solidly defended his profound notion of the one Covenant in the Old Testament, he proceeds to establish his one baptismal covenant in the New: the man professeth much to unity, and fond dreams of nothing but unites, even of words and humane expressions, as if ten, or hundreds, or thousands in a covenant were utterly Antiarithmetical and Antichristian, against the rule of Nature and Scripture.  
Herein having sufficiently scolded his Anatomist, he courts Mr. Crofton with such justice and civility as ●he can afford, which is comparatively very much, and tells us,  
Mr. Cr. instead of proving the Covenant to be ratified by any precept in the New Testament, or examples of any Christians in succeeding ages; flieth to justify it, by the dictates and discoveries of the Old Testament, by politic arts befitting any people, or Church National. But the Doctor should have been so just and civil, as to have observed Mr. Croftons' distinctions between the matter and circumstances of the Covenant; how he concluded in his Analepsis, that the New Testament directeth us as Christians, but in Acts that pertain to us as a Kingdom, or Church national, it leaveth us to the dictates of Nature, and the discoveries of the Old Testament. Although the Doctor hath unjustly couched the one, he doth not, he dares not contradict the other; but inferreth truly on the same grounds, that so much by him and others decried (oath he intends) with etc. in it, which excluded Popery, and confirmed the already legal, and settled Episcopacy of the Church of England, had been as lawful and sacred as this Covenant; and in some respect more allowable, because it disseised no man of his freehold or Estate. But sure the Doctor runs too fast, and now reckons without his host, and by an after reckoning will find his mistake, in these three things.  
First, The Episcopacy of the Church of England was legal, and already settled, which we have before charged as his error; and by a petitio principii he all along builds upon it; but must go to the Temple, and beg some help of the Lawyers to prove Id quod erat demonstrandum.  
Secondly, Admitting the dictates of Nature, and discoveries of the Old Testament to direct the circumstances of an Oath; that the Oath with etc. in it, will be found as lawful and sacred as the Covenant, is a mere non sequitur: For the dictates of nature do authorise any person to vow in his place, calling, and capacity to endeavour the extirpation of what he conceiveth or experienceth evil; but that Oath bindeth against the giving consent to alter, what on after conviction may appear, not only alterable at the pleasure of the superior, to whom our consent must be subject; but in itself hurtful, yea sinful; and so the subserviency of the will to the understanding is superseded by an Oath. Again, the dictates of nature, and discoveries of the Old Testament do direct the matter of an oath to be expressed with all certainty and clearness; and the Covenant doth accordingly express all the particulars covenanted; but this oath is so far from certainty of the matter sworn, that it binds the conscience to an & caetera of infinite extension, and boreth a passage into a man's conscience for whatsoever shall be fathered upon, and said to be intended in the & caetera; which might be at least Moneks and Abbeys, no less legal and established then this Episcopacy. Again, the dictates of Nature, and discoveries of the Old Testament do direct, the National tie of an oath to be stamped by the collective body of the Nation, as was the Covenant, but not the Oath & caetera, which was by a picked, packed Convocation, without any authority, Ecclesiastical or civil, to impose or prescribe an Oath upon the Subjects: Nay, if we give the Doctor his fancy, and suppose the Prelate's Justices of the Peace, they run into a praemunire, who bind the Subject to the good behaviour by an oath not directed by Law.  
Thirdly, That the Oath of the & caetera disseised no honest man of his freehold or estate: I must understand him in his consequences of it, as he doth the Covenant; and then I must inquire what it means, that the Minister, or beneficed, dignified person, refusing this Oath, after one month's consideration shall be suspended ab officio, after two month's consideration, a beneficio, after three months' consideration shall be deprived of all promotion, and execution of his function: Sure the Doctor is as well studied in the Canons of 1640. as the Covenant 1643. Is not a Benefice the Minister's freehold and estate, as much as the Bishopric is the Bishops? or are the suspension a beneficio, yea deprivation no disseisure of the same? and suspension, ab officio, no injustice and impiety? Sir, Your second thoughts will sure sink your parallel, and consequence; and your reply will be found more light and shuffling then Mr. Croftons' Queries, which answer themselves by way of expostulation, 
Pag. 14●.  proving against Dr. Gaudens assertion, that the New Testament is not the only rule which must direct the Nationalty, or other circumstances of a Covenant determinable by the light of nature: As to the question you pretend not answered, it is but now started, and is not in your Analysis, [What erigents in religion did ever put any Church or Christian Subjects upon such a way of public covenanting, etc. Yet by your leave Sir, Mr. Crofton did say something which may answer it: Find you a Church or Christian people, and erigents of Religion, so capacitated for nature, number, quality, and just authority, Analepsis p. 22. and Mr. Crofton will find such a Covenant? until then observe Mr. crofton's Query, Must we inquire only what hath been done in the Christian Churches, to do that and no more, without regarding what may be done; the condition of the Church so requiring. And study Mr. Crofton his Analepsis Anelephthe, sect. 3.  
