E. M. A long imprisoned Malignant, HIS HUMBLE SUBMISSION TO THE COVENANT and DIRECTORY: With some Reasons and Grounds of use to settle and  tender Consciences. PRESENTED IN A Petition to the Right Honourable the LORDS assembled in Parliament, in Whitsun-week, in the Year, 1647.  Eurip. 
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Printed in the Year, 1647.   

To the Right Honourable the Lords assembled in the high Court of Parliament, The humble Petition of E. M. Prisoner in the Right Honourable the Lord Peter's House in Aldersgate-street.  
Shows,  
THat whereas your Lordship's humble Petitioner (upon Remonstrance of his case, that he hath been these five years' Prisoner to this Honourable House, in which time having suffered the often Plunder of his goods, to the very clothes on his back, and Sequestration from any benefit of livelihood or maintenance, and being unmarried, is thereby excluded from plea to so much as any fifth part) did thereupon prefer his humble Petition, that your Lordships would be pleased, either to allow him some necessary sustenance out of his own Estate, or such liberty (upon Bail to appear before this Honourable House upon any term to be limited by your Lordships) whereby he might be enabled to seek, and find some end of his extreme misery, either by some poor honest life, or death: In answer to which Petition, your Lordships were pleased to return, that for maintenance out of his own Estate, it was not in your Honourable power to allow it; and for liberty upon Bail, your Lordships were ready to grant it, but only upon condition of his taking the Covenant beforehand.  
Hereupon your Lordship's humble Petitioner makes request, first of all that he may present to your Honourable Remembrance, that there was a Convocation of this Church representative summoned, and called by the same Authority, together with this present Parliament now sitting, and that the Members of that Convocation (by the Statute of 8. Hen. 6.) are to enjoy the same immunities (as touching their Persons and personal Attendants) from imprisonment, that any Peers in the House of Lords, or Members of the House of Commons (for themselves and theirs) do challenge to that effect: May it then please your Lordships to give your humble Petitioner leave to present to your honourable Notice, that himself is actually at this time a Member of that Convocation; howsoever he shall not insist any further upon this, than your Lordships please, but submits both this, and the law, and Statute itself to your honourable arbitrement and pleasures, how far it is to be regarded or superseded; and craves only leave of your Lordships, that he may without offence express his sense and mind in certain considerations upon the sole condition whereon his liberty and livelihood at this present depends.  
1. First, he finds this Covenant (for many intrinsecall inordinations in the same, which by divers learned men have been worthily and weightily pressed, and may further be amplified and noted, as your Petitioner is ready to declare, whensoever by your Honours he shall be thereunto required) so opposite to his Religion, Faith, and all his duties to God and man, that daily he doth humbly beseech Almighty God to strengthen him with grace, that he may endure and embrace any extremity of torture, or death, rather than in any sense of his own or others, take, or seem to have taken that, which for aught he can any ways inform himself (and other means of information in this long and strict durance he can have none) must needs run him into a desperate hazard of all the good he can hope for in this or any other world.  
2 Next, he desires to present to your honourable considerations, that those Recusants in this Kingdom, who profess themselves of the Communion of the Church of Rome, are very seldom (if at all) pressed or urged by any House or Committee (to their great commendation be it ever mentioned) to that Covenant; upon supposition, that they are so fare honest and true to their own souls and consciences, that they will never swear that which is inconsistible with their Faith. May it then please your Lordships to consider, that the Church of England, as it stood established by divine and humane Laws, and still stands (to all those men upon whose consciences Laws have any obligation) wherein your humble Petitioner was made a Member of Christ, & hath received such sensible impressions of God's grace, as obliges him to perseverance therein against all the temptations of the World, the Flesh, or the Devil. May it please your Honours to consider, & assuredly to believe, that this our Church of Christ may by God's Grace breed & nourish men every whit as honest and true to their souls and consciences, and as constant to their Faith and Principles, as your Lordships conceive the Church of Rome doth, (where notwithstanding Dispensations and mental Reservations, we are sure we may say without offence to any man, are more impetrable and allowable then with us;) And therefore may it please your Lordships to vouchsafe that Christian men of this our Church (wherein your very Lordships have held and professed Communion) may find so much credit and countenance from your Honours, as those of the Church of Rome daily do; and may be thought possibly so fare true and fast to their Principles and Faith, that they cannot admit their souls into a Sacrament and Covenant, wholly destructive to their Religion, and indeed more individually and immediately penned, meant, and intended by the Authors of it against their Church, Doctrine and Government, then against the Church of Rome; there being no mention therein of any singular thing proper to the Church of Rome, but either common to us with them, or proper to us alone.  
