a king and his politic considerations, shall adhere to a | gether. Which he also acknowledges in these words : catholic English.

"that if the crown upon his head be so heavy as to oppress the whole body, the weakness of inferiour members cannot return any thing of strength, honour, or safety to the head; but that a necessary debilitation must follow." So that this liberty of this subject concerns himself and the subsistence of his own regal power in the first place, and before the consideration of any right belonging to the subject. We expect therefore something more, that must distinguish free government from slavish. But instead of that, this king, though ever talking and protesting as smooth as now, suffered it in his own hearing to be preached and pleaded without control or check, by them whom he most favoured and upheld, that the subject had no property of his own goods, but that all was the king's right.

Next, for the "benefit of those laws, to which we ourselves have consented," we never had it under him; for not to speak of laws ill executed, when the parliament, and in them the people, have consented to divers laws, and, according to our ancient rights, demanded them, he took upon him to have a negative will, as the transcendent and ultimate law above all our laws; and to rule us forcibly by laws, to which we ourselves did not consent, but complained of. Thus these two heads, wherein the utmost of his allowance here will give our liberties leave to consist, the one of them shall be so far only made good to us, as may support his own interest and crown from ruin or debilitation; and so far Turkish vassals enjoy as much liberty under Mahomet and the Grand Signior: the other we neither yet have enjoyed under him, nor were ever like to do under the tyranny of a negative voice, which he claims above the unanimous consent and power of a whole nation, virtually in the parliament.

But suppose the church of England were as it ought to be, how is it to us the safer by being so named and established, whenas that very name and establishment, by this contriving, or approbation, served for nothing else but to delude us and amuse us, while the church of England insensibly was almost changed and translated into the church of Rome. Which as every man knows in general to be true, so the particular treaties and transactions tending to that conclusion are at large discovered in a book entitled the " English Pope." But when the people, discerning these abuses, began to call for reformation, in order to which the parliament demanded of the king to unestablish that prelatical government, which without Scripture had usurped over us; straight as Pharaoh accused of idleness the Israelites that sought leave to go and sacrifice to God, he lays faction to their charge. And that we may not hope to have ever any thing reformed in the church either by him or his son, he forewarns him, "that the devil of rebellion doth most commonly turn himself into an angel of reformation:" and says enough to make him hate it, as the worst of evils, and the bane of his crown: nay he counsels him to "let nothing seem little or despicable to him, so as not speedily and effectually to suppress errours and schisms." Whereby we may perceive plainly, that our consciences were destined to the same servitude and persecution, if not worse than before, whether under him, or if it should so happen, under his son ; who count all protestant churches erroneous and schismatical, which are not episcopal. His next precept is concerning our civil liberties; which by his sole voice and predominant will must be circumscribed, and not permitted to extend a hand's breadth further than his interpretation of the laws already settled. And although all human In which negative voice to have been cast by the laws are but the offspring of that frailty, that fallibility doom of war, and put to death by those who vanquished and imperfection, which was in their authors, whereby him in their own defence, he reckons to himself more many laws in the change of ignorant and obscure ages, than a negative martyrdom. But martyrs bear witness may be found both scandalous, and full of grievance to to the truth, not to themselves. If I bear witness of their posterity that made them, and no law is further myself, saith Christ, my witness is not true. He who good than mutable upon just occasion; yet if the re-writes himself martyr by his own inscription, is like ar moving of an old law, or the making of a new, would ill painter, who, by writing on a shapeless picture save the kingdom, we shall not have it, unless his arbi- which he hath drawn, is fain to tell passengers what trary voice will so far slacken the stiff curb of his pre-shape it is: which else no man could imagine: rogative, as to grant it us; who are as freeborn to make our own laws, as our fathers were, who made these we have. Where are then the English liberties, which we boast to have been left us by our progenitors? To that he answers, that "our liberties consist in the enjoyment of the fruits of our industry, and the benefit of those laws, to which we ourselves have consented." First, for the enjoyment of those fruits, which our industry and labours have made our own upon our own, what privilege is that above what the Turks, Jews, and Moors enjoy under the Turkish monarchy? For without that kind of justice, which is also in Algiers, among thieves and pirates between themselves, no kind of government, no society, just or unjust, could stand; no combination or conspiracy could stick toge