The Doctor hath not more shuffled about Mr. Crose●f answering expostulation, than he poorly shifts off his vindication and rescue of the Covenant from the odium of the Ligue de Saint in France, which he (as writing after his friends John russel's copy) in his margin, with a notorious falsehood calls Mr. Croftons' pattern, and in the Text upbraidingly crieth out, Mr. Crofton not like an Eagle, but a meaner bird, stoops to feed on that long ago dead and noisome carcase, the holy League in France, as a very exemplary parellel for his holy Covenant. Doctor, are not you ashamed to father the Brats of your own fancy on Mr: Crofton. This parellel is your own bastard, and quod fieri non debuit, factum valet; you begot it you must keep it: Did not you in your Analysis labour to make the Covenant odious by this example? Doth Mr. Crofton own or allow this League de Saint? Nay doth he not condemn it? only stave off the odious reflection designed by an envious Renegado and Apostate.  
I pray Sir, read Mr. Croftons' words again, and see whether Mr. Crofton feed on this as a pattern, on only a fence against your assault made by it: May not the League de Saint, and Oath & caetera in England, (there is your parallel Dr.) though SINFUL IN THE MATTER (Sir rub your Romish spectacles) be good spurs and directions in Christian policy? may not the same means (as abstracted from the matter) be used to corroborate true Religion and Reformation? why may not Popish policy teach Protestant's to combine by Covenant? Reverend Sir, read my riddle, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. Sir was not Mr. Crofton herein like an Eagle on the horns of an Hart, scattering that dust in your eyes, that caused you to throw yourself into the precipice of false accusation? or appear, not you, like the envious and cruel Vulture, killed by the oil of Roses, which sprang and grew out of the dung of a noisome dead carcase. O man be honest though a Prelate.  

p. 242, 243.  The Doctor tells us, Mr. Crofton stranges at Dr. Gauden, not finding the like lineaments in the Covenant, as in the baptismal Covenant, you are again mistaken Doctor, for Mr. Cr. stranged at the transport of so grave and serious a Divine, to oppose the baptismal Covenant to this, Mr. Crofton did easily admit they were disparata, but not opposita contraria: this was Dr. Gaudens work to demonstrate, if you will believe him; he tells us the inconsistency is plain, and fully explained by Dr. Gauden, where or how? why, if it obligeth to injustice, oppression, sedition, sacrilege, schism, and Iliads of miserable innovations, at this rate it will appear but ifs or and's, are no proofs or demonstrations; if they were I would soon prove your Prelacy a Papacy, and store your Table with Episcopal plenties and dainties, for if the Elements fall, we shall catch Larks; this way of disputing is apparently Jesuitical, Machiavilian and barbarous, so far from baptismal, that it is plainly irrational; what good, duty, Justice, morality, or Religion may not be ruined, if a mans fancied if, be reason enough against it, if the Bishopric of Exeter be unjustly held by Dr. Gauden from Mr. Crofton, or Bath and Wells from D. B. it is unjust and sacrilegious, and they are both bound to abandon their places, and avoid their Seats, and to restore them, how like you the Argument? is it not very Logical and Cogent? Sir draw up a positive charge, and prove it, Mr. Crofton will stand to it, that he will renounce the Covenant, in the mean time let me desire the Doctor, to take a view of the parallel between this and the baptismal vow or covenant, proposed by Mr. Cr. in his Analepsis Analephthe Sect. 3. pag. 35. and avoid it if he can, only take notice it is the honesty of the Covenant, not all Covenanters, that Mr. Crofton pleads with confidence, he confesseth many cups may be found in his brethren's sacks, but not in any Article of the Covenant, and Dr. Gaudens multiplied reiterated Ifs, do make me confident of Benjamins' innocency, and apt to think things unknown are thrust upon them; but not from so pious a principle, and to so charitable an end, as Joseph acted from and aimed at: but truly Doctor, it is a Sophistical evasion to confound things and persons in a dispute, but this the learned Doctor doth decline as to the name, office, degree, order and Authority of a Bishop in Scripture, Sir do you not now appear a greater dictator then little Mr. Crofton, 