3. May it likewise please your Honours to consider, that all our late Parliaments in England (and, most of all, this wherein your Honours are now sitting) have professed always great severity, and made strict inquisition against all men that should intent, practice, or endeavour by word, or writing, any alteration of Religion, or Innovation in Doctrine or Worship, as a capital offence: (and indeed what fantasy can be more derogatory and contrary to all Christian Religion, than that men should be of any Religion that in these last days is to be set up?) wherefore when your Petitioner daily sees and considers men that endeavour, profess, Print, and practice Innovations and Alterations in the Church, Doctrine, Worship, and Government, in the very Creed, in the 39 Articles of our Confession, in all the Ecclesiastical Canons, Muniments, Ceremonies, Sacraments, and in the whole substance of Religion, the Public Service of God, and Liturgy of the Church, sealed in the blood of so many Martyrs, and settled by the sanction of so many Parliaments: And when he sees such men go about every where, not only with indemnity, and without question, but also rewarded with Preferments, Immunities, Privileges, for their Apostasy from that Faith which they have so often subscribed, preached, practised, and whereunto before God, Angels, and men, they have plighted their troth: When he sees again men constant to their Religion, and to their Foundation, persecuted and brought to nought (himself especially) not only with total and final Sequestration, but also with a destiny of perpetual Imprisonment, without all necessaries, even to famine, unless he will for swear and renounce that his Religion (to which if he were not by his own inclination, education, breeding (but chief by the fear of God) obliged, yet the severe proceed of all Parliaments (this especially) against the introducers of Innovations in Religion, were sufficient to keep him, and awe him, or any man else to his Rule and Conformity: When he sees such a time of Jubilee and Indulgence on the one side, and when he beholds such a time of hot persecution on the other side: he cannot entertain a more honourable opinion of your Lordships, then to conceive, that your Lordships in a zealous prudence (as Jehu once served Baal's Prophets) have a desire to sift and winnow this populous Kingdom, and by such a seeming distribution of rewards and punishments, do intent only to find out, and to root out all those worshippers of Baal, those false, hypocritical, adulterate pretenders to a Religion, who manifestly give sentence upon themselves, that either they have all this while formerly (notwithstanding all their subscriptions, Oaths and Professions) lived, and gone in a wrong way, or else that they will now swear themselves into a wrong way for their advantage: Neither can your Petitioner any ways believe, that it can possibly be your Lordship's will, & Honourable pleasure, that either he or any constant Christian (who cannot but abominate such hypocrisy, false dealing, and Merchandise in Religion) should by perjury seem to be what he is not.  
4. Besides, may it please your Lordships, to give your Petitioner leave to mention that too, which your Honours know and understand best of all; that there is a great deal of difference between Christian and Pagan Allegiance: Pagan Allegiance is a virtue actuated out of the habit of prudence and Moral goodness, acceptable to God, and most commonly rewarded with the temporal goods only, and benefits of this life, but cannot of itself alone prefer a man any higher.  
Christian Allegiance is a virtue incorporate in the other good works of a Christian Faith, wrought out of the supernatural principles of God's Grace and Word. A pagan may be loyal to his King, because the rule of Prudence and Moral virtue prescribes him so to be. A Christian must be loyal to his King above all men, because the Word of God (above all rules of Moral prudence) commands him so to be: And so it comes to pass that Christian Allegiance issuing from the supernatural powers of God's Word, Spirit and Grace, is an act and work of Faith in Christ, and efficatious to prefer the Subject to a supernatural happiness in life eternal. Now your Petitioner being obliged by Sacrament no less than 14. several times to this Christian Allegiance and profession of his King's Supremacy overall persons in England whatsoever, or howsoever; and having likewise as often declared upon Sacrament of Oath, that he doth not believe that any Dispensator in the world (no not the Pope himself, the greatest pretender that way that he ever yet heard of) is able to free, or absolve him from that obligation: Now this Covenant quite dissolving that Bond of Christian Allegiance, and obliging him clean contrary ways, though he will not judge, much less condemn other men; yet if he should take it, all circumstances considered, he could not but judge and condemn himself apostatised from his Christian Allegiance, which is a great part of that Christian Faith, in which he hath hitherto lived, and wherein he desires God to grant him strength and grace to die.  