more than how a martyrdom can belong to him, wh
therefore dies for his religion, because it is established.
Certainly if Agrippa had turned Christian, as he was
once turning, and had put to death scribes and Phari-
sees for observing the law of Moses, and refusing
Christianity, they had died a truer martyrdom. Fi
those laws were established by God and Moses, these
by no warrantable authors of religion, whose laws i
all other best reformed churches are rejected. And 1
to die for an establishment of religion be martyrdo
then Romish priests executed for that, which had
many hundred years been established in this land. 1
no worse martyrs than he. Lastly, if to die for t
testimony of his own conscience, be enough to
him a martyr, what heretic dying for direct blasphet

as some have done constantly, may not boast a martyr-violence of superstition banded both against them, he dom? As for the constitution or repeal of civil laws, may be sure will never seek to be forgiven that, which that power lying only in the parliament, which he by may be justly attributed to their immortal praise; nor the very law of his coronation was to grant them, not will assent ever to the guilty blotting out of those acto debar them, not to preserve a lesser law with the tions before men, by which their faith assures them contempt and violation of a greater; it will conclude they chiefly stand approved, and are had in rememhim not so much as in a civil and metaphorical sense brance before the throne of God. to have died a martyr of our laws, but a plain transgressor of them. And should the parliament, endued with legislative power, make our laws, and be after to dispute them piece-meal with the reason, conscience, humour, passion, fancy, folly, obstinacy, or other ends of one man, whose sole word and will shall baffle and unmake what all the wisdom of a parliament hath been deliberately framing; what a ridiculous and contemptible thing a parliament would soon be, and what a base unworthy nation we, who boast our freedom, and send them with the manifest peril of their lives to preserve it, they who are not marked by destiny for may apprehend! In this servile condition to have kept us still under hatches, he both resolves here to the last, and so instructs his son.

slaves

As to those offered condescensions of a "charitable connivance, or toleration," if we consider what went before, and what follows, they moulder into nothing. For, what with not suffering ever so little to seem a despicable schism, without effectual suppression, as he warned him before, and what with no opposition of law, government, or established religion to be permitted, which is his following proviso, and wholly within his own construction; what a miserable and suspected teration, under spies and haunting promooters, we bould enjoy, is apparent. Besides that it is so far beneath the honour of a parliament and free nation, to bez and supplicate the godship of one frail man, for the bare and simple toleration of what they all consent t be both just, pious, and best pleasing to God, while that which is erroneous, unjust, and mischievous in the church or state, shall by him alone against them al be kept up and established, and they censured the while for a covetous, ambitious, and sacrilegious fac

Another bait to allure the people is the charge he Lays upon his son to be tender of them. Which if we bold believe in part, because they are his herd, his cate, the stock upon his ground, as he accounts them, whom to waste and destroy would undo himself, yet the inducement, which he brings to move him, renders the motion itself something suspicious. For if princes bed no palliations, as he tells his son, wherefore is it at he himself hath so often used them? Princes, of all other men, have not more change of raiment in their wardrobes, than variety of shifts and palliations in their solemn actings and pretences to the people. To try next if he can ensnare the prime men of those who have opposed him, whom, more truly than his ning was, he calls the "patrons and vindicators of the people," be gives out indemnity, and offers acts of sion. But they who with a good conscience, and prght heart did their civil duties in the sight of God, and in their several places, to resist tyranny and the

