meaning, whatever their oath were, to hold them only for fupreme, whom they found at any time moft yielding to what they petitioned? Both thefe oaths, which were the ftraiteft bond of an English fubject in reference to the king, being thus broke and made void; it follows undeniably, that the king from that time was by them in fact abfolutely depofed, and they no longer in reality to be thought his fubjects, notwithstanding their fine clause in the covenant to preferve his perfon, crown, and dignity, fet there by fome dodging cafuift with more craft than fincerity, to mitigate the matter in case of ill fuccefs, and not taken I fuppofe by any honeft man, but as a condition fubordinate to every the least particle, that might more concern religion, liberty, or the public peace. To prove it yet more plainly, that they are the men who have depofed the king, I thus argue. We know, that king and fubject are relatives, and relatives have, no longer being than in the relation; the relation between king and fubject can be no other than regal authority and fubjection. Hence I infer past their defending, that if the fubject, who is one relative, take away the relation, of force he takes away also the other relative: but the prefbyterians, who were one relative, that is to fay fubjects, have for this feven years taken away the relation; that is to fay the king's authority, and their fubjection to it; therefore the prefbyterians for thefe feven years have removed and extinguished the other relative, that is to say the king; or to speak more in brief, have depofed him; not only by depriving him the execution ofhis authority, but by conferring it upon others. If then their oaths of fubjection broken, new fupremacy obeyed, new oaths and covenant taken, notwithstanding frivolous evasions, have in plain terms unkinged the king, much more then hath their seven years war, not depofed him only, but outlawed him, and defied him as an alien, a rebel to law, and enemy to the ftate. It must needs be clear to any man not averfe from reafon, that hoftility and fubjection are two direct and pofitive contraries, and can no more in one fubject ftand together in refpect of the fame king, than one perfon at the fame time can be in two remote places. Against whom therefore the fubject is in act of U 4 hostility, hoftility, we may be confident, that to him he is in no fubjection: and in whom hoftility takes place of fubjection, for they can by no means confift together, to him the king can be not only no king, but an enemy. So that from hence we shall not need difpute, whether they have depofed him, or what they have defaulted towards him as no king, but fhow manifeftly how much they have done toward the killing him. Have they not levied all thefe wars against him, whether offenfive or defenfive (for defence in war equally offends, and moft prudently beforehand), and given commiffion to flay, where they knew his perfon could not be exempt from danger? And if chance or flight had not faved him, how often had they killed him, directing their artillery, without blame or prohibition, to the very place where they faw him stand? Have they not fequefiered him, judged or unjudged, and converted his revenue to other ufes, detaining from him, as a grand delinquent, all means of livelihood, fo that for them long fince he might have perished, or have ftarved? Have they not hunted and purfued him round about the kingdom with fword and fire? Have they not formerly denied to treat with him, and their now recanting minifters preached against him, as a reprobate incurable, an enemy to God and his church, marked for deftruction, and therefore not to be treated with? Have they not beficged him, and to their power forbid him water and fire, fave what they fhot against him to the hazard of his life? Yet while they thus affaulted and endangered it with hoftile deeds, they fwore in words to defend it with his crown and dignity; not in order, as it seems now, to a firm and lafting peace, or to his repentance after all this blood; but fimply, without regard, without remorfe or any comparable value of all the miferies and calamities fuffered by the poor people, or to fuffer hereafter through his obftinacy or impenitence. No understanding man can be ignorant, that covenants are ever made according to the prefent ftate of perfons and of things; and have ever the more general laws of nature and of reafon 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 conceive a difobligement. If I covenant, not to hurt an enemy, in favour of him and forbearance, and hope of his amendment, and he, after that, fhall do me tenfold injury and mifchief to what he had done when I fo covenanted, and still be plotting what may tend to my deftruction, I queftion not but that his afteractions release me; nor know I covenant fo facred, that withholds me from demanding justice on him. Howbeit, had not their diftruft in a good cause, and the fast and loose of our prevaricating divines, overfwayed, it had been doubtlefs better, not to have inferted in a covenant unneceffary obligations, and words, not works of fupererogating allegiance to their enemy; no way advantageous to themfelves, had the king prevailed, as to their coft many would have felt; but