hierarchy which God had not planted, but ambition and corruption had brought in, and fostered to the church's great damage and oppression, was no point of controversy to be argued without end, but a thing of clear moral necessity to be forthwith done. Neither was the "covenant superfluous, though former engagements, both religious and legal, bound us before;" but was the practice of all churches heretofore intending reformation. All Israel, though bound enough before by the law of Moses" to all necessary duties;" yet with Asa their king entered into a new covenant at the beginning of a reformation: and the Jews, after captivity, without consent demanded of that king who was their master, took solemn oath to walk in the commandments of God.

All protestant churches have done the like, notwithstanding former engagements to their several duties. And although his aim were to sow variance between the protestation and the covenant, to reconcile them is not difficult. The protestation was but one step, extending only to the doctrine of the church of England, as it was distinct from church discipline ; the covenant went further, as it pleased God to dispense his light and our encouragement by degrees, and comprehended church-government;-former with latter steps, in the progress of well-doing need not reconcilement. Nevertheless he breaks through to his conclusion, "that all honest and wise men ever thought themselves sufficiently bound by former ties of religion;" leaving Asa, Ezra, and the whole church of God, in sundry ages, to shift for honesty and wisdom from some other than his testimony. And although after-contracts absolve not till the former be made void, yet he first having done that, our duty returns back, which to him was neither moral nor eternal, but conditional.

Willing to persuade himself that many "good men" took the covenant, either unwarily or out of fear, he seems to have bestowed some thoughts how these "good men," following his advice, may keep the covenant and not keep it. The first evasion is presuming "that the chief end of covenanting in such men's intentions was to preserve religion in purity, and the kingdom's peace. But the covenant will more truly inform them that purity of religion and the kingdom's peace was not then in state to be preserved, but to be restored; and therefore binds them not

to a preservation of what was, but to a reformation of what was evil, what was traditional, and dangerous, whether novelty or antiquity, in church or state. To do this clashes with "no former oath" lawfully sworn either to God or the king, and rightly understood.

In general, he brands all "such confederations by league and covenant, as the common road used in all factious perturbations of state and church." This kind of language reflects, with the same ignominy, upon all the protestant reformations that have been since Luther; and so indeed doth his whole book, replenished throughout with hardly other words or arguments than papists, and especially popish kings, have used heretofore against their protestant subjects, whom he would persuade to be " every man his own pope, and to absolve himself of those ties," by the suggestion of false or equivocal interpretations too oft repeated to be now answered.

The parliament, he saith, "made their covenant, like manna, agreeable to every man's palate." This is another of his glosses upon the covenant; he is content to let it be manna, but his drift is that men should loathe it, or at least expound it by their own "relish" and "latitude of sense; wherein, lest any one of the simpler sort should fail to be his craftsmaster, he furnishes him with two or three laxative, he terms them "general clauses, which may serve somewhat to relieve them" against the covenant taken: intimating, as if" what were lawful and according to the word of God," were no otherwise so, than as every man fancied to himself. From such learned explications and resolutions as these upon the covenant, what marvel if no royalist or malignant refuse to take it, as having learnt from these princely instructions his many "salvoes, cautious, and reservations," how to be a covenanter and anticovenanter, how at once to be a Scot, and an Irish rebel. He returns again to disallow of "that reformation which the covenant" vows, 66 as being the partial advice of a few divines." But matters of this moment, as they were not to be decided there by those divines, so neither are they to be determined here by essays and curtal aphorisms, but by solid proofs of scripture.

The rest of his discourse he spends, highly accusing the parliament, "that the main reformation by" them "intended

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was to rob the church," and much applauding himself both for "his forwardness" to all due reformation, and his averseness from all such kind of sacrilege. All which, with his glorious title of the "Church's Defender," we leave him to make good by "Pharaoh's divinity," if he please, for to Joseph's piety it will be a task unsuitable. As for "the parity and poverty of ministers," which he takes to be so sad of "consequence," the scripture reckons them for two special legacies left by our Saviour to his disciples; under which two primitive nurses, for such they were indeed, the church of God more truly flourished than ever after, since the time that imparity and church-revenue rushing in, corrupted and belepered all the clergy with a worse infection than Gehazi's; some one of whose tribe, rather than a king, I should take to be the compiler of that unsalted and Simonical prayer annexed: although the prayer itself strongly prays against them. For never such holy things as he means were given more to swine, nor the church's bread more to dogs, than when it fed ambitious, irreligious, and dumb prelates.

CHAPTER XV.