5. Moreover, may it please your Lordships seriously to consider, how detestable to all posterity the memory of those Gunpowder Traitors is, who took the Covenant to extirpate our Religion, root and branch, by taking away our King, Queen, Prince, Royal issue, Lords, Commons, Arch-Bishops, Bishops, Deans, Deans and Chapters▪ Arch-Deacons, all the rest of our Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and all persons in whom our Religion was conserved: There was nothing in the persons destined to destruction, (neither Blood Nobility, nor any other malignancy) offensive to the Covenanters and Conspirators, but the Doctrine, Worship, and Government of this Church; and that only of this Church, not that of Scotland, Geneva, or any to be set up, for those were not in any being here at that time, but prohibited, and proscribed by the same Laws and penalties, whereby that of the Church of Rome was eff●ned; and our whole Nation by a solemn Decree hath devoted already to God Almighty the perpetuation of the 5. of November, throughout all Generations, to an Anniversary Thanksgiving for that his preservation of this Doctrine, Worship and Government in these blessed persons, without whose conservation, Posterity had never come to see this light; and in this Thanksgiving all men of this Church for these 42 years have engaged their souls to Almighty God, either cordially, or at least hypocritically (your humble Petitioner for his part professeth cordially) with what face or heart than can he possibly swear to the extirpation of that Religion, for the preservation whereof before men & Angels, he hath so often given God hearty thanks?  
Or with what devotion can he ever again upon the 5. of November enter into God's House, to give God thanks and praise for the preservation of that Religion, which God sees him entered into a Covenant to extirpate? Nay, your humble Petitioner appeals only to your Honourable Lordships, whether the blood of our forefather's and Ancestors, shed, and ready to be shed in Martyrdom, for the Profession and maintenance of 〈◊〉 Faith, Worship, and Government (and not that of Scotland, or Geneva) would not cry to Heaven for vengeance against their Posterity, that should now justify their Persecutors, and swear themselves into the Office to extirpate all, without any exception of King, or Parent, if addicted to that Religion, for which they so readily laid down their lives? And whether the blood of those Gunpowder Conspirators can be silent against these men that enter into Covenant now adays to extirpate that Religion, for the attempting whereof, the mouths of the new Confederates even to this day give sentence upon those Gunpowder Covenanters, that they justly deserved those shameful deaths and executions, which by legal judgements came upon them? Your Lordship's Petitioner is therefore confident, that in your Honourable and Noble Bloods there cannot be any desire, that either he, or any true Christian Englishman should give the world an instance of such degenerous unworthiness.  
6. Last of all, seeing that your Lordship's humble Petitioner after the loss of all in this world, at your Honourable pleasure hath passed the probation of 5. years in 6. Gaoles, by land and by water, with plunders, Sequestrations, necessities, want of all means and support, save (that only which at this blessed time we solemnly celebrate) the mission of God the Comforter into the hearts of faithful Christians; (the public commemoration of that too by the consequence of this Covenant (should your Petitioner take it) he must swear for ever hereafter to abandon;) and seeing that all these Sufferings have not been of force to impugn that grace of God, by which only (and not by any strength or ability of his own) he professes himself to outstand.  
May it therefore please your Honours, that this 5. year's probation of extremities, may suffice to give your Lordship's indubitable satisfaction, that your humble Petitioner cannot by any means of life, or death, be moved to enter into this Covenant; and therefore that your Honours would be pleased to think of any other course for the expiation of your Lordship's displeasure upon him, rather than to order him to perpetual imprisonment, even to death, and that by want and Famine too, only for the preservation of that Faith, in which he hath with unspeakable comfort engaged his Soul to Almighty God.  
And Your Petitioner shall pray, etc.