Pag. 249.  who rationally urged his exception, and is no way afraid or unwilling in this case to try a turn with Dr. John Gauden on the questions before propounded, who yet will hold to his ingenuous agnition, which so much pleaseth you, viz. that the Covenant is not leveled against any real excellency in the Bishops (which is all that Mr. Crofton agnifed, 
Analep. Pag. 25.  though you according to your usual falsehood do add, authority, estate and honour,) which Mr. Cr. noted to be unwarrantable, neither to be assumed by them, nor attributed to them, and Sir I must tell you, ruin and extirpation of the frame of the English Hierarchy, doth no way interfere with the preservation and esteem of any real excellency in Bishops but that Mr. Crofton may be ready and bound (if in a capacity) to veil that pompous worldly State, and wicked superiority, which Church Governors had obtained; a note or instance of which he gave in Lawn sleeves, no more puerile or scurrilous, nor unbeseeming a Scholar, or Gentleman, than the baseness and contemptible inferiority of Presbyters, was by you marked out, in a black coat, to which that was opposed, is below the sobriety of a man, the humility of a Primus Presbyter, and reverence of a Christian to the poorest meanest Minister of Christ; and speaks your prelatical Pride, much more than your Rochet and Chymer sets out your pomp, which my baptism binds against; and will engage the Boanergesses of God to thunder out terror against Covenant breaking? which you account a weak Womanish flash, 
Pag. 249, 251.  yet will not be quenched by your first demonstrations, or this reply, by your judicious self, proclaimed rational, and conscientious, though to all men beside, proud, profane, ridiculous, weak, and wicked, whilst Mr. Crofton seeketh not to strain the ●ovenant beyond its own just and ingenuous resolution, 
Pag 251.  sense, operation, influence and obligation, consenting to, and rejoicing in, its limitation to the Word of God, and duties of our places and callings, by which Mr. Crofton is resolved he will be judged, and is in himself assured, that King and Kingdom accordingly keeping their Covenant, the controverted Episcopacy will be at an end, and the commission of our present Prelate Justices expired and useless; covenanters by their good behaviour, proving the solemn League and Covenant to be, as indeed it is Berith Anti-Baall, which Dr. Gauden blasphemously denominateth Baal Berith, and Mr. Crofton is nor shall no way be shy of retrospection how or by whom, to what or in what sense it binds, and the rationality of its obligation, all which he hath seriously considered in an opposition to the Oxford Reasons, to which the Doctor so often retireth, as he may see in my Analepsis Anelephthe, pag. 265.  
We have seen the Doctor's strength in the defence of his indirect answer, and consideration of the Covenant, which being done, he proceeds to reinforce his direct answer, and Goliath like, being encouraged by the stature of little Mr. Crofton, not taking notice of his stone and sling, he triumphantly enters, and tauntingly crieth, Mr. Croftons' fear (good man) is  Dr. Gaudens down right blows, may quite break in sunder, 
Pag. 273, 274.  whatever may be of sacred bond in the Covenant; the Reader that well regardeth the strength of his book, cannot but with Laughter say, there was great cause of fear, but the best is, it was but a fear, and so on past, for in the next assault Mr. Crofton is victor.  
