Sir, my humble requeft is, that you would proceed, and give us that other member of the diftribution mentioned in your book; viz. that Hire doth greatly impede truth and liberty: it is like if you do, you shall find oppofers: but remember that faying, Beatius eft pati quam frui: or, in the apostle's words, James v, 11, We count them happy that endure. I have fometimes thought (concurring with your affertion of that ftoried voice that fhould fpeak from Heaven) when ecclefiaftics were endowed with worldly preferments, hodie venenum infunditur in ecclefiam: for to ufe the fpeech of Genefis iv, ult. according to the sense which it hath in the Hebrew, then began men to corrupt the worship of God. I fhall tell you a fuppofal of mine, which is this: Mr. Dury has bestowed about thirty years time in travel, conference, and writings, to reconcile Calvinifts and Lutherans, and that with little or no fuccefs. But the flortest way were, take away ecclefiaftical dignities, honours, and preferments, on both fides, and all would foon be hushed; the ecclefiaftics would be quiet, and then the people would come forth into truth and liberty. But I will not engage in this quarrel; yet I fhall lay this engagement upon myself to remain Your faithful friend and fervant, Causham, May 26, 1659. JOHN WALL. From this Letter the reader may fee in what way wife and good men of that age employed themfelves: in ftudying to remove every grievance, to break every yoke. And it is matter of astonishment, that this age, which boafts of greatest light and knowledge, fhould make no effort toward a reformation in things acknowledged to be wrong; but both in religion and in civil government be barbarian! RICHARD BARON. Below Blackheath, 'EIKONOKAAETH E. IN ANSWER TO A BOOK ENTITLED, 'EIKO N ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΗ, THE PORTRAITURE OF HIS SACRED MAJESTY IN HIS SOLITUDES Prov. xxviii, 15. As a roaring lion and a raging bear, 16. The prince that wanteth understanding, is also a great oppreffor; but he that hateth covetoufnefs, fhall prolong his days. 17. A man that doth violence to the blood of any perfon, fhall fly to the pit, let no man stay him. Salluft. Conjurat. Catalin. Regium imperium, quod initio, confervandæ libertatis, atque augendæ reipublicæ caufà fuerat, in fuperbiam, dominationemque fe convertit. Regibus boni, quam mali, fufpectiores funt, femperque his aliena virtus formidolofa eft. Impunè quælibet facere, id eft regem effe. Idem Bell. Jugurth. PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY. THE PREFACE. TO defcant on the misfortunes of a perfon fallen from fo high a dignity, who hath alfo paid his final debt both to nature and his faults, is neither of it felf a thing commendable, nor the intention of this difcourfe. Neither was it fond ambition, nor the vanity to get a name, prefent or with pofterity, by writing against a king. I never was fo thirsty after fame, nor fo destitute of other hopes and means, better and more certain to attain it: for kings have gained glorious titles from their favourers by writing against private men, as Henry VIIIth did against Luther; but but no man ever gained much honour by writing against a king, as not ufually meeting with that force of argument in fuch courtly antagonists, which to convince might add to his reputation. Kings most commonly, though ftrong in legions, are but weak at arguments; as they who ever have accustomed from the cradle to use their will only as their right hand, their reafon always as their left. Whence unexpectedly conftrained to that kind of combat, they prove but weak and puny adverfaries: nevertheless, for their fakes, who through cuftom,/fimplicity, or want of better teaching, have not more ferioutly confidered kings, than in the gaudy name of majesty, and admire them and their doings as if they breathed not the fame breath with other mortal men, I fhall make no fcruple to take up (for it seems to be the challenge both of him and all his party) to take up this gauntlet, though a king's, in the behalf of liberty and the commonwealth. And further, fince it appears manifeftly the cunning drift of a factious and defeated party, to make the fame advantage of his book, which they did before of his regal name and authority, and intend it not fo much the defence of his former actions, as the promoting of their own future defigns; (making thereby the book their own rather than the king's, as the benefit now must be their own more than his) now the third time to corrupt and diforder the minds of weaker men, by new fuggef tions and narrations, either falfely or fallacioufly reprefenting the state of things to the difhonour of this prefent government, and the retarding of a general peace, fo needful to this afflicted nation, and fo nigh obtained; I fuppofe it no injury to the dead, but a good deed rather to the living, if by better information given them, or, which is enough, by only remembering them the truth of what they