church, marked for destruction, and therefore not to be | by deposing him have long since taken from him the

treated with? Have they not besieged him, and to their power forbid him water and fire, save what they shot against him to the hazard of his life? Yet while they thus assaulted and endangered it with hostile deeds, they swore in words to defend it with his crown and dignity; not in order, as it seems now, to a firm and lasting peace, or to his repentance after all this blood; but simply, without regard, without remorse or any comparable value of all the miseries and calamities suffered by the poor people, or to suffer hereafter, through his obstinacy or impenitence. No understanding man can be ignorant, that covenants are ever made according to the present state of persons and of things; and have ever the more general laws of nature and of reason included in them, though not expressed. If I make a voluntary covenant, as with a man to do him good, and he prove afterward a monster to me, I should conceive a disobligement. If I covenant, not to hurt an enemy, in favour of him and forbearance, and hope of his amendment, and he, after that, shall do me tenfold injury and mischief to what he had done when I so covenanted, and still be plotting what may tend to my destruction, I question not but that his after-actions release me; nor know I covenant so sacred, that withholds me from demanding justice on him. Howbeit, had not their distrust in a good cause, and the fast and loose of our prevaricating divines, overswayed, it had been doubtless better, not to have inserted in a covenant unnecessary obligations, and words, not works of supererogating allegiance to their enemy; no way advantageous to themselves, had the king prevailed, as to their cost many would have felt; but full of snare and distraction to our friends, useful only, as we now find, to our adversaries, who under such a latitude and shelter of ambiguous interpretation have ever since been plotting and contriving new opportunities to trouble all again. How much better had it been, and more becoming an undaunted virtue, to have declared openly and boldly whom and what power the people were to hold supreme, as on the like occasion protestants have done before, and many conscientious men now in these times have more than once besought the parliament to do, that they might go on upon a sure foundation, and not with a riddling covenant in their mouths, seeming to swear counter, almost in the same breath, allegiance and no allegiance; which doubtless had drawn off all the minds of sincere men from siding with them, had they not discerned their actions far more deposing him than their words upholding him; which words, made now the subject of cavillous interpretations, stood ever in the covenant, by judgment of the more discerning sort, an evidence of their fear, not of their fidelity. What should I return to speak on, of those attempts for which the king himself hath often charged the presbyterians of seeking his life, whenas in the due estimation of things they might without a fallacy be said to have done the deed outright? Who knows not, that the king is a name of dignity and office, not of person? Who therefore kills a king, must kill him while he is a king. Then they certainly, who

life of a king, his office and his dignity, they in the truest sense may be said to have killed the king: not only by their deposing and waging war against him, which, besides the danger to his personal life, set him in the farthest opposite point from any vital function of a king, but by their holding him in prison, vanquished and yielded into their absolute and despotic power, which brought him to the lowest degradement and incapacity of the regal name. I say not by whose matchless valour next under God, lest the story of their ingratitude thereupon carry me from the purpose in hand, which is to convince them, that they, which I repeat again, were the men who in the truest sense killed the king, not only as is proved before, but by depressing him their king far below the rank of a subject to the condition of a captive, without intention to restore him, as the chancellor of Scotland in a speech told him plainly at Newcastle, unless he granted fully all their demands, which they knew he never meant. Nor did they treat, or think of treating, with him, till their hatred to the army that delivered them, not their love or duty to the king, joined them secretly with men sentenced so oft for reprobates in their own mouths, by whose subtle inspiring they grew mad upon a most tardy and improper treaty. Whereas if the whole bent of their actions had not been against the king himself, but only against his evil counsellors, as they feigned, and published, wherefore did they not restore him all that while to the true life of a king, his office, crown, and dignity, when he was in their power, and they themselves his nearest counsellors? The truth therefore is, both that they would not, and that indeed they could not without their own certain destruction, having reduced him to such a final pass, as was the very death and burial of all in him that was regal, and from whence never king of England yet revived, but by the new reinforcement of his own party, which was a kind of resurrection to him. Thus having quite extinguished all that could be in him of a king, and from a total privation clad him over, like another specifical thing, with forms and habitudes destructive to the former, they left in his person, dead as to law and all the civil right either of king or subject, the life only of a pri soner, a captive, and a malefactor: whom the equal and impartial hand of justice finding, was no more to spare than another ordinary man; not only made ob noxious to the doom of law by a charge more than once drawn up against him, and his own confession to the first article at Newport, but summoned and arraigned in the sight of God and his people, cursed and devoted to perdition worse than any Ahab, or Antiochus, with exhortation to curse all those in the name of God, that made not war against him, as bitterly as Meroz way to be cursed, that went not out against a Canaanitish king, almost in all the sermons, prayers, and fulmina tions, that have been uttered this seven years by those cloven tongues of falsehood and dissension, who now to the stirring up of new discord, acquit him; and against their own discipline, which they boast to be the throne and sceptre of Christ, absolve him, unconfound

