"is

Your next proof is as false and frivolous, "The king," say you, God's sword-bearer;" true, but not the king only: for Gideon, by whom you seek to prove this, neither was nor would be a king; and as you yourself confess, page 40, "There be divers forms of government." "He bears not the sword in vain," Rom. xiii. 4: This also is as true of any lawful rulers, especially supreme; so that "Rulers," ver. 3, and therefore this present government, without whose authority you excite the people to a king, bear the sword as well as kings, and as little in vain. "They fight against God, who resist his ordinance, and go about to wrest the sword out of the hands of his anointed." This is likewise granted: but who is his anointed? Not every king, but they only who were anointed or made kings by his special command; as Saul, David, and his race, which ended in the Messiah, (from whom no kings at this day can derive their title,) Jehu, Cyrus, and if any other were by name appointed by him to some particular service: as for the rest of kings, all other supreme magistrates are as much the Lord's anointed as they; and our obedience commanded equally to them all; "for there is no power but of God," Rom. xiii. 1: and we are exhorted in the gospel to obey kings, as other magistrates, not that they are called any where the Lord's anointed, but as they are the "Ordinance of man," 1 Pet. ii. 13. You therefore and other such false doctors, preaching kings to your auditory, as the Lord's only anointed, to withdraw people from the present government, by your own text are self-condemned, and not to be followed, not to be "meddled with," but to be noted, as most of all others the "seditious and desirous of change."

Your third proof is no less against yourself. Psal. cv. 15, "Touch not mine anointed." For this is not spoken in behalf of kings, but spoken to reprove kings, that they should not touch his anointed saints and servants, the seed of Abraham, as the verse next before might have taught you, he reproved kings for their sakes, saying, "Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm;" according to that, 2 Cor. i. 21, "He who hath anointed us, is God." But how well you confirm one wrested scripture with another! 1 Sam. viii. 7, "They have not rejected thee, but me:" grossly misapplying these words, which were not spoken to any who had "resisted or rejected" a king, but to them who much against the will of God had sought a king, and rejected a commonwealth, wherein they might have lived happily under the reign of God only, their king. Let the words interpret themselves; ver. 6, 7, "But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us: and Samuel prayed unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee; for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them." Hence you conclude, "so indissoluble is the conjunction of God and the king." O notorious abuse of Scripture! whenas you should have concluded, so unwilling was God to give them a king, so wide was the disjunction of God from a king. Is this the doctrine you boast of, to be "so clear in itself, and like a mathematical principle, that needs no farther demonstration?" Bad logic, bad mathematics, (for principles can have no demonstration at all,) but worse divinity. O people of an implicit faith, no better than Romish, if these be thy prime teachers, who to their credulous audience dare thus juggle with Scripture, to allege those places for the proof of their doctrine, which are the plain refutation: and this is all the Scripture which he brings to confirm his point. The rest of his preachment is mere groundless chat, save here and there a few grains of corn scattered to entice the silly fowl into his net, interlaced here and there with some human reading, though slight, and not without VOL. II.

25

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geographical and historical mistakes: as page 29, Suevia the German dukedom, for Suecia, the Northern kingdom: Philip of Macedon, who is generally understood of the great Alexander's father only, made contemporary, page 31, with T. Quintus the Roman commander, instead of T. Quintius, and the latter Philip: and page 44, Tully cited "in his third oration against Verres," to say of him, "that he was a wicked consul," who never was a consul: nor "Trojan sedition ever portrayed" by that verse of Virgil, which you cite page 47, as that of Troy: schoolboys could have told you, that there is nothing of Troy in that whole portraiture, as you call it, of Sedition. These gross mistakes may justly bring in doubt your other loose citations, and that you take them up somewhere at the second or third hand rashly, and without due considering.

Nor are you happier in the relating or the moralizing your fable, "The frogs" (BEING ONCE A FREE NATION, saith the fable) "petitioned Jupiter for a king: he tumbled among them a log: they found it insensible; they petitioned then for a king that should be active; he sent them a crane" (a STORK, saith the fable) "which straight fell to pecking them up." This you apply to the reproof of them who desire change: whereas indeed the true moral shows rather the folly of those who being free seek a king; which for the most part either as a log lies heavy on his subjects, without doing aught worthy of his dignity and the charge to maintain him, or as a stork, is ever pecking them up, and devouring them.

40.

