nant by this seditious representation, accompanied with | understand, or ever seriously mind, the beginning of the doubtful obedience of that province which represents it. And thus we have their preface supported with three reasons; two of them notorious falsities, and the third against themselves; and two examples, "the province of London, and the commissioners of the kirk-assembly." But certain, if canonical examples bind not, much less do apocryphal. Proceeding to avouch the trust put upon them by God, which is plainly proved to be none of this nature, "they would not be looked upon as sowers of sedition, or authors of divisive motions; their record," they say, "is in heaven," and their truth and honesty no man knows where. For is not this a shameless hypocrisy, and of mere wolves in sheep's clothing, to sow sedition in the ears of all men, and to face us down to the very act, that they are authors of no such matter? But let the sequel both of their paper, and the obedience of the place wherein they are, determine. Nay, while we are yet writing these things, and foretelling all men the rebellion, which was even then designed in the close purpose of these unhallowed priestlings, at the very time when with their lips they disclaimed all sowing of sedition, news is brought, and too true, that the Scottish inhabitants of that province are actually revolted, and have not only besieged in Londonderry those forces, which were to have fought against Ormond and the Irish rebels; but have in a manner declared with them, and begun open war against the parliament; and all this by the incitement and illusions of that unchristian synagogue at Belfast, who yet dare charge the parliament, " that, notwithstanding specious pretences, yet their actings do evidence, that they love a rough garment to deceive." | The deceit we own not, but the comparison, by what at first sight may seem alluded, we accept: for that hairy roughness assumed won Jacob the birthright both temporal and eternal; and God we trust hath so disposed the mouth of these Balaams, that, coming to curse, they have stumbled into a kind of blessing, and compared our actings to the faithful act of that patriarch. 66 that 4th verse, may "be ashamed every one of his lying vision," and may justly fear that foregoing denouncement to such " as speak lies in the name of the Lord," verse 3, lurking under the rough garment of outward rigour and formality, whereby they cheat the simple. So that "this rough garment to deceive" we bring ye once again, grave sirs, into your own vestry; or with Zachary shall not think much to fit it to your own shoulders. To bestow aught in good earnest on the magistrate, we know your classic priestship is too gripple, for ye are always begging: and for this rough gown to deceive, we are confident ye cannot spare it; it is your Sunday's gown, your every day gown, your only gown, the gown of your faculty; your divining gown; to take it from ye were sacrilege. Wear it therefore, and possess it yourselves, most grave and reverend Carmelites, that all men, both young and old, as we hope they will shortly, may yet better know ye, and distinguish ye by it; and give to your rough gown, wherever they meet it, whether in pulpit, classis, or provincial synod, the precedency and the pre-eminence of deceiving. They charge us next, that we have broken the covenant, and loaden it with slighting reproaches. For the reproaching, let them answer that are guilty, whereof the state we are sure cannot be accused. For the breaking, let us hear wherein. "In labouring," say they," to establish by law a universal toleration of all religions." This touches not the state; for 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 errours 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, errours, 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 But if they mean, as more probably their meaning was, that "rough garment" spoken of Zach. xiii. 4, we may then behold the pitiful store of learning and theology, which these deceivers have thought sufficient to uphold their credit with the people, who, though the rancour that leavens them have somewhat quickened the common drawling of their pulpit elocution, yet for want of stock enough in scripture-phrase to serve the necessary uses of their malice, they are become so liberal, as to part freely with their own budge-gowns from off their backs, and bestow them on the magistrate as a rough garment to deceive; rather than not be fur-execution of church-discipline within their own connished with a reproach, though never so improper, never so odious to be turned upon themselves. For but with half an eye cast upon that text, any man will soon discern that rough garment to be their own coat, their own livery, the very badge and cognizance of such false prophets as themselves, Who, when they gregations. 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 covenantbreakers 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 wicked considerations; 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. 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," 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 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 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 free-height of them; these profound instructors, in the midst dom, 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. 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, 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 trapsBut here, utterly forgetting to be ministers of thegression to be disciplined upon their own stools. Or 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. 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: here by 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. 