tofore

6

him, though unconverted, unrepentant, unsensible of much more mild and humane then is it, to give them all their precious saints and martyrs, whose blood they fair and open trial; to teach lawless kings, and all who have so oft laid upon his head: and now again with a so much adore them, that not mortal man, or his imnew sovereign anointment can wash it all off, as if it perious will, but justice, is the only true sovereign and were as vile, and no more to be reckoned for than the supreme majesty upon earth? Let men cease therefore, blood of so many dogs in a time of pestilence: giving out of faction and hypocrisy, to make outcries and horthe most opprobrious lie to all the acted zeal, that for rid things of things so just and honourable. Though these many years hath filled their bellies, and fed them perhaps till now, no protestant state or kingdom can fat upon the foolish people. Ministers of sedition, not be alleged to have openly put to death their king, of the gospel, who, while they saw it manifestly tend which lately some have written, and imputed to their to civil war and bloodshed, never ceased exasperating great glory; much mistaking the matter. It is not, the people against him; and now, that they see it neither ought to be, the glory of a protestant state, never likely to breed new commotion, cease not to incite to have put their king to death; it is the glory of a others against the people, that have saved them from protestant king never to have deserved death.' And if him, as if sedition were their only aim, whether against the parliament and military council do what they do him or for him. But God, as we have cause to trust, without precedent, if it appear their duty, it argues the will put other thoughts into the people, and turn them more wisdom, virtue, and magnanimity, that they know from giving ear or heed to these mercenary noise- themselves able to be a precedent to others. Who permakers, of whose fury and false prophecies we have haps in future ages, if they prove not too degenerate, enough experience; and from the murmurs of new will look up with honour, and aspire toward these exdiscord will incline them, to hearken rather with erected emplary and matchless deeds of their ancestors, as to the minds to the voice of our supreme magistracy, calling highest top of their civil glory and emulation. Which us to liberty, and the flourishing deeds of a reformed heretofore, in the pursuance of fame and foreign domicommonwealth; with this hope, that as God was here- nion, spent itself vaingloriously abroad; but henceforth angry with the Jews who rejected him and his may learn a better fortitude, to dare execute highest form of government to choose a king, so that he will justice on them, that shall by force of arms endeavour the bless us, and be propitious to us, who reject a king to oppressing and bereaving of religion and their liberty make him only our leader, and supreme governor, in at home: that no unbridled potentate or tyrant, but to the conformity as near as may be of his own ancient his sorrow, for the future may presume such high and government; if we have at least but so much worth in irresponsible licence over mankind, to havoc and turn as to entertain the sense of our future happiness, and upside down whole kingdoms of men, as though they the courage to receive what God vouchsafes us: wherein were no more in respect of his perverse will than a nawe have the honour to precede other nations, who are tion of pismires. As for the party called presbyterian, now labouring to be our followers. For as to this of whom I believe very many to be good and faithful question in hand, what the people by their just right | Christians, though misled by some of turbulent spirit, may do in change of government, or of governor, we I wish them, earnestly and calmly, not to fall off from see it cleared sufficiently; besides other ample author- their first principles, nor to affect rigour and superiority, even from the mouths of princes themselves. And ity over men not under them; not to compel unforcible surely they that shall boast, as we do, to be a free na- things, in religion especially, which, if not voluntary, tion, and not have in themselves the power to remove becomes a sin; not to assist the clamour and malicious or to abolish any governor supreme, or subordinate, drifts of men, whom they themselves have judged to be with the government itself upon urgent causes, may the worst of men, the obdurate enemies of God and his please their fancy with a ridiculous and painted free-church: nor to dart against the actions of their bredom, fit to cozen babies; but are indeed under tyranny thren, for want of other argument, those wrested laws and servitude; as wanting that power, which is the and scriptures thrown by prelates and malignants root and source of all liberty, to dispose and economize against their own sides, which, though they hurt not in the land which God hath given them, as masters of otherwise, yet taken up by them to the condemnation family in their own house and free inheritance. With- of their own doings, give scandal to all men, and diseat which natural and essential power of a free nation, cover in themselves either extreme passion or aposthough bearing high their heads, they can in due esteem tacy. Let them not oppose their best friends and assobe thought no better than slaves and vassals born, in ciates, who molest them not at all, infringe not the the tenure and occupation of another inheriting lord. least of their liberties, unless they call it their liberty Whose government, though not illegal, or intolerable, to bind other men's consciences, but are still seeking hangs over them as a lordly scourge, not as a free go- to live at peace with them and brotherly accord. Let vernment; and therefore to be abrogated. How much them beware an old and perfect enemy, who, though more justly then may they fling off tyranny, or tyrants; he hope by sowing discord to make them his instruwho being once deposed can be no more than privatements, yet cannot forbear a minute the open threatenmen, as subject to the reach of justice and arraignment ing of his destined revenge upon them, when they as any other transgressors? And certainly if men, not have served his purposes. Let them fear therefore, if to speak of heathen, both wise and religious, have done they be wise, rather what they have done already, than justice upon tyrants what way they could soonest, how what remains to do, and be warned in time they put no

