frail man, for the bare and fimple toleration of what they all confent to be both juft, pious, and beft pleafing to God, while that which is erroneous, unjuft, and mifchievous in the church or ftate, fhall by him alone againft them all be kept up and established, and they cenfured the while for a covetuous, ambitious, and facrilegious faction.

Another bait to allure the people is the charge he lays upon his fon to be tender of them. Which if we fhould believe in part, becaufe they are his herd, his cattle, the ftock upon his ground, as he accounts them, whom to waste and deftroy would undo himself, yet the inducement, which he brings to move him, renders the motion itself fomething fufpicious. For if princes need no palliations, as he tells his fon, wherefore is it that he himself hath fo often ufed them? Princes, of all other men, have not more change of raiment in their wardrobes, than variety of fhifts and palliations in their folemn actings and pretences to the people.

To try next if he can enfnare the prime men of those who have oppofed him, whom, more truly than his meaning was, he calls the "patrons and vindicators of the people," he gives out indemnity, and offers acts of oblivion. But they who with a good confcience and upright heart did their civil duties in the fight of God, and in their feveral places, to refift tyranny and the violence of fuperftition banded both against them, he may be fure will never feek to be forgiven that, which may be juftly attributed to their immortal praife; nor will affent ever to the guilty blotting out of thofe actions before men, by which their faith affures them they chiefly ftand approved, and are had in remembrance before the throne of God.

He exhorts his fon "not to study revenge. But how far he, or at leaft they about him intend to follow that exhortation, was feen lately at the Hague, and now latelieft at Madrid; where to execute in the bafeft manner, though but the fmalleft part of that favage and barbarous revenge, which they do nothing elfe but ftudy and contemplate, they cared not to let the world know them for profeffed traitors and affaffinators of all law both divine and human, even of that last and most extenfive law kept inviolable to public perfons among all fair enemies in

L

How

the midft of uttermoft defiance and hoftility. implacable therefore they would be, after any terms of clofure or admittance for the future, or any like opportunity given them hereafter, it will be witdom and our fafety 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 inftability with a bad repentance of their welldoing, and their fidelity to the better caufe; to which at first fo cheerfully and confcientiously they joined themselves.

He returns again to extol the church of England, and again requires his fon by the joint authority of " a father and a king, not to let his heart receive the leaft check or difaffection against it." And not without caufe, for by that means "having fole influence upon the clergy, and they upon the people, after long fearch and many difputes," he could not poffibly find a more compendious and politic way to uphold and fettle tyranny, than by fubduing firft the confciences of vulgar men, with the infenfible poison of their flavith doctrine: for then the body and befotted mind without much reluctancy was likelieft to admit the yoke.

He commends alfo " parliaments held with freedom and with honour." But I would ask how that can be, while he only must be the fole free person in that number; and would have the power with his unaccountable denial, to difhonour them by rejecting all their counfels, 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 conclufion therefore muft needs be quite contrary to what he concludes; that nothing can be more unhappy, more difhonourable, more unfafe for all, than when a wife, grave, and honourable parliament fhall have laboured, debated, argued, confulted, and, as he himfelf fpeaks, "contributed" for the public good all their counfels in common, to be then fruftrated, difappointed, denied and repulfed by the fingle whiff of a negative, from the mouth of one wilful man; nay, to be blafted, to be ftruck as mute and motionleis as a parliament of tapestry in the hangings; or elfe after all their pains and travel

to be diffolved, and caft away like fo many noughts in arithmetic, unless it be to turn the O of their infignificance into a lamentation with the people, who had fo vainly fent them. For this is not to "enact all things by public confent," as he would have us be perfuaded, this is to enact nothing but by the private content and leave of one not negative tyrant; this is mifchief without remedy, a ftifling and obftructing evil that hath no vent, no outlet, no paffage through: grant him this, and the parliament hath no more freedom than if it fate in his noofe, which when he pleafes to draw together with one twitch of his negative, fhall throttle a whole nation, to the with of Caligula, in one neck. This with the power of the militia in his own hands over our bodies and eftates, and the prelates to enthral our confciences either by fraud or force, is the fum of that happiness and liberty we were to look for, whether in his own reftitution, or in these precepts given to his fon. Which unavoidably would have fet us in the fame ftate of mifery, wherein we were before; and have either compelled us to fubmit like bondflaves, or put us back to a fecond wandering over that horrid wildernets of diftraction and civil flaughter, which, not without the ftrong and miraculous hand of God affifting us, we have meafured out, and furvived. And who knows, if we make fo flight of this incomparable deliverance, which God hath beftowed upon us, but that we fhall, like thofe foolish Ifraelites, who depofed God and Samuel to fet 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.