Mr. Croftons' note, that the paucity of the Covenanters doth not discharge its obligation, is true; had not Mr. Crofton much cause of fear and trouble? I but in making Dr. Gauden one of the number, Mr. Crofton reckoned without his host; when that appears, Mr. Crofton will cry true; but the Doctor doth not, dare not deny he swore it: which if he should, Mr. Crofton can tell who heard him preanh upon the Covenant, acd saw him in the Pulpit at Bocking lift up his hand, and swear it: He doth indeed, like a shifting runnegado, labour to darken the act which retorts on his conscience, in his now estate, and tell us, he never took an oath, but those appointed by Law; he might reckon the Covenant to be of this nature, for the Authority of Parliament is by the Petition of Right the legal appointment of an Oath: He tells us a large story how he did sense the Covenant, and with what nonsense he did approve it, understanding Extirpation to signify Reformation, and so by general salvoes and restrictions, he cheated others and himself, which Mr. Crofton hath detected in his Review of Reordination, pag. 35. but may as soon acquit his soul from the bond, as make the words of the Covenant bear his sense; let him ●now equivocation in an Oath, is no way short of Ananias and Saphira's lie unto the Holy Ghost; it is much patience that the punishment hath not yet proclaimed it; The Lord grant it may lead unto repentance. He proceeds  
Mr. Crofton is apt to think the Covenant national (not as in a Presbyterian illegal & caetera sense, which the Doctor adds, but will not alter the case, the sense being no way considerable to the Nationalty of it, but in any sense) signifies as little as other men's thoughts to the contrary. But good Sir, weigh the Reasons brought by Mr. Crofton, and his answer to what you have objected as to the troubles of the Houses, absence of some members, or the like, in Analepsis Anelepthe; sect. 6. which had you read, would have saved, or increased your labour in your Reply. Mr. Crofton must not shuffle that into this book, and therefore shall make bold to tell you, His sacred Majesty and the Kingdom must submit to the plain and literal sense thereof, though it seem as sour grapes, unless we will by God's wrath set our own and children's teeth on edge; for the capacity of the Covenanters doth extend the obligation. But  
The Doctor judgeth an oath extorted by fear to a man's private damage doth bind; 
Pag 279.  sure he means a proper damage; for I cannot think he will in cool blood deny the Parent's oath to the damage of the family; or progenitors in a corporation, to the damage of successors; or Governors to the damage of the people or Subjects to bind, because these are sui juris; and then he yields as much as I desire, to shut out, yea thrust out and pluck up his Episcopacy, and in this point we shall agree. But now he shufles to defend his strange notions of morality; Of which  
The first is, Mr. Crofton carps at the Doctors owning the bonds of God, which are moral, to have in them sufficient and indispensable obligations of the soul to all duty. 
Pag. 28.  By your leave Doctor this is false: Mr. Croftons' wonder was at the Doctor's Antithesis of the words of a Covenant, to Reason, Justice, Truth, Religion, Duty: which he never denied to tie as well as Oaths, but not as much, muchless more; as your iron adamantine bonds of Reason, morality, etc. opposed to the cords and with'hs of Oaths, did suggest in your Analysis; but now indeed you confess that Oaths do harden and solder these moral chains unto a greater toughness; which was the thing Mr. Cr. asserted in his Analepsis: I confess retraction of error is the best vindication; but you should be ingenuous, and do it without shuffling, and suggesting a falsehood against your Antagonist: But Mr. Cr. will grant to you, that new Covenants cannot absolve or abrogate old lawful Oaths; but what it may do to laws I must dispute, when done by Legislators, I affirm it to be the fullest repeal: But if I admit it, it will not secure your Bishop's Lands, Honour, Office, or Authority, until you have proved your Episcopacy to be established by law, which may be done by an act of the next Parliament, if the long Parliament be not in being, as hath been affirmed; though it is out of Mr. Cr. way to determine; and he is well advised by the Doctor to let wise men manage affairs, as is but reason; for no doubt wisemen will hear and weigh the doubts of the meanest men, the stating of which, proud Prelates think to be pragmatique.  
But Sir, Mr. Cr. thinks whatever Jepthas' vow was, it was literally fulfilled; 
Pag. 281,  and I hope Dr. Gauden will not assert a Popish commutation of an Oath; and the Popish Casuists conclude, Non posse promissum commutari in evidenter pejus; an oath may not be changed for the worse: And Sir, if he vowed (which I will not conclude) his daughter's life, I think her virgin liberty to be less and worse. And Dr. Saunderson determineth Vinculum juramenti non posse remitti vel solvi ex parte per commutationem, sine consensu partium omnium: The exchange must be by consent of all parties concerned: But the Scripture mentioneth not God's consent, nor Jeptha's exchange; what he vowed that he performed: For ubi lex non distinguit, non est distinguendum.  