He exhorts his son "not to study revenge." But how far he, or at least they about him, intend to follow that exhortation, was seen lately at the Hague, and now lateliest at Madrid; where to execute in the basest manner, though but the smallest part of that savage and barbarous revenge, which they do nothing else but study and contemplate, they cared not to let the world know them for professed traitors and assassinators of all law both divine and human, even of that last and most extensive law kept inviolable to public persons among all fair enemies in the midst of uttermost defiance and hostility. How implacable therefore they would be, after any terms of closure or admittance for the future, or any like opportunity given them hereafter, it will be wisdom and our safety to believe rather, and prevent, than to make trial. And it will concern the multitude, though courted here, to take heed how they seek to hide or colour their own fickleness and instability with a bad repentance of their well-doing, and their fidelity to the better cause; to which at first so cheerfully and conscientiously they joined themselves.

He returns again to extol the church of England, and again requires his son by the joint authority of "a father and a king, not to let his heart receive the least check or disaffection against it.” And not without cause, for by that means, "having sole influence upon the clergy, and they upon the people, after long search and many disputes," he could not possibly find a more compendious and politic way to uphold and settle tyranny, than by subduing first the consciences of vulgar men, with the insensible poison of their slavish doctrine: for then the body and besotted mind without much reluctancy was likeliest to admit the yoke.

He commends also "parliaments held with freedom and with honour." But I would ask how that can be, while he only must be the sole free person in that number; and would have the power with his unaccountable denial, to dishonour them by rejecting all their counsels, to confine their lawgiving power, which is the foundation of our freedom, and to change at his pleasure the very name of a parliament into the name of a faction.

The conclusion therefore must needs be quite contrary to what he concludes; that nothing can be more unhappy, more dishonourable, more unsafe for all, than when a wise, grave, and honourable parliament shall have laboured, debated, argued, consulted, and, as he

himself speaks, "contributed" for the public good all their counsels in common, to be then frustrated, disappointed, denied and repulsed by the single whiff of a negative, from the mouth of one wilful man; nay, to be blasted, to be struck as mute and motionless as a parliament of tapestry in the hangings; or else after all their pains and travel to be dissolved, and cast away

out and bellowed for, but fitter to be led back again into their old servitude, like a sort of clamouring and fighting brutes, broke loose from their copy-holds, that know not how to use or possess the liberty which they fought for; but with the fair words and promises of an old exasperated foe, are ready to be stroked and tamed again, into the wonted and well-pleasing state of their true Norman villanage, to them best agreeable.

The last sentence, whereon he seems to venture the whole weight of all his former reasons and argumentations, "That religion to their God, and loyalty to their king, cannot be parted, without the sin and infelicity of a people," is contrary to the plain teaching of Christ, that "No man can serve two masters; but, if he hold to the one, he must reject and forsake the other." If God, then, and earthly kings be for the most part not several only, but opposite masters, it will as oft happen, that they who will serve their king must forsake their God; and they who will serve God must

like so many noughts in arithmetic, unless it be to turn the O of their insignificance into a lamentation with the people, who had so vainly sent them. For this is not to "enact all things by public consent," as he would have us be persuaded, this is to enact nothing but by the private consent and leave of one not negative tyrant; this is mischief without remedy, a stifling and obstructing evil that hath no vent, no outlet, no passage through: grant him this, and the parliament hath no more freedom than if it sate in his noose, which when he pleases to draw together with one twitch of his negative, shall throttle a whole nation, to the wish of Caligula, in one neck. This with the power of the militia in his own hands over our bodies and estates, and the prelates to enthral our consciences either by fraud or force, is the sum of that happiness and liberty we were to look for, whether in his own restitution, or in these precepts given to his son. Which unavoidably would have set us in the same state of misery, wherein we were before; and have either compelled us to sub-forsake their king; which then will neither be their sin, mit like bondslaves, or put us back to a second wandering over that horrid wilderness of distraction and civil slaughter, which, not without the strong and miraculous hand of God assisting us, we have measured out, and survived. And who knows, if we make so slight of this incomparable deliverance, which God hath bestowed upon us, but that we shall, like those foolish Israelites, who deposed God and Samuel to set up a king, “cry out" one day, "because of our king," which we have been mad upon; and then God, as he foretold them, will no more deliver us.