confidence in princes whom they have provoked, lest | held not conversation with such as are: let them be

sorry, that, being called to assemble about reforming the church, they fell to progging and soliciting the parliament, though they had renounced the name of priests, for a new settling of their tithes and oblations; and double-lined themselves with spiritual places of commodity beyond the possible discharge of their duty. Let them assemble in consistory with their elders and deacons, according to ancient ecclesiastical rule, to the preserving of church discipline, each in his several charge, and not a pack of clergymen by themselves to belly-cheer in their presumptuous Sion, or to promote designs, abuse and gull the simple laity, and stir up tumult, as the prelates did, for the maintenance of their pride and avarice. These things if they observe, and wait with patience, no doubt but all things will go well without their importunities or exclamations: and the printed letters, which they send subscribed with the ostentation of great characters and little moment, would be more considerable than now they are. But if they be the ministers of mammon instead of Christ, and scandalize his church with the filthy love of gain, aspiring also to sit the closest and the heaviest of all ty rants upon the conscience, and fall notoriously into the same sins, whereof so lately and so loud they accused the prelates; as God rooted out those wicked ones immediately before, so will he root out them their imitators: and to vindicate his own glory and religion, will uncover their hypocrisy to the open world; and visit upon their own heads that " curse ye Meroz," the very motto of their pulpits, wherewith so frequently, not as Meroz, but more like atheists, they have blasphemed the vengeance of God, and traduced the zeal of his

they be added to the examples of those that miserably
have tasted the event. Stories can inform them how
Christiern the IId, king of Denmark, not much above
a hundred years past, driven out by his subjects, and
received again upon new oaths and conditions, broke
through them all to his most bloody revenge; slaying
his chief opposers, when he saw his time, both them
and their children, invited to a feast for that purpose.
How Maximilian dealt with those of Bruges, though
by mediation of the German princes reconciled to them
by solemn and public writings drawn and sealed.
How the massacre at Paris was the effect of that cre-
dulous peace, which the French protestants made with
Charles the IX, their king: and that the main visible
cause, which to this day hath saved the Netherlands
from utter ruin, was their final not believing the per-
fidious cruelty, which as a constant maxim of state
hath been used by the Spanish kings on their subjects
that have taken arms, and after trusted them; as no
latter age but can testify, heretofore in Belgia itself,
and this very year in Naples. And to conclude with
one past exception, though far more ancient, David,
whose sanctified prudence might be alone sufficient,
not to warrant us only, but to instruct us, when once
he had taken arms, never after that trusted Saul, though
with tears and much relenting he twice promised not
to hurt him. These instances, few of many, might ad-
monish them, both English and Scotch, not to let their
own ends, and the driving on of a faction, betray them
blindly into the snare of those enemies, whose revenge
looks on them as the men who first begun, fomented,
and carried on beyond the cure of any sound or safe ac-
commodation, all the evil which hath since unavoid-people.
ably befallen them and their king.