His second suggestion was, That a Covenant cannot bind a man by the power of his own imagination, Analysis, p. 15. To this Mr. Crofton excepted in his Analepsis, pag. 19 and he replies It is true, that imagination or mere presumption, cannot bind, contrary to what in Reason, Justice, Law and Religion you own to another. But Doctor, 
Pag. 282, ●  have you not again run from your own second suggestion? How long will you shuffle? your suggestion was of any Covenant, your reply of Covenants to the wrong of others; and therefore you add, the measure of an erroneous conscience may bind to things of our own injury; but not otherwise; your suggestion opposed a man's own imagination to others interpretation; your reply opposeth our own to others wrong; where shall we hold you? can Jesuitism itself be more subtle and sophistical? I pray come to the question, doth an erroneous conscience bind, and doth it universally bind? I have sworn, and do imagine it is no wrong to my neighbour; though I ought to be the better informed by right reason, and rules of justice; yet whilst in my error, must I conscientiously wrong my neighbour, or captivate my conscience by Dr. G. say so? you profess Sir to be best in a particular case; I pray you resolve it clearly and plainly. You boast of this second suggestion, as having as much strength as I confess your next hath; when indeed you have made it the same; and instead of defending the second, you have spoken the third in a second book; profound disputing! I will admit this strength, and yet your inferred safety of your Episcopacy (which I stand by is no wrong to remove) is a plain non sequitur; grounded on your common petitio prinipii; for I must inquire what is the right of Episcopacy? may not the power that founded Prelacy extirpate it? Is it not sui juris? May not Episcopacy be abolished without wrong, as well particular Bishoprics be given to lay persons for two, three, four, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years together, and the See kept vacant? tell us was the Church so long injured? May not English authority abolish Prelacy, with as little wrong as Denmark did? I know my horse and saddle, wife and children, 
Pag. 183.  house and lands; but yet I know not the pretended right of Episcopacy; and conceive there is some difference between personal and political right: When God stirreth up the King's heart to con●ider, and raiseth up an English Parliament to take notice of, they will know their right in and over Episcopacy, and make Bishops know they are their servants, horse and saddle, to be disposed at their pleasure, without complaint of wrong. Mr. Cr. shall freely trust them to it, and God to give them thereunto hearts of wisdom, conscience and courage.  
The Doctor's assertion more than his judgement, leads him to an exclamation, Mr. Croftons' next paragraph is a factious query, not worth any sober man's Reply. It is well Sir, it is not seditious; 
pag. 2●4  for many Deputy Lieutenants are become so far the Bishop's slaves and Constables, as to resolve the peace and order of the Kingdom into owning the Bishops, and make the contrary sedition? But Sir, what is the Query? I presume it toucheth the Prelate's copyhold; you cry so of faction, whether the Statute of 17. Caroli hath not cut short their horns? And you tell us of a Councillor who resolved in the negative. Mr. Cr. knows him not, but hath heard of a Convention of Prelates, who on advice with Council discerned the affirmative, and received the silence of the learned in the Law to their enquiry; you may if you please take silence for consent: I am prone to think Dr. Gauden knows this story to be true, and that the Councillor who concluded for Episcopal Jurisdiction, did determine it could not be executed without the King's commission, barred by the Statute of 17 Caroli primi. But this was fit for the Doctor to tell.  
The Doctor's next fling is at Mr. Croftons' fear of National perjury; before considered, 
pag. 185.  and on good grounds will convince men it is not causeless: Mr. Cr. would be glad to see how the Nation will escape it; but he will meet Dr. Gauden on any ground, with his Majesty's leave to maintain the Solemn League and Covenant, is a full and formal and National obligation. This past  
He finds himself grieved that Mr. Cr. chargeth Episcopacy to have brought reformation to a palpable retrogradation; but like a subtle Sophister, he coucheth Mr. Croftons' demonstrative instances of the returned Liturgy, most conform to the Romish Mass book; Incloseds-in-altar, or railed Communion-Tables, Crosses, Surplices, Popish Oblations, and other superstitious Rites; to say nothing of profaned Sabbaths by bishops ●arding; suppressing pious, painful Preachers thrust out, and profane, drunken deboist, canonical, Common-prayer-book men forced in, wheresoever a Bishop's power can reach; all which are read in such legible characters that all can run and read them: It may be this is the Reformation desired by our Prelates and amongst others by Dr. G. If so I have done them wrong, they do not retrograde it, but drive it on, like Phaeton to the apparent hazard of Charles his wain. If you say this is rude Rhetoric, remember it is plain English: As for bringing horses to Church, it is as much Mr. Croftons' reformation, as Bishop's Palaces and holiness of Church, Chancels, or other places, which it is known he hath equally opposed, and loveth no less than pulling down crosses and setting up weathercock Covenanters, as Bishops or Priests in the Church; let what will stand on the steeple, these will turn with every wind.  
