perfon of a man, fights againft his own majefty and kingthip, and then indeed fets the firft hand to his own depofing.

"The treaty at Uxbridge," he faith, " gave the fairest hopes of a happy compofure;" faireft indeed, if his inftructions to bribe our commiffioners with the promise of fecurity, rewards, and places, were fair: what other hopes it gave, no man can tell. There being but three main heads whereon to be treated; Ireland, epifcopacy, and the militia; the firft was anticipated and foreftalled by a peace at any rate to be haftened with the Irish rebels, ere the treaty could begin, that he might pretend his word and honour paffed againft" the fpecious and popular arguments" (he calls them no better) which the parliament would urge upon him for the continuance of that juft war. Epifcopacy he bids the queen be confident he will never quit: which informs us by what patronage it ftood and the fword he refolves to clutch as faft, as if God with his own hand had put it into his. This was the "moderation which he brought;" this was "as far as reafon, honour, confcience," and the queen, who was his regent in all thefe," would give him leave." Laftly, "for compofure," inftead of happy, how miferable it was more likely to have been, wife men could then judge; when the English, during treaty, were called rebels; the Irish, good and catholic fubjects; and the parliament beforehand, though for fashion's fake called a parliament, yet by a jefuitical fleight not acknowledged, though called fo; but privately in the council books enrolled no parliament: that if accommodation had fucceeded, upon what terms foever, fuch a devilith fraud was prepared, that the king in his own efteem had been abfolved from all performance, as having treated with rebels and no parliament; and they, on the other fide, inftead of an expected happiness, had been brought under the hatchet. Then no doubt "war had ended," that maflacre and tyranny might begin. Thefe jealoufies, however raised, let all men fee whether they be diminished or allayed, by the letters of his own cabinet opened. And yet the breach of this treaty is laid all upon the parliament and their commiffioners, with odious

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names of "pertinacy, hatred of peace, faction, and covetoufnefs," nay, his own brat his own brat "fuperftition" is laid to their charge; notwithstanding his here profeffed refolution to continue both the order, maintenance, and authority, of prelates, as a truth of God.

And who were moft to blame in the unfuccefsfulness of that treaty," his appeal is to God's decifion; believing to be very excufable at that tribunal. But if ever man gloried in an unflexible stiffnefs, he came not behind any; and that grand maxim, always to put fomething into his treaties, which might give colour to refufe all that was in other things granted, and to make them fignify nothing, was his own principal maxim and particular inftructions to his commiffioners. Yet all, by his own verdict, muft be conftrued reafon in the king, and depraved temper in the parliament.

That the "highest tide of fuccefs," with these principles and defigns, "fet him not above a treaty," no great wonder. And yet if that be spoken to his praife, the parliament therein furpafled him; who, when he was their vanquished and their captive, his forces utterly broken and difbanded, yet offered him three feveral times no worfe proposals or demands, than when he stood fair to be their conqueror. But that imprudent furmife that his lowest ebb could not fet him "below a fight," was a prefumption that ruined him.

He prefaged the future "unfuccefsfulness of treaties, by the unwillingness of fome men to treat;" and could not fee what was prefent, that their unwillingness had good caufe to proceed from the continual experience of his own obftinacy and breach of word.

His prayer therefore of forgivenefs to the guilty of "that treaty's breaking," he had good reason to say heartily over, as including no man in that guilt fooner than himself.

As for that protestation following in his prayer, "how oft have I entreated for peace, but when I fpeak thereof they make them ready to war;" unless he thought himfelf ftill in that perfidious mift between Colebrook and Hounflow, and thought that mift could hide him from the eye of Heaven as well as of man, after fuch a bloody recompenfe

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recompenfe given to our firft offers of peace, how could this in the fight of Heaven without horrours of confcience be uttered?

XIX. Upon the various events of the War.

IT is no new or unwonted thing, for bad men to claim as much part in God as his beft fervants; to ufurp and imitate their words, and appropriate to themselves thofe properties, which belong only to the good and righteous. This not only in Scripture is familiarly to be found, but here alfo in this chapter of Apocrypha. He tells us much, why "it pleafed God" to fend him victory or lofs (although what in fo doing was the intent of God, he might be much miftaken as to his own particular) but we are yet to learn what real good ufe he made thereof in his practice.