I have something also to the divines, though brief to what were needful; not to be disturbers of the civil affairs, being in hands better able and more belonging to manage them; but to study harder, and to attend the office of good pastors, knowing that he, whose flock is least among them, hath a dreadful charge, not performed by mounting twice into the chair with a formal preachment huddled up at the odd hours of a whole lazy week, but by incessant pains and watching in season and out of season, from house to house, over the souls of whom they have to feed. Which if they ever well considered, how little leisure would they find, to be the most pragmatical sidesmen of every popular tumult and sedition! And all this while are to learn what the true end and reason is of the gospel which they teach; and what a world it differs from the censorious and supercilious lording over conscience. It would be good also they lived so as might persuade the people they hated covetousness, which, worse than heresy, is idolatry; hated pluralities, and all kind of simony; left rambling from benefice to benefice, like ravenous wolves seeking where they may devour the biggest. Of which if some, well and warmly seated from the beginning, be not guilty, it were good they

All that follows, to the end of this tract, was left out not only in the edition printed 1733, in 2 vols. folio, but in that of Mr. Toland, who first

*And that they be not what they go for, true ministers of the protestant doctrine, taught by those abroad, famous and religious men, who first reformed the church, or by those no less zealous, who withstood corruption and the bishops here at home, branded with the name of puritans and nonconformists, we shall abound with testimonies to make appear: that men may yet more fully know the difference between protestant divines, and these pulpit-firebrands.

'Luther. Lib. contra rusticos apud Sleidan. 1. 5.

"Is est hodie rerum status, &c. "Such is the state of things at this day, that men neither can, nor will, nor indeed ought to endure longer the domination of you princes."

Neque vero Cæsarem, &c. "Neither is Cæsar to make war as head of christendom, protector of the church, defender of the faith; these titles being false and windy, and most kings being the greatest enemies to religion." Lib. de Bello contra Turcas, apud Sleid 1. 14. What hinders then, but that we may depose of punish them?

These also are recited by Cochleus in his Miscellanies to be the words of Luther, or some other eminent divine, then in Germany, when the protestants there

collected the author's works: how this omission arose, the reader will sen in a note at the beginning of this tract, page 231.

entered into solemn covenant at Smalcaldia. Ut ora
iis obturem, &c. "That I may stop their mouths, the
pope
and emperor are not born, but elected, and may
also be deposed as hath been often done." If Luther,
or whoever else, thought so, he could not stay there;
for the right of birth or succession can be no privilege
in nature, to let a tyrant sit irremovable over a nation
freeborn, without transforming that nation from the
nature and condition of men born free, into natural,
hereditary, and successive slaves. Therefore he saith
farther; "To displace and throw down this exactor,
this Phalaris, this Nero, is a work pleasing to God;"
namely, for being such a one: which is a moral reason.
Shall then so slight a consideration as his hap to be
not elective simply, but by birth, which was a mere ac-
cident, overthrow that which is moral, and make un-
pleasing to God that which otherwise had so well
pleased him? Certainly not: for if the matter be rightly
argued, election, much rather than chance, binds a man
to content himself with what he suffers by his own bad
election. Though indeed neither the one nor other
Linds sany man, much less any people, to a necessary
sufferance of those wrongs and evils, which they have
ability and strength enough given them to remove.

tioned in the title of kings, but that they may acknow-
ledge no superior? In the mean while God, whose
name they use to support themselves, they willingly
would tread under their feet. It is therefore a mere
cheat, when they boast to reign by the grace of God."
'Abdicant se terreni principes, &c. "Earthly
princes depose themselves, while they rise against
God, yea they are unworthy to be numbered among
men: rather it behoves us to spit upon their heads,
than to obey them." On Dan. c. vi. v. 22.
'Bucer on Matth. c. v.