His next fret is, at Mr. Crofton? wiping his nose on the Bishop's lawn sleeves; as mannerly Sir, as with his nails at Exeter to tear them, for Linen is fit for that use, especially when black becomes despicable by it; you now profess love and esteem for Presbyters; but when you taught the people to know them but as their equals and inferiors, because in black coats, Analysis, pag. 17. you exposed them to contempt.  
His last work is to explain himself, concerning the good, against which, his Analysis urged, no Oath could bind, the man is become a Bishop, it is below him to learn, at least to let the world see, that a little despicable Presbyter is to him an instructor, who never affected to be a dictator, and therefore in an angry stile he must correct his error, and tell us When Dr. Gauden affirmed an Oath cannot bind against what is in nature good, he meant, so far only as that good may be morally necessary for him and his: But Sir that we may yet know your meaning, I should inquire what you mean by morally necessary, when Mr. Crofton tells you, Episcopacy must not be restored against the Covenant, though good, unless found necessary you put the case of your good horse necessary for you; and truly Sir, I cannot see any more moral necessity in your horse, than your Episcopal fines of Gold and silver, and other things that may be barred by an Oath, you are the most unhappy Master of words, that I have met with, to darken your meaning by declaring what you mean. Sir I do say all good, not good by the necessity of nature, or divine precept, but at man's choice to take or refuse, in order to the bene esse of him or his, may be concluded by an Oath, and charity commands me to think, this is that you would say you meant (though you shot far wide) in your Analysis, if your many words, and whirling tongue would let your mind regularly dictate its expressions.  
We have seen the strength of Dr. Gaudens Argumentation, which truly I cannot commend; though I think an error weakly vented, is very sinfully defended; whilst the exceptions against him, do by his own expression appear cogent, he should meekly yield to the conviction, and bear the shame, which struggling to avoid, he hath added folly, vanity, sophistry, and false quotations and suggestions; the effects of a stubborn mind, unwilling to give God Glory, and fallen under the curse of calling good evil, and evil good; and more immediately subjected himself to God's wrath, by hardening his neck against reproof, and labouring not only to vindicate and defend his own apostasy, but by his wordy influence to encourage the profane; and as far as in him lieth, plunge both King and Kingdom, under the guilt of perjury, or breach of Covenant, the quarrel of which, the God of jealousy hath avenged, as to the civil part, and will undoubtedly avenge as to the religious part, against the violent rejections, or fraudulent evasions of the sons of men.  
FINIS.   

Books written by Mr. Zach. Crofton.  
Foelix scelus, Querela piorum, & Auscultato Divina; Or, Prospering profaneness provoking Holy conference, and God's attention, in which you have the happy estate of the wicked, the holy exercise of the godly, the hazard and event of both. Plainly propounded in sundry Sermons Preached at botolph's Algate London: and after contracted in two Sermons Preached in Peter's Church in West-chester, July 17. 1659.  
Catechising Gods Ordinance: Or a short Treatise concerning that Ancient Approved Soul-edifying Singularly necessary exercise of Catechising.  
The people's need of a living Pastor: Asserted and explained in a Sermon Preached Novemb. 4. 1656. At the sad and solemn Funeral of that late learned, pious and eminent hopeful Minister of the Gospel, Mr. John Frost, Bachelor in Divinity, late fellow of St. John's College in Cambridge, and Pastor of St. Olaves' Hartstreet London. Together with a Narrative of his Life and Death.  
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, Or St. Peter's bonds abide, being an answer to Dr. Gaudens sense and solution of the Solemn League and Covenant.  
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, The fastening of St. Peter's Fetters, by seven kinds or propositions.  
A serious review of Presbyters reordination by Bishops, in a Letter Written unto a Minister in Warwicksheir, resolving this case of conscience, Whether a Minister ordained by Presbyters may with a good conscience be reordained by a Bishop, Presbyter and Deacon, so that they will declare their Ordination to be merely accumalative and the man shall not renounce his Ordination by it.  
Bethshemesh clouded, or some Animadverisions on the Rabbinical Talmud of Rabbi John Rogers, of Thomas-Apostles Lond.  
Altar-Worship, Or bowing to the Communion Table, considered, as to the novelty, vanity, iniquity, malignity, charged upon it.  
Fraterna Correptio: Or the Saints zeal against sinful Altars: delivered in a Sermon Preached on a day of Humiliation for the Errors, Heresies and Schisms of our times and Nations.