nor their infelicity; but their wisdom, their piety, and their true happiness; as to be deluded by these unsound and subtle ostentations here, would be their misery; and in all likelihood much greater than what they hitherto have undergone: if now again intoxicated and moped with these royal, and therefore so delicious because royal, rudiments of bondage, the cup of deception, spiced and tempered to their bane, they should deliver up themselves to these glozing words and illusions of him, whose rage and utmost violence they have sustained, and overcome so nobly.

XXVIII. Entitled Meditations upon Death.

Ir might be well thought by him, who reads no further than the title of this last essay, that it required no answer. For all other human things are disputed, and will be variously thought of to the world's end. Bat this business of death is a plain case, and admits no controversy: in that centre all opinions meet. Never

There remains now but little more of his discourse, whereof to take a short view will not be amiss. His words make semblance as if he were magnanimously exercising himself, and so teaching his son, “to want as well as to wear a crown ;" and would seem to account it "not worth taking up or enjoying, upon sordid, dishonourable, and irreligious terms;" and yet to his very last did nothing more industriously, than strive to take up and enjoy again his sequestered crown, upon the most sordid, disloyal, dishonourable, and irreligious terms, not of making peace only, but of joining and incorporating with the murderous Irish, formerly by him-theless, since out of those few mortifying hours, that self declared against, for "wicked and detestable rebels, odious to God and all good men." And who but those rebels now are the chief strength and confidence of his son? While the presbyter Scot that woos and solicits him, is neglected and put off, as if no terms were to him sordid, irreligious, and dishonourable, but the Scottish and presbyterian, never to be complied with, till the fear of instant perishing starve him out at length to some unsound and hypocritical agreement.

He bids his son "keep to the true principles of piety, virtue, and honour, and he shall never want a kingdom." And I say, people of England! keep ye to those principles, and ye shall never want a king. Nay, after such a fair deliverance as this, with so much fortitude and valour shewn against a tyrant, that people that should seek a king, claiming what this man claims, would shew themselves to be by nature slaves, and arrant beasts; not fit for that liberty, which they cried

should have been intirest to themselves, and most at peace from all passion and disquiet, he can afford spar time to inveigh bitterly against that justice which was done upon him; it will be needful to say something defence of those proceedings, though briefly, in regard so much on this subject hath been written lately.

It happened once, as we find in Esdras and Jose phus, authors not less believed than any under sacred, to be a great and solemn debate in the court of Daris what thing was to be counted strongest of all oth He that could resolve this, in reward of his excelle wisdom, should be clad in purple, drink in gold, she on a bed of gold, and sit next Darius. None but the doubtless who were reputed wise, had the questi propounded to them: who after some respite giver them by the king to consider, in full assembly el... his lords and gravest counsellors, returned severa what they thought. The first held, that wine was

:

strongest, another that the king was strongest. But Zorobabel prince of the captive Jews, and heir to the crown of Judah, being one of them, proved women to be stronger than the king, for that he himself had seen a concubine take his crown from off his head to set it upon her own and others besides him have likewise seen the like feat done, and not in jest. Yet he proved on, and it was so yielded by the king himself, and all bis sages, that neither wine, nor women, nor the king, but truth of all other things was the strongest. For me, though neither asked, nor in a nation that gives such rewards to wisdom, I shall pronounce my sentence somewhat different from Zorobabel; and shall defend that either truth and justice are all one, (for truth is but justice in our knowledge, and justice is but truth in our practice; and he indeed so explains himself, in saying that with truth is no accepting of persons, which is the property of justice,) or else if there be any odds, that justice, though not stronger than truth, yet by her office is to put forth and exhibit more strength in the affairs of mankind. For truth is properly no more than contemplation; and her utmost efbciency is but teaching: but justice in her very essence is all strength and activity; and hath a sword put into her hand, to use against all violence and oppression on the earth. She it is most truly, who accepts no person, and exempts none from the severity of her stroke. She never suffers injury to prevail, but when falsehood first prevails over truth; and that also is a kind of justice done on them who are so deluded. Though wicked kings and tyrants counterfeit her word, as some did that buckler, fabled to fall from heaven into the capitol, yet she communicates her power to none but such as like herself are just, or at ast will do justice. For it were extreme partiality and injustice, the flat denial and overthrow of herself, to put her own authentic sword into the hand of an unstand wicked man, or so far to accept and exalt one mortal person above his equals, that he alone shall Lave the punishing of all other men transgressing, and not receive like punishment from men, when he Limself shall be found the highest transgressor.

