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certainly were they so minded, they need not labour it, but do it, having power in their hands; and we know of no act as yet passed to that purpose. But suppose it done, wherein is the covenant broke? The covenant enjoins us to endeavour the extirpation first of popery and prelacy, then of heresy, schism, and profaneness, and whatsoever shall be found contrary to sound doctrine and the power of godliness. And this we cease not to do by all effectual and proper means: but these divines might know, that to extirpate all these things can be no work of the civil sword, but of the spiritual, which is the word of God.

No man well in his wits, endeavouring to root up weeds out of his ground, instead of using the spade will take a mallet or a beetle. Nor doth the covenant any way engage us to extirpate, or to prosecute the men, but the heresies and errors in them, which we tell these divines, and the rest that understand not, belongs chiefly to their own function, in the diligent preaching and insisting upon sound doctrine, in the confuting, not the railing down, errors, encountering both in public and private conference, and by the power of truth, not of persecution, subduing those authors of heretical opinions, and lastly in the spiritual execution of church-discipline within their own congregations. In all these ways we shall assist them, favour them, and as far as appertains to us join with them, and moreover not tolerate the free exercise of any religion, which shall be found absolutely contrary to sound doctrine or the power of godliness; for the conscience, we must have patience till it be within our verge. And thus doing, we shall believe to have kept exactly all that is required from us by the covenant. Whilst they by their seditious practices against us, than which nothing for the present can add more assistance or advantage to those bloody rebels and papists in the south, will be found most pernicious covenant-breakers themselves, and as deep in that guilt, as those of their own nation the last year; the warning of whose ill success, like men hardened for the same judgment, they miserably pervert to an encouragement in the same offence, if not a far worse: for now they have joined interest with the Irish rebels, who have ever fought against the covenant, whereas their countrymen the year before made the covenant their plea. But as it is a peculiar mercy of God to his people, while they remain his, to preserve them from

VOL. II.

wicked confederations; so it is a mark and punishment of hypocrites, to be driven at length to mix their cause, and the interest of their covenant, with God's enemies.

And whereas they affirm, that the tolerating of all religions, in the manner that we tolerate them, is an innovation; we must acquaint them, that we are able to make it good, if need be, both by scripture and the primitive fathers, and the frequent assertion of whole churches and protestant states in their remonstrances and expostulations against the popish tyranny over souls. And what force of argument do these doctors bring to the contrary? But we have long observed to what pass the bold ignorance and sloth of our clergy tends no less now than in the bishops' days, to make their bare sayings and censures authentic with the people, though destitute of any proof or argument. But, thanks be to God, they are discerned.

Their next impeachment is, "that we oppose the presbyterial government, the hedge and bulwark of religion;" which all the land knows to be a most impudent falsehood, having established it with all freedom, wherever it hath been desired. Nevertheless, as we perceive it aspiring to be a compulsive power upon all without exception in parochial, classical, and provincial hierarchies, or to require the fleshly arm of magistracy in the execution of a spiritual discipline, to punish and amerce by any corporal infliction those whose consciences cannot be edified by what authority they are compelled, we hold it no more to be "the hedge and bulwark of religion," than the popish or prelatical courts, or the Spanish Inquisition.

But we are told, "we embrace paganism and judaism in the arms of toleration," a most audacious calumny! And yet, while we detest Judaism, we know ourselves commanded by St. Paul, Rom. xi., to respect the Jews, and by all means to endeavour their conversion.

Neither was it ever sworn in the covenant, to maintain an universal presbytery in England, as they falsely allege, but in Scotland against the common enemy, if our aid were called for; being left free to reform our own country according to the word of God, and the example of best reformed churches; from which rule we are not yet departed.

But here, utterly forgetting to be ministers of the gospel, they presume to open their mouths, not "in the spirit of

meekness," as like dissemblers they pretend, but with as much devilish malice, impudence, and falsehood, as any Irish rebel could have uttered, and from a barbarous nook of Ireland brand us with the extirpation of laws and liberties; things which they seem as little to understand, as aught that belong to good letters or humanity.