themfelves know to be here mifaffirmed, they may be kept from entering the third time unadvifedly into war and bloodshed: for as to any moment of folidity in the book itself, (fave only that a king is faid to be the author, a name, than which there needs no more among the blockish vulgar, to make it wife, and excellent, and admired, nay to fet it next the Bible, though otherwife contaming little elfe but the common grounds of of tyranny and popery, dreffed up, the better to deceive, in a new proteftant guife, trimly garnished over,) or as to any need of anfwering, in refpect of ftaid and wellprincipled men, I take it on me as a work affigned rather, than by me chofen or affected: which was the cause both of beginning it fo late, and finifhing it fo leifurely in the midft of other employments and diverfions. And though well it might have feemed in vain to write at all, confidering the envy and almost infinite prejudice likely to be stirred up among the common fort, against whatever can be written or gainfaid to the king's book, so advan tageous to a book it is, only to be a king's; and though it be an irksome labour, to write with industry and judicious pains, that which, neither weighed nor well read, fhall be judged without induftry or the pains of welljudging, by faction and the eafy literature of custom and opinion; it thall be ventured yet, and the truth not fmothered, but fent abroad, in the native confidence of her fingle felf, to earn, how the can, her entertainment in the world, and to find out her own readers: few perhaps, but those few, of fuch value and fubftantial worth, as truth and wisdom, not respecting numbers and big names, have been ever wont in all ages to be contented with. And if the late king had thought fufficient those answers and defences made for him in his lifetime, they who on the other fide accufed his evil government, judging that on their behalf enough alfo hath been replied, the heat of this controverfy was in all likelihood drawing to an end; and the further mention of his deeds, not fo much unfortunate as faulty, had in tenderness to his late fufferings been willingly forborn; and perhaps for the prefent age might have flept with him unrepeated, while his adverfaries, calmed and affuaged with the fuccefs of their cause, had been the lefs unfavourable to his memory. But fince he himself, making new appeal to truth and the world, hath left behind him this book, as the beft advocate and interpreter of his own actions, and that his friends by publishing, difperfing, commending, and almost adoring it, feem to place therein the chief ftrength and nerves of their caufe; it would argue doubtless in the other party great deficience and diftruft diftruft of themselves, not to meet the force of his reason in any field what foever, the force and equipage of whose arms they have fo often met victorioufly: and he who at the bar ftood excepting against the form and manner of his judicature, and complained that he was not heard; neither he nor his friends fhall have that caufe now to find fault, being met and debated with in this open and monumental court of his erecting; and not only heard uttering his whole mind at large, but answered: which to do effectually, if it be neceffary, that to his book nothing the more respect be had for being his, they of his own party can have no juft reafon to exclaim. For it were too unreasonable that he, because dead, should have the liberty in his book to speak all evil of the parliament; and they, because living, should be expected to have less freedom, or any for them, to speak home the plain truth of a full and pertinent reply. As he, to acquit himself, hath not spared his adverfaries to load them with all forts of blame and accufation, fo to him, as in his book alive, there will be ufed no more courtship than he uses; but what is properly his own guilt, not imputed any more to his evil counfellors (a ceremony ufed longer by the parliament than he himself defired) thall be laid here without circumlocutions at his own door. That they who from the first beginning, or but now of late, by what unhappiness I know not, are fo much affatuated, not with his person only, but with his palpable faults, and doat upon his deformities, may have none to blame but their own folly, if they live and die in fuch a ftrooken blindness, as next to that of Sodom hath not happened to any fort of men more grofs, or more misleading. Yet neither let his enemies expect to find recorded here all that hath been whispered in the court, or alleged openly, of the king's bad actions; it being the proper fcope of this work in hand, not to rip up and relate the mifdoings of his whole life, but to anfwer only and refute the miffayings of his book. First then, that some men (whether this were by him intended, or by his friends) have by policy accomplished after death that revenge upon their enemies, which in life they were not able, hath been oft related. And 22. among |