We

may conclude therefore, that justice, above all ther things, is and ought to be the strongest: she is The strength, the kingdom, the power, and majesty of ages. Truth herself would subscribe to this, though Darius and all the monarchs of the world should deny. And if by sentence thus written, it were my happiness to set free the minds of Englishmen from longing to turn poorly under that captivity of kings, from which the strength and supreme sword of justice hath deavered them, I shall have done a work not much infeFear to that of Zorobabel: who by well praising and xtolling the force of truth, in that contemplative trength conquered Darius; and freed his country and people of God, from the captivity of Babylon. Which I shall yet not despair to do, if they in this had, whose minds are yet captive, be but as ingenus to acknowledge the strength and supremacy of stire, as that heathen king was to confess the strength ftruth: or let them but, as he did, grant that, and

they will soon perceive, that truth resigns all her outward strength to justice: justice therefore must needs be strongest, both in her own, and in the strength of truth. But if a king may do among men whatsoever is his will and pleasure, and notwithstanding be unaccountable to men, then contrary to his magnified wisdom of Zorobabel, neither truth nor justice, but the king, is strongest of all other things, which that Persian monarch himself, in the midst of all his pride and glory, durst not assume.

Let us see therefore what this king hath to affirm, why the sentence of justice, and the weight of that sword, which she delivers into the hands of men, should be more partial to him offending, than to all others of human race. First, he pleads, that "no law of God or man gives to subjects any power of judicature without or against him." Which assertion shall be proved in every part to be most untrue. The first express law of God given to mankind was that to Noah, as a law, in general, to all the sons of men. And by that most ancient and universal law, "Whosoever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed;" we find here no exception. If a king therefore do this, to a king, and that by men also, the same shall be done. This in the law of Moses, which came next, several times is repeated, and in one place remarkably, Numb. XXXV. "Ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, but he shall surely be put to death: the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it." This is so spoken as that which concerned all Israel, not one man alone, to see performed; and if no satisfaction were to be taken, then certainly no exception. Nay the king, when they should set up any, was to observe the whole law, and not only to see it done, but to "do it; that his heart might not be lifted up above his brethren;" to dream of vain and useless prerogatives or exemptions, whereby the law itself must needs be founded in unrighteousness.

And were that true, which is most false, that all kings are the Lord's anointed, it were yet absurd to think that the anointment of God should be, as it were, a charm against law, and give them privilege, who punish others, to sin themselves unpunishably. The high priest was the Lord's anointed as well as any king, and with the same consecrated oil: yet Solomon had put to death Abiathar, had it not been for other respects than that anointment. If God himself say to kings, “touch not mine anointed," meaning his chosen people, as is evident in that psalm, yet no man will argue thence, that he protects them from civil laws if they offend; then certainly, though David as a private man, and in his own cause, feared to lift his hand against the Lord's anointed, much less can this forbid the law, or disarm justice from having legal power against any king. No other supreme magistrate, in what kind of government soever, lays claim to any such enormous privilege; wherefore then should any king, who is but one kind of magistrate, and set over the people for no other end than they?

Next in order of time to the laws of Moses are those