full of fnare and diftraction to our friends, ufeful only, as we now find, to our adverfaries, who under fuch a latitude and fhelter of ambiguous interpretation have ever fince 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 fupreme, as on the like occafion proteftants have done before, and many confcientious men now in thefe times have more than once befought the parliament to do, that they might go on upon a fure foundation, and not with a ridling covenant in their mouths, feeming to fwear counter, almost in the fame breath, allegiance and no allegiance; which doubtlefs had drawn off all the minds of fincere men from fiding with them, had they not difcerned their actions far more depofing him than their words upholding him ; which words, made now the subject of cavillous interpretations, flood ever in the covenant, by judgment of the more difcerning fort, an evidence of their fear, not of their fidelity, What fhould I return to fpeak on, of thofe attempts for which the king himself hath often charged the prefbyterians of feeking his life, whenas in the due eftimation of things they might without a fallacy be faid to have done the deed outright? Who knows not, that the king is a name of dignity and office, not of perfon? Who therefore kills a king, muft kill him while he he is a king. Then they certainly, who by depofing him have long fince taken from him the life of a king, his office and his dignity, they in the trueft fenfe may be faid to have killed the king: not only by their depofing and waging war against him, which, besides the danger to his perfonal life, fet him in the fartheft oppofite point from any vital function of a king, but by their holding him in prifon, vanquished and yielded into their abfolute and defpotic power, which brought him to the loweft degradement and incapacity of the regal name. I fay not, by whofe matchless valour next under God, left the ftory 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 trueft fenfe killed the king, not only as is proved before, but by depreffing him their king far below the rank of a subject to the condition of a captive, without intention to reftore 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 fecretly with men fentenced fo oft for reprobates in their own mouths, by whose subtle inspiring they grew mad upon a moft tardy and improper treaty. Whereas if the whole bent of their actions had not been against the king himself, but only againft his evil counfellors, as they feigned, and published, wherefore did they not reftore 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 neareft counsellors? The truth therefore is, both that they would not, and that indeed they could not without their own certain deftruction, having reduced him to fuch a final pafs, 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 refurrection 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 fpecifical thing, with forms and habitudes de ftructive ftructive to the former, they left in his perfon, dead as to law and all the civil right either of king or subject, the life only of a prifoner, a captive, and a malefactor: whom the equal and impartial hand of juftice finding, was no more to fpare than another ordinary man; not only made obnoxious to the doom of law by a charge more than once drawn up against him, and his own confeffion to the first article at Newport, but fummoned and arraigned in the fight of God and his people, curfed and devoted to perdition worse than any Ahab, or Antiochus, with exhortation to curfe all thofe in the name of God, that made not war against him, as bitterly as Meroz was to be curfed, that went not out against a Canaanitish king, almost in all the fermons, prayers, and fulminations, that have been uttered this feven years by thofe cloven tongues of falfhood and diffenfion, who now, to the stirring up of new difcord, acquit him; and against their own difcipline, which they boaft to be the throne and fceptre of Chrift, abfolve him, unconfound him, though unconverted, unrepentant, unfenfible of all their precious faints and martyrs, whose blood they have so oft laid upon his head and now again with a new fovereign anointment can wash it all off, as if it were as vile, and no more to be reckoned for than the blood of fo many dogs in a time of peftilence: giving the most opprobrious lie to all the acted zeal, that for these many years hath filled their bellies, and fed them fat upon the foolish people. Ministers of fedition, not of the gofpel, who, while they faw it manifeftly tend to civil war and bloodshed, never ceased exafperating the people against him; and now, that they fee it likely to breed new commotion, cease not to incite others against the people, that have faved them from him, as if fedition were their only aim, whether against him or for him. But God, as we have caufe to truft, will put other thoughts into the people, and turn them from giving ear or heed to thefe mercenary noife-makers, of whofe fury and falfe prophecies we have enough experi ence; and from the murmurs of new difcord will incline them, to hearken rather with erected minds to the voice of our fupreme magiftracy, calling us to liberty, and the flourishing deeds of a reformed commonwealth; with this hope, |