'Zwinglius, tom. 1, articul. 42.

Quando vero perfidè, &c. "When kings reign perfidiously, and against the rule of Christ, they may according to the word of God be deposed."

Mihi ergo compertum non est, &c. "I know not How it comes to pass, that kings reign by succession, aless it be with consent of the whole people." Ibid. "Quum vero consensu, &c. "But when by suffrage and consent of the whole people, or the better part of them, a tyrant is deposed or put to death, God is the if leader in that action." Ibid.

"If a sovereign prince

Si princeps superior, &c.
endeavour by arms to defend transgressors, to subvert
those things which are taught in the word of God, they,
who are in authority under him, ought first to dissuade
him; if they prevail not, and that he now bears him-
self not as a prince but as an enemy, and seeks to vio-
late privileges and rights granted to inferior magistrates
or commonalties, it is the part of pious magistrates,
imploring first the assistance of God, rather to try all
ways and means, than to betray the flock of Christ to
such an enemy of God: for they also are to this end
ordained, that they may defend the people of God, and
maintain those things which are good and just. For
to have supreme power lessens not the evil committed
by that power, but makes it the less tolerable, by how
much the more generally hurtful. Then certainly the
less tolerable, the more unpardonably to be punished."

' Of Peter Martyr we have spoke before.
'Paræus in Rom. xiii.

66

'Quorum est constituere magistratus, &c. They whose part is to set up magistrates, may restrain them also from outrageous deeds, or pull them down; but all magistrates are set up either by parliament or by electors, or by other magistrates; they, therefore, who exalted them may lawfully degrade and punish them.”

Nunc cum tam tepidi sumus, &c. "Now that we are se lakewarm in upholding public justice, we endure the vices of tyrants to reign now-a-days with impunity; jintly therefore by them we are trod underfoot, and "Of the Scots divines I need not mention others than shall at length with them be punished. Yet ways are the famousest among them, Knox, and his fellow-la4 wanting by which tyrants may be removed, but bourers in the reformation of Scotland; whose large are wants public justice." Ibid. treatise on this subject defend the same opinion. To Cavete vobis 6 tyranni. "Beware, ye tyrants! cite them sufficiently, were to insert their whole books, How the gospel of Jesus Christ, spreading far and written purposely on this argument. "Knox's Apwide, will renew the lives of many to love innocence peal;" and to the reader; where he promises in a postand justice; which if ye also shall do, ye shall be hon-script, that the book which he intended to set forth, red. But if ye shall go on to rage and do violence, called, "The Second Blast of the Trumpet," should Te shall be trampled on by all men." Ibid. maintain more at large, that the same men most justly Romanum imperium imó quodque, &c. "When may depose and punish him whom unadvisedly they be Roman empire, or any other, shall begin to oppress have elected, notwithstanding birth, succession, or any ligion, and we negligently suffer it, we are as much oath of allegiance. Among our own divines, Cartalty of religion so violated, as the oppressors them-wright and Fenner, two of the learnedest, may in reaives." Idem, Epist. ad Conrad. Somium.

'Calvin on Daniel, c. iv. v. 25. Hodie monarchæ semper in suis titulis, &c. "Nowdays monarchs pretend always in their titles, to be Kgs by the grace of God: but how many of them to end only pretend it, that they may reign without Control! for to what purpose is the grace of God men

R

son satisfy us what was held by the rest. Fenner in his book of Theology maintaining, that they who have power, that is to say, a parliament, may either by fair means or by force depose a tyrant, whom he defines to be him, that wilfully breaks all or the principal conditions made between him and the commonwealth. Fen. Sac. Theolog. c. 13. And Cartwright in a prefixed epistle testifies his approbation of the whole book.

'England's Complaint against the Canons. "The people may kill wicked princes as monsters and cruel beasts."

'Christopher Goodman of Obedience. "When kings or rulers become blasphemers of God, oppressors and murderers of their subjects, they ought no more to be accounted kings or lawful magistrates, but as private men to be examined, accused, and condemned and punished by the law of God, and being convicted and punished by that law, it is not man's but God's doing." C. x. p. 139.

of England, the protestants, might be persuaded in the truth of that doctrine concerning obedience to magistrates. Whittingham in Prefat.