There remains now but little more of his difcourse, whereof to take a fhort view will not be amifs. His words make femblance as if he were magnanimously exercifing himself, and fo teaching his fon, "to want as well as to wear a crown; and would feem to account it "not worth taking up or enjoying, upon fordid, dishonourable, and irreligious terms;" and yet to his very laft did nothing more induftrioufly, than ftrive to take up and enjoy again his fequeftered crown, upon the most fordid, difloyal, dishonourable, and irreligious terms, not

of making peace only, but of joining and incorporating with the murderous Irish, formerly by himfelf declared againft, for "wicked and deteftable rebels, odious to God and all good men." And who but thofe rebels now are the chief ftrength and confidence of his fon? While the prefbyter Scot that woos and folicits him, is neglected and put off, as if no terms were to him fordid, irreligious and difhonourable, but the fcottish and prefbyterian, never to be complied with, till the fear of inftant perifhing ftarve him out at length to fome unfound and hypocritical agreement.

He bids his fon "keep to the true principles of piety, virtue, and honour, and he shall never want a kingdom. And I fay, people of England! keep ye to thofe principles, and ye fhall never want a king. Nay, after fuch a fair deliverance as this, with fo much fortitude and valour fhown against a tyrant, that people that fhould feek a king, claiming what this man claims, would fhow themfelves to be by nature flaves, and arrant beasts; not fit for that liberty, which they cried out and bellowed for, but fitter to be led back again into their old fervitude, like a fort of clamouring and fighting brutes, broke loofe from their copy-holds, that know not how to use or poffefs the liberty which they fought for; but with the fair words and promifes of an old exafperated foe, are ready to be stroked and tamed again, into the wonted and wellpleafing state of their true norman villanage, to them best agreeable.

The laft fentence, whereon he feems to venture the whole weight of all his former reafons and argumentations, "That religion to their God, and loyalty to their king, cannot be parted, without the fin and infelicity of a people," is contrary to the plain teaching of Chrift, that "No man can ferve two mafters; but, if he hold to the one, he muft reject and forfake the other." If God, then, and earthly kings be for the most part not several only, but oppofite mafters, it will as oft happen, that they who will ferve their king muft forfake their God; and they who will ferve God must forfake their king; which then will neither be their fin, nor their infelicity; but their wisdom, their piety, and their true happinefs; as

to

to be deluded by these unfound and fubtle oftentations here, would be their mifery; and in all likelihood much greater than what they hitherto have undergone: if now again intoxicated and moped with thefe royal, and therefore fo delicious because royal, rudiments of bondage, the cup of deception, fpiced and tempered to their bane, they should deliver up themselves to thefe glozing words and illufions of him, whofe rage and utmost violence they have sustained, and overcome fo nobly.

XXVIII. Entitled Meditations upon Death.

IT might be well thought by him, who reads no further than the title of this Jaft effay, that it required no answer. For all other human things are difputed, and will be variously thought of to the world's end. But this. business of death is a plain cafe, and admits no controverfy in that centre all opinions meet. Nevertheless, fince out of those few mortifying hours, that should have been intireft to themselves, and moft at peace from all paffion and difquiet, he can afford fpare time to inveigh bitterly against that juftice which was done upon him; it will be needful to fay fomething in defence of those proceedings, though briefly, in regard fo much on this fubject hath been written lately.

It happened once, as we find in Efdras and Jofephus, authors not lefs believed than any under facred, to be a great and folemn debate in the court of Darius, what thing was to be counted ftrongest of all other. He that could refolve this, in reward of his excellent wisdom, fhould be clad in purple, drink in gold, fleep on a bed of gold, and fit next Darius. None but they doubtless who were reputed wife, had the queftion propounded to them: who after fome refpite given them by the king to confider, in full affembly of all his lords and graveft counfellors, returned feverally what they thought. The first held, that wine was ftrongeft, another that the king was ftrongeft. 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