"That we seized on the person of the king;" who was surrendered into our hands an enemy and captive by our own subordinate and paid army of Scots in England. Next, "our imprisoning many members of the house." As if it were impossible they should deserve it, conspiring and bandying against the public good; which to the other part appearing, and with the power they had, not resisting had been a manifest desertion of their trust and duty. No question but it is as good and necessary to expel rotten members out of the house, as to banish delinquents out of the land: and the reason holds as well in forty as in five. And if they be yet more, the more dangerous is their number. They had no privilege to sit there, and vote home the author, the impenitent author, of all our miseries, to freedom, honour, and royalty, for a few fraudulent, if not destructive, concessions. Which that they went about to do, how much more clear it was to all men, so much the more expedient and important to the commonwealth was their speedy seizure and exclusion; and no breach of any just privilege, but a breach of their knotted faction. And here they cry out, 66 an action without parallel in any age." So heartily we wish all men were unprejudiced in all our actions, as these illiterate denouncers never paralleled so much of any age as would contribute to the tithe of a century. "That we abolish parliamentary power, and establish a representative instead thereof." Now we have the height of them; these profound instructors, in the midst of their representation, would know the English of a representative, and were perhaps of that classis, who heretofore were as much staggered at triennial.

Their grand accusation is our justice done on the king, which that they may prove to be "without rule or example, they venture all the credit they have in divine and human history; and by the same desperate boldness detect themselves to be egregious liars and impostors, seeking to abuse the multitude with a shew of that gravity and learning,

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which never was their portion, Had their knowledge been equal to the knowledge of any stupid monk or abbot, they would have known at least, though ignorant of all things else, the life and acts of him, who first instituted their order: but these blockish presbyters of Clandeboy know not that John Knox, who was the first founder of presbytery in Scotland, taught professedly the doctrine of deposing and of killing kings. And thus while they deny that any such rule can be found, the rule is found in their own country, given them by their own first presbyterian institutor; and they themselves, like irregular friars walking contrary to the rule of their own foundation, deserve for so gross an ignorance and transgression to be disciplined upon their own stools. Or had their reading in history been any, which by this we may be confident is none at all, or their malice not heightened to a blind rage, they never would so rashly have thrown the dice to a palpable discovery of their ignorance and want of shame. But wherefore spend we two such precious things as time and reason upon priests, the most prodigal misspenders of time, and the scarcest owners of reasons? It is sufficient we have published our Defences, given reasons, given examples of our justice done; books also have been written to the same purpose for men to look on that will; that no nation under heaven but in one age or other hath done the like. The difference only is, which rather seems to us matter of glory, that they for the most part have without form of law done the deed by a kind of martial justice, we by the deliberate and well-weighed sentence of a legal judicature.

But they tell us, " it was against the interest and protestation of the kingdom of Scotland;" and did exceeding well to join those two together: hereby informing us what credit or regard need be given in England to a Scots protestation, ushered in by a Scots interest: certainly no more than we see is given in Scotland to an English declaration, declaring the interest of England. If then our interest move not them, why should theirs move us? If they say, we are not all England; we reply, they are not all Scotland: nay, were the last year so inconsiderable a part of Scotland, as were beholden to this which they now term the sectarian army, to defend and rescue them at the charges of England, from a stronger party of their own countrymen, in whose esteem

they were no better than sectarians themselves. But they add, "It was against the former declarations of both kingdoms," to seize, or proceed against the king. We are certain that no such declarations of both kingdoms, as derive not their full force from the sense and meaning of the covenant, can be produced.

And if they plead against the covenant, "to preserve and defend his person;" we ask them briefly, whether they take the covenant to be absolute or conditional? If absolute, then suppose the king to have committed all prodigious crimes and impieties against God, or nature, or whole nations, he must nevertheless be sacred from all violent touch. Which absurd opinion, how it can live in any man's reason, either natural or rectified, we much marvel: since God declared his anger as impetuous for the saving of king Benhadad, though surrendering himself at mercy, as for the killing of Naboth. If it be conditional, in the preservation and defence of religion, and the people's liberty, then certainly to take away his life, being dangerous, and pernicious to both these, was no more a breach of the covenant, than for the same reason at Edinburgh to behead Gordon, the marquis of Huntley. By the same covenant we made vow to assist and defend all those that should enter with us into this league; not absolutely, but in the maintenance and pursuing thereof. If, therefore, no man else was ever so mad as to claim from hence an impunity from all justice, why should any for the king, whose life, by other articles of the same covenant, was forfeit? Nay, if common sense had not led us to such a clear interpretation, the Scots commissioners themselves might boast to have been our first teachers: who, when they drew to the malignance which brought forth that perfidious last year's irruption against all the bands of covenant or Christian neighbourhood, making their hollow plea the defence of his majesty's person, they were constrained by their own guiltiness to leave out that following morsel that would have choked them, “the preservation and defence of true religion and our liberties." And questionless in the preservation of these we are bound, as well, both by the covenant, and before the covenant, to preserve and defend the person of any private man, as the person and authority of any inferior magistrate; so that this article, objected with such vehemence against us, contains not an ex

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