But "by our fundamental laws, the king is the highest power," page If we must hear mooting and law lectures from the pulpit, what shame is it for a doctor of divinity not first to consider, that no law can be fundamental, but that which is grounded on the light of nature or right reason, commonly called moral law: which no form of government was ever counted, but arbitrary, and at all times in the choice of every free people, or their representers. This choice of government is so essential to their freedom, that longer than they have it, they are not free. In this land not only the late king and his posterity, but kingship itself, hath been abrogated by a law; which involves with as good reason the posterity of a king for feited to the people, as that law heretofore of treason against the king, attainted the children with the father. This law against both king and kingship they who most question, do not less question all enacted without the king and his antiparliament at Oxford, though called mongrel by himself. If no law must be held good, but what passes in full parliament, then surely in exactness of legality no member must be missing: for look how many are missing, so many counties or cities that sent them want their represent

ers.

But if, being once chosen, they serve for the whole nation, then any number, which is sufficient, is full, and most of all in times of discord, necessity, and danger. The king himself was bound by the old mode of parliaments, not to be absent, but in case of sickness, or some extraordinary occasion, and then to leave his substitute; much less might any member be allowed to absent himself. If the king then and many of the members with him, without leaving any in his stead, forsook the parliament upon a mere panic fear, as was at that time judged by most men, and to levy war against them that sat, should they who were left sitting, break up, or not dare enact aught of nearest and presentest concernment to public safety, for the punctilio wanting of a full number, which no law-book in such extraordinary cases hath determined? Certainly if it were lawful for them to fly from their charge upon pretence of private safety, it was much more lawful for these to set and act in their trust what was necessary for the public. By a law therefore of parliament, and of a parliament that

*

conquered both Ireland, Scotland, and all their enemies in England, defended their friends, were generally acknowledged for a parliament both at home and abroad, kingship was abolished: this law now of late hath been negatively repealed; yet kingship not positively restored, and I suppose never was established by any certain law in this land, nor possibly could be: for how could our forefathers bind us to any certain form of government, more than we can bind our posterity? If a people be put to war with their king for his misgovernment, and overcome him, the power is then undoubtedly in their own hands how they will be governed. The war was granted just by the king himself at the beginning of his last treaty, and still maintained to be so by this last parliament, as appears by the qualification prescribed to the members of this next ensuing, that none shall be elected, who have borne arms against the parliament since 1641. If the war were just, the conquest was also just by the law of nations. And he who was the chief enemy, in all right ceased to be the king, especially after captivity, by the deciding verdict of war; and royalty with all her laws and pretensions yet remains in the victor's power, together with the choice of our future government. Free commonwealths have been ever counted fittest and properest for civil, virtuous, and industrious, nations, abounding with prudent men worthy to govern; monarchy fittest to curb degenerate, corrupt, idle, proud, luxurious people. If we desire to be of the former, nothing better for us, nothing nobler than a free commonwealth: if we will needs condemn ourselves to be of the latter, despairing of our own virtue, industry, and the number of our able men, we may then, conscious of our own unworthiness to be governed better, sadly betake us to our befitting thraldom : yet choosing out of our number one who hath best aided the people, and best merited against tyranny, the space of a reign or two we may chance to live happily enough, or tolerably. But that a victorious people should give up themselves again to the vanquished, was never yet heard of, seems rather void of all reason and good policy, and will in all probability subject the subduers to the subdued, will expose to revenge, to beggary, to ruin, and perpetual bondage, the victors under the vanquished: than which what can be more unworthy?

From misinterpreting our law, you return to do again the same with Scripture, and would prove the supremacy of English kings from 1 Pet. ii. 13, as if that were the apostle's work: wherein if he saith that "the king is supreme," he speaks so of him but as an "ordinance of man," and in respect of those "governors that are sent by him," not in respect of parliaments, which by the law of this land are his bridle; in vain his bridle, if not also his rider: and therefore hath not only co-ordination with him, which you falsely call seditious, but hath superiority above him, and that neither "against religion," nor "right reason:" no nor against common law; for our kings reigned only by law. But the parliament is above all positive law, whether civil or common, makes or unmakes them both; and still the latter parliament above the former, above all the former lawgivers, then certainly above all precedent laws, entailed the crown on whom it pleased; and as a great lawyer saith, "is so transcendent and absolute, that it cannot be confined either for causes or persons, within any bounds." But your cry is, no parliament without a king. If this be so, we have never had lawful kings, who have all been created kings either by such parliaments, or by conquest: if by such parliaments, they are in your allowance none; if by conquest, that conquest we have now conquered. So that as well by your own assertion as by ours, there can at present be no king. And how could that person be absolutely supreme, who reigned, not under

law only, but under oath of his good demeanor, given to the people at his coronation, ere the people gave him his crown? and his principal oath was to maintain those laws, which the people should choose. If then the law itself, much more he who was but the keeper and minister of law, was in their choice, and both he subordinate to the performance of his duty sworn, and our sworn allegiance in order only to his performance.