'These were the true protestant divines of England, our fathers in the faith we hold; this was their sense, who for so many years labouring under prelacy, through all storms and persecutions kept religion from extinguishing; and delivered it pure to us, till there arose a covetous and ambitious generation of divines, (for divines they call themselves!) who, feigning on a sudden to be new converts and proselytes from episcopacy, under which they had long temporised, opened their mouths at length, in shew against pluralities and prelacy, but with intent to swallow them down both; gorging themselves like harpies on those simonious places and preferments of their outed predecessors, as the quarry for which they hunted, not to plurality only but to multi

"By the civil laws, a fool or idiot born, and so proved, shall lose the lands and inheritance whereto he|plicity; for possessing which they had accused them

is born, because he is not able to use them aright: and especially ought in no case be suffered to have the government of a whole nation; but there is no such evil can come to the commonwealth by fools and idiots, as doth by the rage and fury of ungodly rulers; such, therefore, being without God, ought to have no authority over God's people, who by his word requireth the contrary." C. xi. p. 143, 144.

"No person is exempt by any law of God from this punishment: be he king, queen, or emperor, he must die the death; for God hath not placed them above others, to transgress his laws as they list, but to be subject to them as well as others; and if they be subject to his laws, then to the punishment also, so much the more as their example is more dangerous.” C. xiii. p. 184.

"When magistrates cease to do their duty, the people are as it were without magistrates, yea, worse, and then God giveth the sword into the people's hand, and he himself is become immediately their head." P. 185. If princes do right, and keep promise with you, then do you owe to them all humble obedience; if not, ye are discharged, and your study ought to be in this case how ye may depose and punish according to the law such rebels against God, and oppressors of their country." P. 190.

This Goodman was a minister of the English church at Geneva, as Dudley Fenner was at Middleburgh, or some other place in that country. These were the pastors of those saints and confessors, who, flying from the bloody persecution of Queen Mary, gathered up at length their scattered members into many congregations; whereof some in upper, some in lower Germany, part of them settled at Geneva; where this author having preached on this subject to the great liking of certain learned and godly men who heard him, was by them sundry times and with much instance required to write more fully on that point. Who thereupon took it in hand, and conferring with the best learned in those parts, (among whom Calvin was then living in the same city,) with their special approbation he published this treatise, aiming principally, as is testified by Whittingham in the preface, that his brethren

their brethren, and aspiring under another title to the same authority and usurpation over the consciences of all men.

'Of this faction, diverse reverend and learned divines (as they are styled in the philactery of their own titlepage) pleading the lawfulness of defensive arms against the king, in a treatise called " Scripture and Reason." seem in words to disclaim utterly the deposing of a king; but both the Scripture, and the reasons which they use, draw consequences after them, which, without their bidding, conclude it lawful. For if by Scripture, and by that especially to the Romans, which they most insist upon, kings, doing that which is contrary to Saint Paul's definition of a magistrate, may be resisted, they may altogether with as much force of consequence be deposed or punished. And if by reason the unjust authority of kings" may be forfeited in part, and his power be reassumed in part, either by the parliament or people, for the case in hazard and the present neces sity," as they affirm, p. 34, there can no scripture be alleged, no imaginable reason given, that necessity continuing, as it may always, and they in all prudence and their duty may take upon them to foresee it, why in such a case they may not finally amerce him with the loss of his kingdom, of whose amendment they have no hope. And if one wicked action persisted in against religion, laws, and liberties, may warrant us to thus much in part, why may not forty times as many tyrannies, by him committed, warrant us to proceed on restraining him, till the restraint become total? For the ways of justice are exactest proportion; if for ontrespass of a king it require so much remedy or satis faction, then for twenty more as heinous crimes, it requires of him twenty-fold; and so proportionably, t it come to what is utmost among men. If in thes proceedings against their king they may not finish, by the usual course of justice, what they have begun, the could not lawfully begin at all. For this golden r of justice and morality, as well as of arithmetic, out three terms which they admit, will as certainly unavoidably bring out the fourth, as any problem tha ever Euclid or Apollonius made good by demonstrati

And if the parliament, being undeposable but i