Thofe numbers, which he grew to" from finall beginnings," were not fuch as out of love came to protect him, for none approved his actions as a king, except courtiers and prelates, but were fuch as fled to be protected by him from the fear of that reformation which the pravity of their lives would not bear. Such a fnowball he might eafily gather by rolling through thofe cold and dark provinces of ignorance and lewdnefs, where on a fudden he became fo numerous. He imputes that to God's "protection," which, to them who perfift in a bad caufe, is either his long-fuffering or his hardening; and that to wholefome "chaftifement," which were the gradual beginnings of a fevere punishment. For if neither God nor nature put civil power in the hands of any whomfoever, but to a lawful end, and commands our obedience to the authority of law only, not to the tyrannical force of any perfon; and if the laws of our land have placed the fword in no man's fingle hand, fo much as to unheath against a foreign enemy, much lefs upon the native people; but have placed it in that elective body of the parliament, to whom the making, repealing, judging, and interpreting of law itself was alfo committed, as was fitteft, fo long as we intended to be a free nation, and

and not the flaves of one man's will; then was the king himfelf difobedient and rebellious to that law by which he reigned and by authority of parliament to raise arms against him in defence of law and liberty, we do not only think, but believe and know was justifiable both "by the word of God, the laws of the land, and all lawful oaths;" and they who fided with him, fought against all thefe.

The fame allegations, which he ufes for himself and his party, may as well fit any tyrant in the world: for let the parliament be called a faction when the king pleases, and that no law must be made or changed, either civil or religious, because no law will content all fides, then must be made or changed no law at all, but what a tyrant, be he proteftant or papift, thinks fit. Which tyrannous

affertion forced upon us by the fword, he who fights againft, and dies fighting, if his other fins outweigh not, dies a martyr undoubtedly both of the faith and of the commonwealth: and I hold it not as the opinion, but as the full belief and perfuafion of far holier and wifer men than parafitic preachers: who, without their dinnerdoctrine, know that neither king, law, civil oaths, or religion, was ever established without the parliament : and their power is the fame to abrogate as to establish : neither is any thing to be thought established, which that houfe declares to be abolifhed. Where the parliament fits, there infeparably fits the king, there the laws, there our oaths, and whatsoever can be civil in religion. They who fought for the parliament, in the trueft fense, fought for all thefe; who fought for the king divided from his parliament, fought for the fhadow of a king against all these; and for things that were not, as if they were established. It were a thing monftroufly abfurd and contradictory, to give the parliament a legislative power, and then to upbraid them for tranfgreffing old establishments.

But the king and his party having loft in this quarrel their Heaven upon earth, begin to make great reckoning of eternal life, and at an eafy rate in forma pauperis canonize one another into Heaven; he them in his book, they him in the portraiture before his book: but as was

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faid

faid before, ftage-work will not do it, much lefs the juftnefs of their caufe," wherein moft frequently they died in a brutish fiercenefs, with oaths and other damning words in their mouths; as if fuch had been all "the only oaths" they fought for; which undoubtedly fent them full fail on another voyage than to Heaven. In the meanwhile they to whom God gave victory, never brought to the king at Oxford the ftate of their confciences, that he should prefume without confeffion, more than a pope prefumes, to tell abroad what "conflicts and accufations," men whom he never spoke with, have "in their own thoughts." We never read of any English king but one that was a confeffor, and his name was Edward; yet fure it paffed his fkill to know thoughts, as this king takes upon him. But they who will not stick to flander men's inward confciences, which they can neither fee nor know, much lefs will care to flander outward actions, which they pretend to fee, though with fenfes never fo vitiated.

To judge of his condition conquered," and the manner of "dying" on that fide, by the fober men that chofe it, would be his fall advantage: it being moft notorious, that they who were hotteft in his caufe, the moft of them were men oftener drunk, than by their good will fober, and very many of them fo fought and fo died *.

And that the confcience of any man fhould grow fufpicious, or be now convicted by any pretenfions in the parliament, which are now proved falfe and unintended, there can be no juft caufe. For neither did they ever pretend to establish his throne without our liberty and religion, nor religion without the word of God, nor to judge of laws by their being established, but to establish them by their being good and neceffary.

He tells the world" he often prayed, that all on his

Hear what defcription an historian of that party gives of those on the royal fide : "Never had any good undertaking fo many unworthy attendants; fuch horrid blafphemers and wicked wretches as ours hath had: I quake to think, much more to speak, what mine ears have heard from fome of their lips: but to difcover them is not my prefent bufinefs."

Symmon's Defence of King Charles I. p. 165.