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 exception of the king's person, and authority, to do by privilege what wickedness he list, and be defended as some fancy, but an express testification of our loyalty; and the plain words without wresting will bear as much, that we had no thoughts against his person, or just power, provided they might consist with the preservation and defence of true religion and our liberties. But to these how hazardous his life was, will be needless to repeat so often. It may suffice, that, while he was in custody, where we expected his repentance, his remorse at last, and compassion of all the innocent blood shed already, and hereafter likely to be shed, for his mere wilfulness, he made no other use of our continual forbearance, our humblest petitions and obtestations at his feet, but to sit contriving and fomenting new plots against us, and, as his own phrase was, playing his own game" upon the miseries of his people: of which we desire no other view at present than these articles of peace with the rebels, and the rare game likely to ensue from such a cast of his cards. And then let men reflect a little upon the slanders and reviles of these wretched priests, and judge what modesty, what truth, what conscience, what any thing fit for ministers, or we might say reasonable men, can harbour in them. For what they began in shamelessness and malice, they conclude in frenzy: throwing out a sudden rhapsody of proverbs quite from the purpose; and with as much comeliness as when Saul prophesied. For casting off, as he did his garments, all modesty and meekness, wherewith the language of ministers ought to be clothed, especially to their supreme magistrate, they talk at random 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 kill-of" servants raging, servants riding, and wonder how ing 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 the earth can bear them." Either these men imagine themselves to be marvellously high set and exalted in the chair of Belfast, to vouchsafe the parliament of England no better style than servants, or else their high notion, which we rather believe, falls as low as court-parasitism; supposing all men to be servants but the king. And then all their pains taken to seem so wise in proverbing serve but to conclude them downright slaves: and the edge of their own proverb falls reverse upon themselves. For as delight is not seemly for fools," much less high words to come from base minds. What they are for ministers, or how they 66 crept into the fold, whether at the window, or through | heathen, proved ingrateful and treacherous guests to the wall, or who set them there so haughty in the pontifical see of Belfast, we know not. But this we rather have cause to wonder, if the earth can bear this insufferable insolency of upstarts; who, from a ground which is not their own, dare send such defiance to the sovereign magistracy of England, by whose authority and in whose right they inhabit there. By their actions we might rather judge them to be a generation of highland thieves and redshanks, who being neighbourly admitted, not as the Saxons by merit of their warfare against our enemies, but by the courtesy of England, to hold possessions in our province, a country better than their own, have, with worse faith than those their best friends and entertainers. And let them take heed, lest while their silence as to these matters might have kept them blameless and secure under those proceedings which they so feared to partake in, that these their treasonous attempts and practices have not involved them in a far worse guilt of rebellion; and (notwithstanding that fair dehortatory from joining with malignants) in the appearance of a co-interest and partaking with the Irish rebels: against whom, though by themselves pronounced to be the enemies of God, they go not out to battle, as they ought, but rather by these their doings assist and become associates! THE PORTRAITURE OF HIS MAJESTY IN HIS SOLITUDES AND SUFFERINGS. PUBLISHED FROM THE AUTHOR'S SECOND EDITION, PRINTED IN 1650, WITH MANY ENLARGEMENTS, BY RICHARD BARON. WITH A PREFACE SHEWING THE TRANSCENDENT EXCELLENCY OF MILTON'S PROSE WORKS. TO WHICH IS ADDED, AN ORIGINAL LETTER TO MILTON, NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED. Morpheus, on thy dewy wing Such fair auspicious visions bring. As sooth'd great MILTON's injur'd age, The tribes unborn with pious awe Imbibe each virtue from his heavenly page. DR. AKENSIDE. THE EDITOR'S PREFACE. WHEN the last impression of Milton's prose works was committed to my care, I executed that trust with the greatest fidelity. Not satisfied with printing from any copy at hand, as editors are generally wont, my affection and zeal for the author induced me to compare every sentence, line by line, with the original edition of each treatise that I was able to obtain. Hence, errours innumerable of the former impression were corrected; besides what improvements were added from the author's second edition of The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, which Mr. Toland had either not seen, or had neglected to commit to the press.* After I had endeavoured to do this justice to my favourite author, the last summer I discovered a second edition of his Eikonoklastes, with many large and curious additions, printed in the year 1650, which edition had escaped the notice both of Mr. Toland and myself. In communicating this discovery to a few friends, I found that this edition was not unknown to some others, though from low and base motives secreted from the public. But I, who from my soul love liberty, and for that reason openly and boldly assert its principles at all times, resolved that the public should no longer be withheld from the possession of such a treasure. I therefore now give a new impression of this work, with the additions and improvements made by the author; and I deem it a singular felicity, to be the instrument of restoring to my country so many excellent lines long lost, and in danger of being for ever lost,-of a writer who is a lasting honour to our language and nation; and of a work, wherein the principles of tyranny are confuted and overthrown, and all the arts and cunning of a great tyrant and his adherents detected and laid open. The love of liberty is a public affection, of which those men must be altogether void, that can suppress or smother any thing written in its defence, and tending to serve its glorious cause. What signify professions, when the actions are opposite and contradictory? Could any high-churchman, any partizan of Charles I, have acted a worse, or a different part, than some pretended friends of liberty have done in this instance? Many high Mr. Toland first collected and published the author's prose works in 3 vols, folio, 1697, or 1698: for which all lovers of liberty owe grateful praise to his name; but through hurry, or perhaps not having seen the different copies, he printed from the first edition of some tracts, which the author had afterwards published with considerable additions. In 1738 Milton's prose works were again published in 2 vols. folio; of which impression all I shall say is, that, no person being employed to inspect the press, the printer took the liberty to alter what he did not understand, and thereby defaced the author, and marred the beauty of many passages. |