You fall next on the consistorian schismatics; for so you call Presbyterians, page 40, and judge them to have "enervated the king's supremacy by their opinions and practice, differing in many things only in terms from popery;" though some of those principles, which you there cite concerning kingship, are to be read in Aristotle's Politics, long ere popery was thought on. The presbyterians therefore it concerns to be well forewarned of you betimes; and to them I leave you.

As for your examples of seditious men, page 54, &c. Cora, Absalom, Zimri, Sheba, to these you might with much more reason have added your own name, who "blow the trumpet of sedition" from your pulpit against the present government: in reward whereof they have sent you by this time, as I hear, to your "own place," for preaching open sedition, while you would seem to preach against it.

As for your Appendix annexed of the "Samaritan revived," finding it so foul a libel against all the well-affected of this land, since the very time of ship-money, against the whole parliament, both lords and commons, except those that fled to Oxford, against the whole reformed church, not only in England and Scotland, but all over Europe, (in comparison whereof you and your prelatical party are more truly schismatics and sectarians, nay, more properly fanatics in your fanes and gilded temples, than those whom you revile by those names,) and meeting with no more Scripture or solid reason in your "Samaritan wine and oil," than hath already been found sophisticated and adulterate, I leave your malignant narrative, as needing no other confutation, than the just censure already passed upon you by the council of state.

THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN,

THAT PART ESPECIALLY NOW CALLED ENGLAND,

FROM THE FIRST TRADITIONAL BEGINNING, CONTINUED TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST:-COLLECTED OUT OF THE ANCIENTEST AND BEST AUTHORS THEREOF.

PUBLISHED FROM A COPY CORRECTED BY THE AUTHOR Himself, [1670.]

THE FIRST BOOK.

THE beginning of nations, those excepted of whom sacred books have spoken, is to this day unknown. Nor only the beginning, but the deeds also of many succeeding ages, yea, periods of ages, either wholly unknown, or obscured and blemished with fables. Whether it were that the use of letters came in long after, or were it the violence of barbarous inundations, or they themselves, at certain revolutions of time, fatally decaying, and degenerating into sloth and ignorance; whereby the monuments of more ancient civility have been some destroyed, some lost. Perhaps disesteem and contempt of the public affairs then present, as not worth recording, might partly be in cause. Certainly ofttimes we see that wise men, and of best ability, have foreborne to write the acts of their own days, while they beheld with a just loathing and disdain, not only how unworthy, how perverse, how corrupt, but often how ignoble, how petty, how below all history, the persons and their actions were; who, either by fortune or some rude election, had attained, as a sore judgment and ignominy upon the land, to have chief sway in managing the commonwealth. But that any law, or superstition of our philosophers, the Druids, forbad the Britons to write their memorable deeds, I know not why any out of Cæsar* should allege: he indeed saith, that their doctrine they thought not lawful to commit to letters; but in most matters else, both private and public, among which well may history be reckoned, they used the Greek tongue; and that the British Druids, who taught those in Gaul, would be ignorant of any language known and used by their disciples, or so frequently writing other things, and so inquisitive into highest, would for want of recording be ever children in the knowledge of times and ages, is not likely. Whatever might be the reason, this we find, that of British affairs, from the first peopling of the island to the coming of Julius Cæsar, nothing certain, either by tradition, history, or ancient fame, hath hitherto been left us. That which we have of oldest seeming, hath by the greater part of judicious antiquaries been long rejected for a modern fable.

Nevertheless there being others, besides the first supposed author, men not unread, nor unlearned in antiquity, who admit that for approved story, which the former explode for fiction; and seeing that ofttimes relations heretofore accounted fabulous have been after found to contain in them many footsteps and reliques of something true, as what we read in poets of the flood, and giants little believed, till undoubted witnesses taught us, that

* Cæs. l. 6.