Upon the many Jealousies, &c.

To wipe off jealousies and scandals, the best way had been by clear actions, or till actions could be cleared, by evident reasons: but mere words we are too well acquainted with. Had "his honour and reputation been dearer to him" than the lust of reigning, how could the parliament of either nation have laid so often at his door the breach of words, promises, acts, oaths, and execrations, as they do avowedly in many of their petitions and addresses to him? Thither I remit the reader. And who can believe that whole parliaments, elected by the people from all parts of the land, should meet in one mind and resolution not to advise him, but to conspire against him, in a worse powder-plot than Catesbie's "to blow up," as he terms it, "the people's affection towards him, and batter down their loyalty by the engines of foul aspersions." Water-works rather than engines to batter with, yet those aspersions were raised from the foulness of

his own actions; whereof to purge himself, he uses no other argument than a general and so often iterated commendation of himself; and thinks that court holy-water hath the virtue of expiation, at least with the silly people; to whom he familiarly imputes sin where none is, to seem liberal of his forgiveness where none is asked or needed.

What ways he hath taken towards the prosperity of his people, which he would seem "so earnestly to desire," if we do but once call to mind, it will be enough to teach us, looking on the smooth insinuations here, that tyrants are not more flattered by their slaves, than forced to flatter others whom they fear. For the people's "tranquillity he would willingly be the Jonah;" but lest he should be taken at his word, pretends to foresee within ken two imaginary "winds" never heard of in the compass, which threaten, if he be cast overboard, "to increase the storm; " but that controversy

divine lot hath ended.

"He had rather not rule, than that his people should be ruined;" and yet, above these twenty years, hath been ruining the people about the niceties of his ruling. He is accurate "to put a difference between the plague of malice and the ague of mistakes; the itch of novelty, and the leprosy of disloyalty." But had he as well known how to distinguish between the venerable gray hairs of ancient religion and the old scurf of superstition, between the wholesome heat of well governing and the feverous rage of tyrannizing, his judgment in state physic had been of more authority.

Much he prophesies, "that the credit of those men, who have cast black scandals on him, shall ere long be quite blasted by the same furnace of popular obloquy, wherein they sought to cast his name and honour." I believe not that a Romish gilded portraiture gives better oracles than a Babylonish golden image could do, to tell us truly who heated that furnace of obloquy, or who deserves to be thrown in, Nebuchadnezzar or the three kingdoms. It "gave him great cause to suspect his own innocence," that he was opposed by "so many who professed singular piety." But this qualm was soon over, and he concluded rather to suspect their religion than his own innocence, affirming that "many with him were both learned and religious above the ordinary size." But if his great seal, without the

parliament, were not sufficient to create lords, his parole must needs be far more unable to create learned and religious men; and who shall authorize his unlearned judgment to point them out?

He guesses that " many well-minded men were by popular preachers urged to oppose him." But the opposition undoubtedly proceeded and continues from heads far wiser, and spirits of a nobler strain; those priest-led Herodians, with their blind guides, are in the ditch already; travelling, as they thought, to Sion, but moored in the Isle of Wight. He thanks God" for his constancy to the protestant religion both abroad and at home." Abroad, his letter to the pope; at home, his innovations in the church, will speak his constancy in religion what it was, without further credit to this vain boast. His "using the assistance of some papists," as the cause might be, could not hurt his religion; but, in the settling of protestantism, their aid was both unseemly and suspicious, and inferred that the greatest part of protestants were against him and his obtruded settlement.

But this is strange indeed, that he should appear now teaching the parliament, what no man, till this was read, thought ever he had learned," that difference of persuasion in religious matters may fall out where there is the sameness of allegiance and subjection." If he thought so from the beginning, wherefore was there such compulsion used to the puritans of England, and the whole realm of Scotland, about conforming to a Liturgy? Wherefore no bishop, no king? Wherefore episcopacy more agreeable to monarchy, if different persuasions in religion, may agree in one duty and allegiance? Thus do court maxims, like court minions, rise or fall as the king pleases.

Not to tax him for want of elegance as a courtier, in writing Oglio for Olla, the Spanish word, it might be well affirmed, that there was a greater medley and disproportioning of religions, to mix papists with protestants in a religous cause, than to entertain all those diversified sects, who yet were all protestants, one religion, though many opinions. Neither was it any "shame to protestants," that he, a declared papist, if his own letter to the pope, not yet renounced, belie him not, found so few protestants of his religion, as enforced him to call in both the counsel and the aid of papists to help establish